The Huron Expositor, 1985-07-03, Page 2GOLFING 'THEN AND NOW—Just about everyone took part In, Into the spirit of stepping back In time. Featured In the dress of a
and every interest was covered In the Tuckersmith Sesquicentennial by-gone time is Cameron Dolg, Bill Tremeer, and Linda Walsh,
parade on Saturday. Here, the Seaforth Golf and Country Club got Michael Watt and Karly Price show, more up-to-date styles.
(McIlwraith photo)
EElluron .4 xposittor
SINCE 1880, SERVING THE COMMUNITY FIRST
oefeleFieeerfee.c
SUSAN WHITE, General Manager
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el J.
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1983
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COUNTRY CORNER
by Larry Dillon
Door to door sales
Let's get_a ruffirkg
The whole story of separate schopVfunding might never be known.
When former Premier William Da* was education minister in the 60s,
rellable__Eumor has it, -he'-made a--deal--with-Gerald Emmett Cardinal
da-ifer, 'one of the country's most influential Catholic leaders, to
implement full funding for the province's separate schools.
When Cardinal Carter learned the premier was about to retire, 'he
insisted the promise be fulfilled. Mr. Davis, aware his departure would
likely cause an election, didn't want to take a chance on having the entire
weight of the Catholic hierarchy against.the Conservatives, so he . made
good.
By doing so, however, Mr. Davis also burdened his successor with the
entire problem. That' may or may not have contributed to the Tories'
dismal showing. ,
Now Premier. David Peterson is beginning to hint the govern
might ask for a court ruling on the legality of the move. Since th
previous administration had promised to put the plan into action this fall,
he'll have to move quickly.
But there is no doubt he should seek legal advice. The simple fact is
Ontarians are deeply divided over the issue, and the court - which (in
theory any way) is the arbitor of social questions of dubious legality -
might be able to shed some light.
Since the leaders of all three parties have committed themselves, and
thereby their caucuses, to carrying out the plan, there doesn't seem to be
much hope for its demise. It will probably go ahead, despite a real cry
from the people of 'this province for some imput, of at least some
information on the haws and whys.
With a new administration at Queen's Park - and one that's promising
a more open government at that - the least the people of this province
should expect is some answers. And the least the Liberals can do is try to
provide them.
What do John Neville, soon to be artistic
direct& at. the Stratford Shakespearean
Festival, and Stevie W odder, Motown
musician and rock singer extraordinaire have
in common? At first glance, nothing, but wait
for it reader, I'm going to try hard to make a
connection.
Fuse John Neville. He was guest speaker
at the opening of the 11th season of the Bly'i.
Simmer Festival a couple of weeks ago. And
he was wonderful. I've attended I guess , 0 of
that fine Canadian theatre's season open-
ings. And Jobn Neville's off-the-cuff remarks
turned the evening into the best I can
remember ever.
The. incoming head of Cenada's biggest
theatre had some complimentary things to
say about Blyth and what Stratford could
learn from it...chiefly its excellent sense of
connection to the community it serves. He
talked too about tough times for the arts and
their need for support. He said it worries him
that Stratford is too expensive and too
exclusive. But the strongest point John
Neville made, and it was an emotional one, as
all strong points ultimately are, was why wf
need theatre.
ATITSBBIfT
At its best, he said Aleatre prompts its
audience to ask questions. We go to plays so
that we can remind ourselves to ask why we
make war, not love. W e need theatre to get us
to ask why we allow famine in Ethiopia, why
we have terror and hijackings. When people
who see plays ask themselves these and other
fundamental questions, theatre is doing its
job.
Blyth's opening night play directly posed
some of Mr. Neville's questions, because
Polderland gave us some small understand-
ing of the problems of conscience and
survival faced by the ordinary soldiers who
fought in the second world war. But
ex-classical actor John Neville made a bigger
impact on me than the play did that Friday
night. I doubt that I'll ever again enter a
theatre without thinking a bit about the big
human qiiestions. •
Okay, okay, but Stevie Wonder, you ask?
