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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-11-24, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views Taming up the Scottish tartan Jt took a mighty effort, but I finally found something good to say about Trump: he's not Scottish. Nope, turns out the orange beluga's pedigree is solidly Prussian — `Drumf' is the original family name. Not McDrumf or MacDrumf. Just Drumf. Speaking as an umpty-eleventh generation Scot, I think that's a good thing. My Caledonian forebears don't need any Trump baggage. Scots already have plenty to answer for. To wit: Porridge. Haggis. Bagpipes. Men in skirts. Oh, and uh, thriftiness. Scots are renowned for being able to take a Canadian nickel and squeeze it `til the Beaver's nose bleeds. You've heard the story about the Scotsman who goes into a drug store and carefully extracts a single condom from his sporran? The condom is somewhat the worse for wear — ragged, battered, torn up one side. It is also an unmistakably Scottish condom because it is distinctly plaid. Possibly the MacHinery tartan. "How much," the Scot asks the druggist, "to rrrreplace this?" The druggist tells him a new condom would cost ten shillings. "And how much," the customer asks, "to rrrrepairrr?" OP*Arthur 6-11 4 Black The druggist casts an expert eye over the merchandise and allows that it could be repaired for just five shillings. "I'll be rrrright back," says the Scot. Two hours later he's back, a huge smile wreathing his face. "Grrrrrrreat news" he tells the druggist. "The Rrrrregiment has voted to rrrrrrepairrr." I'm not sure about condoms but I know that tartans are another gift from the Scots. The story goes that back in 1842 a pair of brothers, John and Charles Allen, published a doorstopper entitled Vestiarium Scoticum. It was, they claimed, a reproduction of an ancient Scots manuscript, complete with colour illustrations showing the official clan tartans of venerable Scottish families. Clan Tartanism swiftly went viral. The Royals gave it their passionate endorsement. Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's hubby, enthusiastically commissioned a gray and red plaid tartan specifically for Balmoral Castle. Kind of cheeky considering Prince Albert was a German. Vestiarium Scoticum became the go -to source for unquestioned validation of all clan tartans — and why not? The Allen brothers were, after all, the grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. Except they weren't. John and Charles Allen weren't even brothers. Or Scottish, come to that. The truth is, the enterprising duo made the whole thing up. For hundreds of years Scots had worn any damn plaid that came off their looms. Then along came the Allen boys — actually a pair of Limeys from southern England — who invented the whole `sacred tartan' scam to make some money. To quote a report in the London Times, the myth of clan -specific tartans was "cooked up by a couple of enterprising gay fashionistas". Fact is, anyone from anywhere in the world can whip up a tartan of his or her choice and have it accepted by the Scottish Register of Tartans. This means any pretentious Johnny -come -lately with delusions of adequacy and access to a loom can literally weave themselves their own `Scottish' ancestry. The MacDrumf Tartan. Watch for it coming soon. Dealing with the Toronto of Huron Growing up in Goderich you can get a feel for what growing up in Toronto is like — people really do think it's the centre of the universe. Reports indicate that the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) will be looking at creating a new Huron County detachment to replace the aging facility on Highway 21 south of Goderich. Recently, the Town of Goderich Council sent out a resolution to its neighbours outlining why this new HURON COUNTY OPP detachment (I figured bold and capitalized might draw attention to the important words in that title) should be placed in Goderich, one of the westernmost locations in the entire county. While I'm yet to see how North Huron reacts, I can tell you quite confidently that Morris- Turnberry Council wasn't having any of it and I tip my hat to it for speaking up against the issue. I spent more than a decade, not continuously, in Goderich. I went through Kindergarten to Grade 6 at what is now Goderich Public School. I then attended Goderich District Collegiate Institute for a brief period of time. After I finished my formal education, I returned to Goderich, living with my father, to work for the newspaper there. During the periods I wasn't in Goderich, I lived in Seaforth for several years and Brantford and Kitchener for education for five years. Why does my life history matter? Well I lived in Goderich and I know that, when you're there, people often forget about the rest of the county. One could argue there are reasons that people in Goderich feel like they are the centre of the universe, but that doesn't make it true. When it comes to something like police coverage, everyone deserves equal response time and, as someone who has lived in Goderich and worked in Blyth, let me tell you, Goderich can get cut off from the rest of the county pretty quickly. While the resolution touts Goderich's location at the intersection of Highways 21 and 8 as a benefit, as someone who lived there and worked elsewhere I can tell you it's a curse, not a blessing. Both those highways are often closed in the winter and, while closures Denny ae Scott sus& Denny's Den don't bar police officers from going where they need to, they do denote a dangerous roadway. Putting the majority of our police coverage equipment and personnel in a location that is often cut off from the rest of the county due to weather isn't just a bad idea, it's stupid. The resolution also states that Goderich's downtown core (which features some of the craziest traffic stories I've ever heard) would be better for accessibility. While I could argue against that, I'll just say it's as accessible as anywhere else and leave it at that. The resolution also suggests that available land at the former Bluewater Youth Centre could be used, which is, you know, right beside the existing detachment. Wouldn't moving the facility down the road be a great waste of tax dollars? To further dispel the resolution, I'll say that Goderich being the largest urban centre in the municipality does NOT need to be considered as the population of Goderich is less than