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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1978-02-02, Page 2An Oxford County Red Cross official has sugg,esteg, that county council there set up an emergency planlo handle the crises that go with, ;big snow storms. Perhaps Huron and Perth counties could takce a look at the idea too. Granted individuals and local governmmt9. muddle along.ver well helping each other, and diving informal .mutual aid. People put up complete strangers who ,get storm stayed at their gates. CB'ers get messages all over the ''''',-.4..countrysiiie and ownerS.. of 4 wheel drive vehicles and snowmobiles are quick to volunteer for ernergenCy transportation and: delivery duty, Farrners,plow-•each other out, and on occasion, township ,roads. But there is a lack of co-ordination Of all these - Valtiable efforts. SoMetimes, duplication, 'confusion and. loss of time. results. It wouldn't hUrt at all if eVeryonain one county knew they could call a.. central emergency number to report a road impassable, a driver lost or a senior citizen needing medicine. We're not talking about another empire, with permanent offices employees and budget. But perhaps ' each cotinty_council could simply work Out a plan so at all the equipment,, • supplies , an v luinteers fre•itte.„,, area „could• tie put to best use once a bad ' Storm hits. , We're thinking of a plan •that would ,` inventory emergency supplies and pOblic places where, storm stayed travellers could be put up 'around thA county. A plan could also 110' firaand police chiefs, Red Cross and. St. Johi.Vs—Ambulance heads-'in 'each `dbrnmunity who could co-ordinate , storm relief. ' Some-_ thought and time given• to developing an emergency snow storm plan need not cost a great deal. It should be a case of having one person, or perhaps an existing county committee, pull together information that's already available in bitS and pieces. / County road departments already have emergency plans that they put into action once it's apparent that another storm is. upon us. A plan that took in the plight of storm stayed dri,vers, -medical and faren emergencieS would.take that one step further: ' We -don't want a snow emergency plan that 'adds another layer 'of bureaucracy. But a" short, sensible directory sort of plan could make our snow s relief efforts more efficient while in no way discouraging' their volulnteer, character. Sugar and Spice by Bill Smiley Winter blues W.O.Mitchell, well-known and respected Canadian writer came out with something on a national TV "interview with which I wholeheartedly, concur. He suggested, more or less, that everything that is wrong with the Canadian character can be blamed on our Canidian winters. After a couple of months •of minter, we feel harassed, persecuted, and vaguely, wronged. We became insular, grumpy, gloomy-and generally, unfit to .live with. When it has snowed and blowed for a couple of weeks on end, or a.,,couple of months on end, as it has around our place, you are ready to kick td cat, Complain about the cooking. sn at your children, or quietly climb into the bathvb and open' your wrists. I haven't any figures. but I'll bet our -„ suicide rate.soars after the holiday season, when xiie face three months of being cold and being, broke. (i wouldn't insult anybody by making this bet in Canadian dollars. Make it yen or marks or francs.) would like to expand on this and make the bet on divprces a'nd deaths. People get to the point, about the end of January, where they. can't 'stand' themselves, let alone thier spouse's, so they split up. Old people-and sick people, huddled at home or in hospital, get so sick of living that they just up and die. You wjll retort that a lot of affairs begin in mid-winter. This is true. But it's not love. Most of. them are among,- the apres-ski crowd, and it's sex or a deiperate measure to keep warm. - I can't imagine anyone falling in love while Whizzing through farmers' fences, on a snowmobile or shoving a car out of a snow-bank. What I can imagine is a sober, decent citizen, perhaps a kindly- retired clergyman, committing murder with a shovel after the town plow has refilled his driveway for the fourth time in 24 hours. I can comtemplate, with some sympathy, the ordinarily happy housewife and loving mother being hauled into court for child battering just after her kids, with friends, have tropped in with half a ton of snow and slush on their boots and marched across kitchen floor she has scrubbed three days in a row. You May think I exaggerate. I 'do not. I,. one 'of the , sweetest chaps, you'd ever et-wonder, have seriously considered mayhem when some turkey with bald tires starts up ati iby hill ahead of me, skids sideways across the road and leaves the there with M'y wheels spinning and smoke corning out 'rot edit. 