HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1978-08-03, Page 3THE HURON EXPOSITOR, AUGUST 3, 1978 *
•
,
Sugar and Spice.
by Bill Smiley
Brother Death
Canadians have a great preoccupation
with death. It is common knovhedge that
we carry mare fife insurance than any other
nation in the world, on a per capita basis. I
wonder why.
It must be a great country in which to be
selling life insurance. Even Simpsons-
Sears, limited, is getting into the
business. Only in Canada would 'a big
department store be selling 'insurance.
Pity.
But it's a fact. In my wife's last
computerized, machine-signed letter from
that august organization, one L. Visosky,
General Credit Manager, talks earnestly
about an accidental death policy,
exclusively for Simpsoes-Sears account
customers. It pays up to $100;000 in
benefits and "protects you while you're
driving, riding, er walking--even when
you're at home or 'at work--everywhere in
the world! NO MEDICAL EXAM! NO AGE
LIMIT!"
Well, I don't do much driving, riding or
walking. when I'm at home, or at work, but
perhaps it"s a goodidea.lecosts only $3.50
a month for a family.
_Does it mean4hat-children under-five can-
be insured for up to 100 grand for
accidental death? Does it mean thaepeople
ever ninety who decide to jump in front a
bus, accidentally, can leave their heirs set
for life? Somehow, I doubt it. It's far more
likely that Simpsons-Sears just want to be.
dang sure they're' paid off, if you've
managed to get into them for a few
hundred ,dollars on your charge account.
Perhaps Canadians are not so foolish in
• their concern about death, A pretty good
English playwright, Will Shakespeare, was
' fascinated by the subject, and speculated
upon it in Hamlet's soliloquies. '
And a thousand thousand other poets
and playwrights have attempted to probe
into the meaning of death: A quick look at
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations shows more
than three solid pages of references to
death.
Thus -Weelearn that--Death among other
things, such as the end of Life, "borders
upon our birth, breaks everybondeis only a
horizon, is the fatal asterisk, is like a friend
unseen, is the end of a journey, is but the
long, cool night; a debt, a trumped ace, a
boatman, a road we all' must go." And so
on. They all sound like cliches, don't they?-
Brother Death becomes more familiar as
you grow older. Children are completely
unaware of him, young people, are barely
so. It's a rather distasteful thing that
happens to other people, mostly old ones.
When, I was a young fighter pilot, I was
very cicise to death, fairly often. But I
didn't even feel his cold breath, nor smell
his slightly mouldy scent. Au. few times I
was almpst literally scared to death, but
not of death.
When you begin seeing school friends in
- the obituary columns, when a brother died,
when a colleague dies, all of them in,their
prime, you begin to feel and smell the Old
Boy, It's not , particularly frightening,
merely a bit disconcerting. •
In your heart, you are twelve years old,
with a little sophistication plastered on the
outside. In your head, you're a couple of •
years away from retirement, a decade or so
away from sensility, certairtly on nodding
terms with Brother Death.
Holy Smokes! I hope this is not too
lugubrious a column for a family journal. It
was that thing from Simpsons-Sears that
got me going. And then my wife suggested ,
I make a list of my insurance policies and
the junk in my safe deposit box and leave it
all in the hands of my brother-in-law, the
lawyer, before we embarked on our trip.
What a gloom-box way of commencing a
summer •holiday.
I told her I would, but never got around
to it. If we're hijacked or go down in the
'Atlantic or die of seasickness on our voyage
down the Rhine, let somebody else sort out , •
't the mess I've left behind. rve beetilbeaTifg'
out their messes long enough.
Let's see, now. There are two insurance
policies ein the bottomdrawer of -the
dresser, beneat my thermal underwear.
There's atiot r with the county school
board. •Ther a stock' certificate some-
where in my desk drawer, worth $94.00.
There's a house, paid for, and two cars in
the driveway, Worth ,1250 each, on a good
day.
As for my safe deposit box at the bank, I
lost my key the first week I had it, and the
girl told me they'd have to have a chap drill
it open, with me present. We were to make
a date mutually agreeable. That was six
months ago. 1 don't know what's -in the
thing anyway.