In his own sweet way this blind musical
genius made an equally strong impression.
The occasion was a TV replay of a three hour
salute to Motown, filmed live sometime in the
last year at Harlem's Apollo theatre.
The highlights Were many: Patti LaBelle in
an outrageous spiky hairdo belting out oldies
but goodies and then leading a gospel choir; a
rendition of the -current song by the
Commodores, Night Shift, that featured,
cameo performances by top singers in the
styles of Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jackie
Wilson and Marvin Gaye, the late Motown.
greats that the song pays tribute to.
MAGIC HOURS
It was a magic three hours for those f us
who were there for the likes of Otis and
first time around, The Drifters, James
Brown, Martha Reeves, wonderful Smokey
Robinson, and many many more entertainers
from the sixties took us back to those exciting
and horrible teenage years. But while her dad
and I bopped along to the oldies and got into
great remember when discussions, our
seven-year-old was captivated too. She even
tuontinued on page MO)
Free trade - good or bad?
On question and commitment --
SOMETHING TO SAY 1
by Susan White
I like door to door salesmen. I never did
before, but I have learned to enjoy their
visits. Before I was always afraid of them.
The high pressure techniques they use, and
my vulnerability to their methods made me
an ideal victim.
Whenever a well dressed person would
come to the door and say "May I have a few
moments to speak to you and your wife."
They had me. By the time their well
rehearsed presentation was over I was ready
to reach for a pen and sign. I would have
spent thousands, perhaps millions, if it had
not been for my guardian angel.
The mistake the salesman usually made,
was to try to include my wife, Thateledy is
usually a bit more senlible than - me.
Somehow the merits of a vacuum cleaner
shaped like a spaceship or fhe advantages of
insurance against drought do not seem as
exciting to her. I always agreed the next day,
but in the excitement of discovering the
goodies the salesman had to offer, I would
have bought.
Door to door salesmen brought a whole
new world into our houset. There are products
out there that are supposedly available only
from these people. A salesman's vacuum
cleaner will lift 15 pounds of sand from the
carpet,. and still have enough energy left to
prove that our cleaner didn't suck all the
black from the curtains. Pots and pans are
available that turn poor cooks into gourmet
chefs.
Magazines, cosmetics, candies, ' oil ad-
ditives, light bulbs, and specialty insurance
are all available from the friendly door to door
sales representatives. In most cases, even
c\rnen highly expensive produ are immediately
available. It's just a matt r of signing the
sales contract and agreeing to a few months
or years of almost "easy pa ts."
At one time I feared thocie friendly sales
reps. Their polite insistence always cost me at
least an hour of My time air* they usually
talked me into buying something I did not
want. I felt guilty they had gone to so much
trouble to come to see me and explain about
their "miracle" item that was "available no
where else." '
- It was an aluminum siding salesman that
changed my attitude. He and his supervisor
spent a whole afternoon at my home. He had
had to call in reinforcements that day. My
wife was home and we did not want to cover
our home with aluminum siding. I kept trying
to say no in a variety of polite ways, but they
failed to notice my refusal. They even went
back to their cars to get materials for the
"iodine demonstration." It was fascinating. I
had not known that iodine would leave a stain
on siding materials other than aluminum.
W e did not give in that time. W e had
already wanted and ordered another type of
siding for our house. It was also interesting
that we had received a price on aluminum
siding from a local contractor before the
salesmen came calling. The contractor's
price was less than half of the amount the
salesmen wanted.
I met that salesman a couple of years later.
He did not recall me. I remembered how
uncomfortable and guilty I had felt about not
buying after he and his boss had spent a
whole afternoon on me. He was still in the
same business and doing very well. Commis-
sions were large and he was an expert
salesman.