'not against winte in principle', I'm just against: Winter in Canada. They can have all the Winter they liken Nor am 1 unaware that then is. a tiny. benighted portion of our. populace that - thoroughly enjoys winter. Children on the whole,. love it. Instead of going .through red lights on their bicycles and being-killed by cars. they can dart out from between'two snow banks into theoath ,of a car that is sashaying along on glare ice. Teenagers: another notoriously unstable group,.also seein to like winter. Instead of breaking 'their legs riding motorbikes, or their necks in speedboats. they can break their legs 'riding snowmobile's and: their necks on ski hill, At any given time in any given winter, half a dozen ski bums are clumping around_ hi, the .average high school with casts on their legs. Curlers, too, don't seem to mind the winter. They drive in a heated car to a heated and often luxurious curling club, where they can run up and down the ice for two hours in their beaptiful tight pants, and then sit around drinking and discussing every rock thrown ad nauseant'. The only 'thing more, boring is a golf • foursome going over every shot•in the bar. But at least they have the sense to do it in summer. d One other segnient that .professes, to'love . winter is the swinging singles.' Every weekepd they pile out of the' city in their thousands.. heading for the -ski hills. And . the chalets: And the big drinking sessions. And-the chance of meeting Mr.' Big or Ms, Boobs. And on Sunday night, after spending perhaps two hours skiing. often none, they pile back in.their fast cars and head for home, a menaeeto -everything on" the road. They're in the same category at the .,, sane singles who do , the same thing in suinmer,„except that the ski mob,' the city slickers, don't know how to drive in snow. 'But .ask anybody sensible if he love; `winter. •'Ask a hydrO • lineman. ' Ask a snowplow operator who has to work a double shift. Ask a cop. It's not necessary, I believe, to ask a guy whp has a fuel oil franchise. Aside from the sights of winter c- red, runny noses, shish and salt all over your front lawn, 800 pounds of icicles from your eaves there are the sounds. , - Hacking coughs on every side. The clunk ,,and..rattle and slant of the snow:plc& under your window at 4 a:m. The sweet howl of the wind about your windows. The crash of falling ice. .The thump and .gulp of the furnace its life bloat:" - 114 y solution? Either site it back to the • IndiartS, poor deVils, or send everybody over 40 sob* for sik. inotiths, and let the other idiots revel in it. And pay the bills.. We're ilette,r off for our storms It never ceases to amaze me the changes that a big winter storm can bring to' humanity. We missed most of what the press has been . labelling the "most intense storm of the century" (now don't you feel left out), but we did get enough to slow things down.and make us think. And just to the south of us, in the London area they'wele in a state of near panic. Yeticipitkitt fear that was with- many peopl P, there are some Marvellous heart- warming stories that came out of the' storm as there have been after every.: storm in the past few yearS. ' In fact it, leads. me to wonder, how much' w • • worse a plate might this be if it weren't' for our frequent storms. People tend to be pretty wrapped up'in their own pro.blents these days, not caring about other people around them r It's a 'world where everyone seems to be grasping, grafting all the time. It's every man for himself. , 'Yet in the midst of,,an eMergency like a storm, the beSt side of • people seems to - re-emerge. It's mindful of the old' time stories of,pioneers where, if a titan lost his barn in a fire, the neighbour's would get together and - rebuild it for. him. The problem seems to be that human beings can't stand comfort. When there is danger all around, they wo'fle ingether for the 'common good but when everything is going well, they bicker.and fight with one another. We seem to need to go bock- to the old situation of.fighting to survive before we can bring, out the best in .humanity again. Thus' when we