the population of the county outside of the town. The last point I'll bring up is the new OPP billing model. This contentious issue is decidedly less so at the Goderich Town Council table because, while the rest of us saw a hike in the cost of police protection, Goderich residents actually saw a drop in per - property coverage. That's right, Goderich is paying less and they now want more service for it. Seriously, how entitled can you get? In short, Goderich Town Council, you're wrong and, to remedy that, allow me to suggest wording for every other municipality in the county to pass as a resolution, and allow me to do it free of charge; all I ask is you make sure that the folks in Goderich know that it is a former son of the town speaking these words. This isn't sour grapes because I'm outside that supposed sphere of influence, this is just me: a guy who grew up down the road from the Goderich Sewage Treatment Facility, saying their refuse certainly does stink. WHEREAS we all pay for the Ontario Provincial Police in the county, not just ratepayers in Goderich, AND WHEREAS the North Huron Municipal Building also serves as a location for court proceedings that could require the same kind of police response as Goderich claims its courthouse needs, AND WHEREAS Goderich benefitted from the new OPP billing model, with individual costs falling despite the fact that the town has its own satellite detachment, AND WHEREAS that same billing model saw prices increase for police coverage for most of the rest of the county (meaning Goderich is actually, on a percentage basis, paying for less of the increased costs that will inevitably follow the new detachment), AND WHEREAS the amount of money located in an area should not allow it to have greater privilege than the rest of us in the county have, especially when it comes to something as important as police coverage, AND WHEREAS Goderich already has an OPP satellite location on The Square, literally across the road from the courthouse which Goderich points to as a reason for putting the OPP detachment in the town, AND WHEREAS Goderich has literally and figuratively become too big for its britches — it has expanded to its borders and has had to acquire land from neighbouring municipalities for development (as for figuratively, the entire motion they circulated to their neighbours basically saying, "We deserve this more because we're bigger than you," covers being too big for its britches), THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that Goderich Town Council realize that everyone in the county deserves to have the best response times from the Ontario Provincial Police Detachment for the area, not just those on the west side of the county. ALSO, BE IT RESOLVED that the Huron County Ontario Provincial Police Detachment be placed somewhere central so that the entire county benefits from its placement instead of a small section of the county benefitting from the taxes the rest of the county pays. 411. Shawn florni7iii" Loughlin Shawn's Sense Information is power Through a rewards program at Jess's work, I am the proud new owner of a Fitbit. Yes, the expensive version of a pedometer that looks like a really slick watch and tells you all kinds of things about yourself that you maybe did or didn't want to know. The collection of information that comes to you by way of a Fitbit is truly astonishing and it calls to mind many questions about how a small, postage stamp -sized electronic on your wrist can know when you fall asleep, when you wake up, when you're going up and down stairs and how many calories you're burning. The idea behind it has a bright side and a dark side as far as I'm concerned. The bright side is the encouragement the contraption provides. For example, on one of the first days I had it, I got very close to hitting the daily goal of 10,000 steps. Just a few hundred short about a half-hour to midnight, I went for a bit of a trot around so that I might bit the goal. That's the good side. The dark side is the shaming aspect of it. Immediately after my triumphant day of reaching 10,000 steps — a day that will forever live in my memory — it was Sunday, the Sunday that just passed. It was snowy, windy and cold and I aimed to do nothing but watch soccer and football. And I succeeded in reaching my goal. Checking out my Fitbit statistics after a day like that wasn't quite the pat on the back that came the day before. One area of the Fitbit, for example, is a chart that compares your "active" time to your "dormant" time. My charts that day were uninspiring to say the least. So, I felt bad, but I had to remind myself that we work all week to earn days like my Sunday, where we wear track pants and watch something good on television, perhaps for an extended period of time if we so desire. Yes, there's the encouragement and drive the Fitbit provides and there's the wagging finger of inactivity when you have a track pants day. One aspect of the experiment that I have been particularly looking forward to, however, is that the device tracks your sleeping patterns. It tells you how much sleep you got in any given night (complete with a happy moon face if you hit eight hours of sleep), even informing you how many times you wake throughout the night and how many times your Fitbit deemed you restless. So it knows when you're sleeping. It knows when you're active and when you're not. It knows when you're going up stairs and when you're going down stairs. It knows whether you're fit or not and it knows your heart rate, so it knows if your heart is racing for one reason or another and it knows if you're extremely calm. Pardon me for being a doomsday conspiracy theorist there, but isn't this a hell of a lot of information for one device to have? And it's all hooked into your smartphone, which, as whistleblower Edward Snowden will tell you, provides all kinds of connectability to your GPS co-ordinates, your correspondence, your banking information, etc. I feel like everything anyone would want to know about my life, whether it be which high- level members of government I'm corresponding with or how many glasses of water I'm drinking each day, is just a few keystrokes away. Now, I'm not a very interesting person in terms of those sorts of things, but if I was, it would all be out there for someone who knew where to look. Should I be scared? Or should I just keep thinking it's pretty cool to check my heart rate every now and then?