My wife has a sewing machine that's
worth more tthan our two cars. The colour
TV is ten years old, but going strong, ever
since we had the TV repairman put back
new knobs where the grandboys had
ripped all the originals off.
My' colleagues in the English depart-
ment are'perfectly welcome to split up my
reference books, my filing cabinet,' which
has not been opened in ten years, and my
picture of the Queen; the one with the
moustache drawn in. .' -
Any left-handed golfer with arthritis may
have my clubs and cart, which are so old
and shabby - they almost qualify . as
antiques. There's a pretty good fishing rod
down in the basementewith the Christmas
decorations. A, few patches and there's a
dandy pair of hip waders to go with it,. •
They're in the trunk of the old -Dodge,
along with a case of beer that froze last
winter.
There, I think that pretty well clears the
dfrei ec nk sd.ly mI f y dBaruogt hhet er r wDoenatthn e egde t as j obv feor, r-
the next three years. It'll take her that long
to sort our the estate. Bum Voyage.
READY, AIM, Martin Andreass( is
taking the whole business of tri:iesday
afternoon's frisbee competition sponsored by
the Seaforth recreation department pretty
seriously as he readies his threw,.
(Expositor photo)
Gordon Farm is five miles outside of
Seaforth.
The wiring in the tractor was burned out
and Mrs. Gordon said she couldn't give an
exact figure on the damage to the vehicle.
You're invited
The August Meeting of the Seaforth
Women's Institute will be held at the limit
Of Mrs, Eldon Kerr, Tuesday evening
August 8 at,8:15 p.m. Miss Robin Theedorn
Of Clinton will show a film on the past
plowing matches and talk on the upcoming
plowing match in Huron. 'Roll Call--name a
past industry in our town -or township.
What torieetiers: Mrs. G. pappld. Mrs. E.
Mrs.' it. Gordon, Mts, 3. E.
McLean.
,rnavtk;-wo
•living on '1 a do:
[by Allee Mb]
Katimavik means "meeting, place" in the Inuit
language and the nine months Jayne Cardno of
Seaforth spnet on, the- program, introduced her to a
variety ortieople, places and lifestyles.
Katimavik, originally The brainchild of Berney
Denson, now Canada's Minister of Defence, is a nine
month federally funded youth program which
introduced 1,000 Canadians a year to three successive
projects, including one in a French-speaking environ-
inent l in three different provinces.
The projects, developed in co-operation with local ee
communities, include three basic components: outdoor
physical work aimed at improving the environment;
community service through local organizations and
cultural and educational aspects.
During her time with Katimavik, Jayne helped clear
a ski trail near the Quebec-New Brunswick border; she
assisted in a variety of community projects in Fort
'McMurray, Alberta and she helped build a darn across
the Dunk RiVer ift Prince Edward Island.
The young people who join Katimavik don't do it for
the money. Participants are volunteers who receive an
allowance of $1 a day, and an honorarium of $1,000 if
they complete the full nine, months of the program.
But money obviously isn't a criteria for becoming a
part of Katimavik. The program allows participants to
improve communication in Canada's two official
languages, to get to know the country better, to live
simply and learn to conserve resources while
experimenting with alternate technology and finally, to
risk eying some adventure while you're doing it.
Jayne Cardno who returned to .Seaforth lacemiesday,
described her experience as "great"--"better than
school anytime."
Old Hotel
During the time she's been away, Jayne. has lived in
an unfinished ski cabin, an old hotel., and an
unfurnished farmhouse. She's eaten a diet heavily
laced with health foods and learned to make her own
bread, do without television and to co-exist with the
other people on her project.
The experience has changed her lifestyle--"living
without luxuries, you see what isn't necessary." •
In the future, she plans to change her eating habits to
include more health foods, to be more energy .
conscious--"le came home and -my family's bought a
dishwasher and I see how much energy is wasted" and
to spend less time in front of a television set.
Jayne Cardno originally learned about Katimavik
through newspaper stories and she mailed in an
application clipped from The Canadian Magazine.