W e talked about his job. He explained how
to approach people and how to not hear their
refusals. The objective. is to -"close" the
contract. He is in the customer's home to
make money. He even explained he appre-
ciated it when some people were rude to him
and slammed the door in his face. They would
not have bought anyway and they just saved
him some valuable time. He calculates he
earns an average of $65 for every door that he
knocks; The sooner he cart get away from a
customer who won't buy the sooner he can
sell to someone else and earn another
commission.
I learned from that salesman. The type of
customer he preferred was the verishy washy
type who could be talked into signing a sales
contract. He didn't knew it, but that was me,
he was talking about.
After listening to him I stopped feeling
guilty about not buying. Salesmen were just
exploiting my feelings to serve their own
ends. Since that time f have even been known
to take revenge on• uninvited sales represen-
tatiyes. I will not spend time with them Unless
I have the time to spare. If I do and their
presentation is particularly good I will lists
as long as possible. I can learn effeetiA
persuasion techniques from them.
I do not tell them at first, but under no
conditions will I buy from a sales rep who has
not been asked to come to my home. If I
decide I need the product they are selling
. will buy a similar item from a local merchant.
The merchants appreciate the business so
much that they charge only for the item and
not for the cost of several unsuccessful-gales
calls on my neighbonsi. This not only saves me
money, it helps local businesses.
It is one of the ironies of history that two
. nations, side by side, celebrate their national
birthdays within a few days of each other and
that while they are the best of friends -(the
undefended border and all that) one of those
nations was formed because of the aggres-
sion of the other.
There has been a tendency in recent years
to deplore the "anti-Americanism" of
Canadian national policy and yet it has always
been the central moving fact in Canadian
history. Nationalism is often spoken in terms
of being against something else, Americans
are most nationalistic when they speak of the
danger of communism and see the sinister
hand of the Soviet Union behind everything.
Canada is a small country living beside the
largest power in the world. W e have a history
of being invaded three times in our short
history from south of the border. The
American revolutionary army invaded Can-
ada to try to make Quebec part of the
revolution in the late 1700's, The Americans
tried to drive British influence from North
America by capturing Canada in 1812 and in
the 1860's, fanatical Irish Americans, with
the tacit support of many American politi-
cians, invaded Canada in their comic-opera ,
plot to turn it into an Irish republic to be used
as a base for an invasion of Ireland. It was
these latter threats that convinced the
Canadian colonies they must unite to protect
themselves from their dangerous neighbor.
We Canadians are a queer lot. bet
there's, no other country in the world where
people talk so much about the weather. You
know what it's like in winter. Go to a party or
,any social gathering. If everybody is silting
,around rather awkwardly and things don't
seem to be warming up, just mention
heating. In five minutes, the people who were
sitting there moments ago staring at each .
other's feet with painful smiles are animated-
ly discussing coal, wood and oil furnaces,
kitchen stoves, insulation, cold east winds.
They'll go on for hours, and both men and
women are fascinated, not by the heating
experiences of others, but in a frenzy of
impatience to tell you about their own.
For eight months of the year we go around
telling each other it's awfully cote for this
time of year. We complain bitterly if the
weather doesn't become semi-tropical in
April, though we should know perfectly well
from past experience that it won't.
Along toward the first of July, we suddenly
get a little hot spell. Nothing desperate. Just
a little warm weather, stuff that people in the
tropics would sneer at. So what do we do? Do
we east off our woollens with joyous cries? Do
We have a bg fete, dancing in the streets and
sacrifices of thanksgiving offered to old Sol?
Do we really get out and loll around in that
wonderful heat we've waited for so long?
Not we. We go around complaining even
more bitterly than we do in winter. W e take it
as a personal affront. We get a harassed,
hectic look. If we live in the city, we dodge
from one aircoolem building to another
(inevitably catching our death of cold in one of
them), and when the weekend comes, rush
In this century the invasion has been
economic, usually with the grateful accept-
ance of Canadians, Many Canadians are
inviting the Americans north again with their
urge for free trade, their panacea for
everything that is wrong in Canada economi-
cally. Part of this is a reaction to the Trudean
years of seeming confrontation with the U.S.