have 'a war or a famine we see the, better side of human beings than when we have prosperity. Maybe if we had more emergencies, we'd be better off as a' nation. If we could get all Canadians, French speaking and English__ speaking, 'easterner and westerner, native and immigrant, storm stayed in one sma9 part of the--country=-I--think -a•-lot -of our-present problems 'might be solved. People would be faced then with a common enemy and they would work together to survive and in doing so :would gain a greeter understanding of and respect for each other. Lacking that common enemy, as we do now in Canada, we become enemies of each other. The effect, of a threat to survival was graphically shown a ,couple of weeks ago by Alice Munro'S script for The Newcomers series on CBC television. Her Irish immigrant came from a highly. structured society where there were owners and tennants, lords and peasants and never the gap between the two was breached. But when he arrived in Canada there was tixeL^cornmen job to be done of clearing the land, surviving the horribly cold - inters, and scraping out a living from he gin soil. Suddenly, the immigrant noted in is letters home' to ,Ireland, the divisions that had formerly divided them ^began to evaporate. Oh things didn't completely disappear. There was still emnity between the Orange and Catholic .Irish and other petty enmities but the whole clasS system. that had' been.. so evident in the homeland quickly disappeared in North America. PrObably one of the things that 'has kept Canada front being a truly united country as some such as the U.S.' have been is not so Much the fast that we have a small' population, • and huge distance assorhewould point out, or that .We have two official languages and still keep many others in various parts' of the country, but' that we have been a peaceful nation. We have faced few crisis in 'our history. Once the pioneers survived the arduous yeare'of settlement, they settled back, • to a relatively' comfortable and enjoyable life. That life was only jarred by such huge events as: the two world wars where,peeple felt theys'..,-, mast work together. Even theser , however, did not seen a real threat to survival to some , people, particularly Quebec residents who saw it as a far off war .in Europe, not a Canadian war. if 'the Germans had been invading Canada we might really have seen ,a tenting factor in the country but a EUropean war seemed a far off, unreal threat 'to some and thus proved divisive rather than some- thing to make all Canadians 'pull toget By comparison, ever since the 13 colonie ' decided to unite in the.,U.S., that eountry,has z..never been,far away from a wan. Since 1776, • semeMber, the U.S. 'has twice attacked Canada. It has battled' Britain, Spain, Mexico, • Italy, Germany, the Chinese and Koreans in the Korean. war, the Chinese, Vietnamese. and Cambodians in south east Asia and even set orie part of the country against another in a bleOdy war. . The feeling of unity that this, sense of common d,anger has brought-eannot be' discounted in watching the 'way the two ---north-Ameriean-nations-have-taken -different-- paths. _ , The present crisis in Canada might have, been ...easily solved by our leadership in- another 'country at , another time, They would simply have engineered a war that seemed a very/ just cause .to fight. The "fervour of the ' crisis would haVe quickly made us forget our petty bickerings within the country and pull together to survive. Canada has, of course, 'never been very warlike and this is not an age where wars are • conveniently begun and stopped as in the past. So we're left only with natural dangers and .lately the powers seem. to be doing their best to provide. enough of these to make people react as if they were in as much danger •aS a war. And AO knows, maybe if we get •enough.otorrns the milk of human 'kindness will flow enough to help us realize that most of our problems are caused by ourselves. Amen by Karl Schuessier Riding the roads A.hh! There'S nothing . like tiding__11 roads in the United States -again. I s like being back home in a comfortable r t. When the radio announeersays it's •Ding to. by 17 degrees outside today, 1 know xactly . what he means. And when he says the winds are coining at.you at SO miles an hour. I know. • what to expect. And whetiThe says 10 inches of snow are going to fall, I know how much snow is going • to layer the ground. That's the way.it is when vou travel in