Her interview was last July, but when she learned'
she wouldn't be notified about the results until
September, she went ahead and applied to attend
Algonquin College in Ottawa.
Accepted
The day she was to leave for Ottawa to enrol in a
museum technology course, Jayne learned she'd been
accepted as a member of a Katimavik project':
It was a'difficult choice- to make at the last minute,
but Jayne decided to postpone her college education for
a year.
After a two week training camp held at Lac St. Jean,
Ouebec, Jayne and the 14 original members' of her
project were posted tcia ski-lodge near the small town of
Ste. Honore on the Quebec-New Brunswick border.
For the first six weeks, project members lived in the
ski chalet while trying-to turn the nearby "cardboard
cabins" in Jayne's words, into suitable accommoda-
tions.
Renovations included turning one cabin into a
combination kitchen-lounge and making another cabin
'into washrooms and a storage area. The other cabins
hadto be raised and foundations put under them before
they were finished off to provide sleeping quarters.
On the Floor
For the first few weeks the Katimavik crew slept in
the bar of the chalet on old iron beds on an asphalt floor
-which , left the feet of project members permanently
black.
In order to keep warm, the crew kept both a furnace
and fireplace going 24 hours a day.
As well as fixing up the camp, project members also
helped clear part of 34 mile ski trail add skied the trail
several' times during the three month period to make
sure there were fires in 'cabins along the trail.
While working in Quebec, as' much communication
as possible was done in French.
Routine •
Jayne said three members of her crew were
French-speaking and at first the crew members tried to
set aside one hour a day to improve their French. Later,
as they became busier, they tried to include French as
part of the daily routine.
Since the crew lived three miles outside Ste, Honore,
they had little contact with the townspeople them-
selves.
-What little spare time there was was taken up with
craft work, listening to tapes or records, including a
good deal of French music, and working on the cabins.
One special project was designing a table for the
lounge which could comfortably seat all the crew and be
folded up when the space was needed for something
Although the Katimavik crew spent Christmas
together, they were given five days between Christmas
and New -Year's- to visit family or friends.
Jayne used the time to pay a quick visit to Seaforth
and said the time "gave people a chance to get away
and look back -at what they were doing."
This visit was the only' time Jayne was home during
her nine and a half months on the project.
When the three months in Quebec 'ended, project
members flew to Fort McMurray. Alberta - the town
created by the Syncrude project at the Athabasca tar
sands.
The crew were housed ifilleartbreek Hotel, one of
the town's poorer hotels which had been, the scene of
many brawls before it was used to house the Katimavik
crews. •
Jayne said the first group in the hotel had to cook
meals on hot plates and wash dishes in the bath tub
since the hotel lacked kitchen facilities.
However, before Jayne's crew moved in, Syncrude
donated a trailer with kitchen facilities to sit beside the
building.
The experience of living in a town-as isolated as Fort
McMurray, a boom town that grew from a population of
4,000 to 24,000 people in less than a decade, was
"mind boggling" sOl Jayne.
Transient
Today, 30 per cent of the town's population is
transient, and drugs and alcoholism are major
problepts.
The three months Jayne spent in Fort McMurray
included a variety of jobs--as teachers' aide in the
junior grades of the local school, working with
physically and mentally 'handicapped students.; vverkiiig
with students in a school for those who can't adjust to
the system, due to drugs, alcohol or emotional
problems; and helping catalogue artifacts 'and
reconstruct a log cabin in the town's Heritage Park.
Also, project members helped officials keep track of
some of the town's developritelet. 'Jayne said the crew
completed a survey of one of the town's, trailer parks to
discover how many trailers it contested, who lived in the
trailers and whose land they were on. •
Also, crew members started a fundraising project to
build a wilderness camp 70 miles north of Fort
Jayne Cardno
McMurray
for boyswho had probleins with, the law. Although
Jayne didn't take part in clearing the land for the camp, •
the northwas really like."
the crew who did discovered firsthand
"what
At the end of April, Jayne's crew were moved to
Prince Edward Island where they lived in three sparsely
furnished farmhouses near the small coummunity of
Bread Albane, in the center of the island.