We long for a new time of peace and
prosperity.
Whether there would be prosperity is a
matter of heated debate between economists.
Whether there will be peace or not will
depend on how much we want to live by the
American rules because any peace will be on
their terms.
We have seen plenty of evidence lately the
Americans will set the rules of free trade.
They will talk about "unfair trade" by their
own definition of 'the rules. Canadian
fishermen, for instance, have been judged as
being unfairly subsidized because they are
allowed to receive unemployment insurance
while American fishermen don't. Canadian
madly off in all directions. We greet each
other with anguished looks and "hot, ain't
it?"
Some people try to fight fire with firewater.
They convince themselves with remarkable
ease that a long, cool one will solve the entire
heat problem. It's like pouring gasoline on a
small blaze. After half a dozen long, cool
ones, they're exuding more moisture than
they're taking in. So they blame the weather.
Most of the preceding remarks have been
about the adult male population. I must admit
that women and kidg stand up to the heat a lot
better. Big reason, of course, is their attire, or
lack of it. Small children have less clothing on
them in this weather than 'there is in the
handkerchief their old man totes around in
his hip pocket. Women, whose name is
vanity,' are interested in acquiring a tan, so
expose every possible inch and ounce to the'
dazed gaze of the men, W omen's summer
garments, if they avoid slacks like the plague,
are a delight to the eye, and the ultimate in
common sense. Maybe that's why ladies
don't sweat, but just perspire.
Not so the men, Unless they're on their
holidays, they face the heat with a surly lack
of compromise that is admirable, if ratli'
stabilization programs for farmers which see
the farmer and the government Share the cost
of a sort of insurance policy against low
prices, have been deemed unfair government
subsidization by American authorities who
have . slapped countervailing duties on
Canadian imports. Never mind the fact
figures show American farmers are subsi-
dized more than twice as much as Canadian.
farmers.
Peace with the Mulroney government has
been bought by caving in to 'all American
demands such as reducing controls on foreign
'investment and changing the National
Energy Program but with no effort on their
part to solve our complaints such as acid rain.
Is free trade a good thing for Canada? We
don't know what we will gain from it for sure,
perhaps a great deal, perhaps nothing. But
we do know what we'll lose: the ability to
make up our own mind what policies best
serve our problems: To get along with the
Americans we must obey their rules. W e will,
in effect, become the 51st state.
stupid. Most of them wear the same clothes
they do in winter except for overcoat and
jacket. A few sneakily remove their tie and
some of the more degenerate roll their
shirt-sleeves up, but that's about as far as
they'll go. Vast majority of men wear heavy
leather shoes, wool socks, long trousers made
of wool or flannel and heavy shirts. They also
wear underpants, which cannot be said of
everybody in summer, or eveny in the family.
One more thing that makes a man
miserable in the heat is the amount of junk he
has to carry in his pockets, In cool weather he
can spread it around in jacket and top coat
pockets. But when he has only trouser
pockets in which to carry cigarettes, handker-
chief, lighter, coins, cat keys, wallet, pencils,
bills, envelopes, banfc-book, sinkers, pipe,
and about fifty other essentials, he looks
about the shape of an old tree, covered with
fungus. A dame can carry twice as much, but
she has it all rammed in a purse, and slung
over her shoulder.
Hot weather is not for men, They should be
all given six weeks off in the summer, while
the scantily clad women and children keep
things going. The men 'won't be happy until
they sniff the first nip of'fali in the air, and can
start grumbling about the cold and what it
costs to heat the place.
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Keith Roulston
Canadians fickle about weather
Illrel.m.a!mmomememear
SeGAR AND SPICE - by Bill Smiley