New York State. They tell it like it is--or was-- in the- good old da . s in Canadai-When pints were vio pints and gal ns were-gallons and we all knew what w were talking about. The State s'de is a straight talking bunch of. people. That's what I've noticed while I've been travelling the States for the last couple of weeks. They not Only give it to you in. familiar measures, but they hand , lt out in plain ts Engl ish. itake ,,those Signs on the streets in Harlem h . in New York City, 'Littering is selfish andltithy. Don't do it," ' ) You can't get any more direct than that, tap you? There's no clever .double , meaning slogans like we see on our . trash cans on downtown sidewalks--signs like "Pitch in" or "Put litter in its place". Those kind of signs ' just riudgeyou alone. Humor y ou into doing the right thing. But I wonder if it keep's the streets as cleans as that bold "Don't do it." In South Carolina there wa's no. don ..Aree, how fast you should driye. Every few mil a sign said it all in three words. Three bigs words. 55 the Law. , • , . Then there was this guy On the radio. He's New York City's Ann LandeiVof the airwaves. I heard him allThe "Way from New York to Georgia. Yes, dear friends, it's true. I am on •;. my way to Florida. NoW. Now. None of that green envy stuff, I'm working. I'm working. This is business. Honegt...1-have ten hours of taped interviews already from New York City and Washington D.C.' Can I help it the man I have to interview is in Key West Florida? .‘?- . But, you say, in Key West, Florida? One of (Continued on Page 3) .: • v tl~e.years ag Since SOO Serving the Corinntinity First . — . Published at SEAFOEITH, .ONTARIO, every Thursday morning McLEA.N BROS, PUBLISHERS' LilD, ANDREW Y. MeLEAN. ifublistier SUSAN WHITE. Editor DAVE ROBB, Advertising Manager . . Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association ' Ofitario Weekly Newspaper Association • -7'ilid'Andit Bureau of Circulation Subscription Rates: Canada (in advance) $12.00 a Year Outside Canada lin adVance)$20.00 a' Year . SINGLE COPIES -:;11.5 CENTS EACH Second Class Mail Registration Number Ob9 ,1 Telephone 527-0240' SEAFORTH; ONTARIO, FEBRUARY' 2,' 108 Do•we ne.-04-a Man? elund the scenes. By Keith Roulston nollowyo, 108 The contract far the OreetiOn of the tew Presbyterian Church in. EgOtondville has been awarded to John H. BroadfOt MeSSts,'Corip and Shaw, the W6lOd work -to the former and the stone and brick work to the atter,), • for the sum of $3,251, Miss Kate O'Donahoe of Lucan has been engaged teacher,of the No. 6 Hullett school, near Clinton, at a .salary of $340 a year. ' A Wise has sold his farm of 50 acres en the 8th concession of Hullett to Robert Taylor for $3,000. pn.,the oecasion, of, a regular. weekly prayer meeting. in ' Duff's Church,MCKkhop, the pastor, Rev, Mr. - Musgrove presented Mr. 'Andrew, Henderson With a Valuable silver watch as' a alight i'eepgnittien of his' rvices on behalf of the church. JANUARY 39,1903 At. a meeting of the County Council which opened at Goderich, Reeve W, H.' Kerr of Brussels was elected Warden. R. Crawford has sold his 150 acre farm on the.13th concession in Hullett to 'his son George for 57 non The balloting for four new elders in C.armel Church, Hensall, resulted in- the following being elected: William Dougall, John McArthur, James A. Bell, and Peter Moir Sr. . , ' Enoch Parker of Dikie, had the misfortune to have his house'destroyed by fire 'which was caused by, children playing with matches. . Mr. William Ament had an experience, one that he would not care to go through again. Mr. Antent had laid down on the couch with his young son and was wakened by a Strange. noise. He noticed that the hall lamp had exploded but it did not take long to extinguish the blaze. 'A rink from the SeaforthTs Curling Club went to • Stratfor to play a match with 'the rink 'of the Scotch Curlers. is composed, of George Patterson, 3. S. Roberts, F. mstead, and Alex Wilson. Last Friday night s the coldest night of the season; fortunately there, was of a high wind or it • would be• , . • almost inbearable. Mr, Dick of To on o. the purchaser of . the. Van Egmond, Woolen was in town last week. . William,Ament is having a lot of logs delivered at his saw mill and Stave factory. W. H. Willis of town is carrying his arm in a sling. He fell' on the ice on.. the, rink injuring it. A few nights afterwards while returning from Gorrie, his rig upset going .through a pitch hole and, being-thrown out, he had his .shoulder dislocated. Robert' Devereaux of the Seaforth Carriage Works, has been given the job to paint a hearse for My Alex Broadfoot of Listowel. r John A. Wilson won' the handscmetrophy donated by Alex Wilson to the curling club fora point competition. .1: A. Wilson and R. S. Hayes tied.,IvIk. Wilson coming . out victorious. , A week ago, we had weather cold enough to freeze the nose off a brass monkey; •the beginnieg of the week' it was balmy as April and on Thursday.we were treated to the novelty Of a January thunderstorm.. On Wednesday. of this week, John Hinehley, an employer of the. Broadfoot and Box Furniture Factory had the misfortune to have two of his fingers taken off. The reads are again being•Made passible for loads to be drawn upon them at Walton. Below the snow there is a considerable depth yet the pitch holeS are less numerous. FEBRUARY 3,•1928 Owing to advancing years and. other' infirmities, William Gillespie has• resigned the position„of Chief Constable in Seaforlh,For 38 years by' day 'and' night, Mr. Gillespie was responsible for law and order on the streets and in"-public places and no man has ever • performed his dutiarlii-cife conscientiously or more efficiently. One of Bayfield's oldest land, marks.was razed a, week or so ago. It was the harness.shop occupied •for some 60 years'...br the ' late ThomaS Cameron. George Coleman of :St anley shipped a fine car load of cattle• from Kippen• station. Messrs. William Dietz and Cooper of Kippen who were 'at Sarnia attending the Thresher- , .men's Convention have returned home. . The coldest snap of the winter was felt on, Sunday of this week. • ,We believe that George Hud received the contract for the caretaking of the. HenSall school., ._so has rt . of Hensall ' ' , Mr. 'and Mrs. David Robinson of ,Millbroelc have purchased the property of Miss Jean Kerr on 'Brock Street, Hensall. Miss Ella Turnbull who has been convalescing at the 'home of her mother, Mrs. G.' T. Turnbull, frpm the effects of an operation, has returned to TOronto: Monday was the coldest of the winter, , the thermometer registering 14 beloi zero. • Miss Dorothy Gemmell of Tuckersmith had' the misfortune to fall and fracture her arm.• , Oswa Walker of Cromart'y is at present getting lumber. on the old store grounds as the bricks are already on the ground.. Harold AfrnStrong and Bill fotheringham of •••-•t- Brucefield are cutting wood for Hugh Aikenhead. :FEBRUARY 6, 195Y Mr.-and Mrs. Henry Weiland of Egmcindville marked`' their 63rd wedding anniversary, Other than a few visits from pear friends and telephone calls from members of the family, they participated in no celebration. Mr. Weyland is 95 and his wife 85. • 'In less than .2 hours, Allister Broadfoot. Tuckersmith, •-witnessed his entire crop, several implements, a number of pigs, and chickens, and his recently remodelled and modernized barn destroyed hy flames. The loss is estimated at over $110:000. The. barn was reported 'to be one of-the best and most _cenveniently laid out in this district. The loss was partly covered by insurance. Twenty-two male Members of St. Thomas Anglican Church met last week to organize a men's club. Gordon A. W right was elected president of the new group. Dr. J.W. McCabe was named Vice President, and George Kruse.' was elected Secretary-Treasurer. Mr. and Mrs. George Fee . of 'Hensall, quietly celebrated their Silver Wedding Anniversary. They Were the recipients of many articles of silver and spring flowers from. friends who called during the day. Their son., Charles, was presented with an engraired telegraph ey by his parents. Cecil Van Horn, his ipstru , made the presentation.. Mr. and Mrs. William Stapleton of Dublin Celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. The family and , immediate ,relatives marked the event with dinner at ' Fairview Farm in Seaforth. Howard Hartry formerly of town and the brother of ,. Miss Maude Hartry, was honored by the co-workers of Lawson Jones Limited in London at a retirement dinner. Mr. Hartry who left here 38 years ago marks 37' years in the firm's accounting section. Mr.Hartry was a former bookkeeper in the_Robert Bell Engine Company here. • Messrs. A, F. Cluff and HowardHartry of London left Saturday for Halifax where they will sail to British Guiana and South America. Miss Helen Horan of KeKillop had the misfortune to fractttre a bone in her foot while Stating on the ice at school last week. k • ,ptiffittort A • •