The major project they ,worked on- was the
construction of a 32 foot dam across the Dunk River.
Jayne said the original project' for the area was to
have been the _reconstruction. of-an-old-sawmill-on-the—
river, but a tornado blew down the mill before the first
Katimavik crew arrived to start work,
Supply Power
When the darn was completed, it would provide 10
kilowatts of power for the area, enough to supply the
needs of about 10 people:•
Jayne said, "Prince Edward Island is very interested
in self-technology projects" in the energy area. It was
an interest in alternative . forms of energy which
attracted many of the young people to the Katimavik
program. •
While working in PEI, members of the crew saved
enough money fromeheir food and living allowances to
attend a speciel energy conference in Moncton.
The group also partially completed a green house and
planted a large garden to supply food for the crew
which would, follow, Ahem.
During the nine and half months of the Katimavik
program, two members of Jayne's team left - the
pregram - one to go to university and the second to take '
other employment.
Homesickness was never a problem since the crews
were kept so, buiy and Jayne' said the experience of
"living with a strong group with the same ideals who
thought a lot alike" was good one.
Like any government project in its first year; there
were some problEms, but Jayne's crew submitted a
number of suggestions they hope can -be incorporated
in the Katimavik program if it's extended for a third
year,
Jayne would "definitely recommend. he experience"
to othere., ' '" •
Jayne'e own favorite pro ject was working on the
dam in PE]. She not only welcomed the chance to do
manual work she wouldn't ordinarily have, done - but
she liked the island, its people and learning about
self-technology.
At least two members of her crew chose to stay.on in
PEI when the Katimavik program ended,
This fall, Jayne will start her course in museum
technology, but in the year since she originally enrolled
in the program, she has experienced Canada in a way
few of us ever can.
Something to say .
by Susan White
Do you wanna dance? For 13 hours?
of that. Would a baby in a
back pack qualify as
dancing partner?
Classified Ads Pay
Dance with me Henry! is
a song that I heard through-
out my typically troubled
adolescence.
I loved to dance when I
was a kid.. Dances were
important then. Bayfield.
Grand Bend, even once in a
while teen town or a street
dance at home in Seaforth
...my friends and I, like
most others of that era,
made thee:lance circuit.
In retrospect, dances are
still important, as a
courting ritual if nothing
else. I mean, I met • my
husband at a dance. (One of
my favourite cartoons is an
rid one from the Saturday
Evening Post. It shows a
decorously dressed white
'Woe! grandmother with a
small child on her knee and
a picture of grandpa in her
hand "I picked him up in a
bet, dear,' Grandma says.)
But dancing in my life, as
in many others I suspect,
came to an abrupt end after
my marriage:Before I knew
him too well- I' would have
told you that my intended
loved to dance.
The Pearl
He was good at it pee,
much better than me. And
being from the city he
knew all the latest. Andy
doing the Pearl or _the
Monkey (the WHAT?) all
but those, who remember
the heady sixties will be
saying was something to
behold. We in Huron
Minty were practically still
doing the Twist.
Oh I can't say wasn't
forewarned. By the time we
were married I knew that
all that grace. and energy on
the dante.floor was a front.
And that, courting rituals
finished with, my husband
to be didn't care if he ever
danced again.
But, like many other pie
eyed bride, I was confident
I'd change all that. Not
dance any more just
because we -were married:
bah, we'd carry on as
before.
And, as many another
pie eyed bride has done, I
met an immovable force,
my husband sayng he
didn't care to go out to this
dance or that one thanks.
Well, I'm lying a bit.
There was a break of, a few
years in here as in the first
years of our marriage we
were in the city where there
just aren't dances every
weekend like there are
here; travelling with a tent
where the question didn't
arise and going to school
when nobody danced to
music, they stood around
and listened to it.
750 Chances
But since we moved back
44 ID this area, we've likely
turned down five years
times three a weekend, oh,
say 750 chances to go to
this dance or that one and
kick up our heels like we
used to in those dim far
away courting days.
I wonder if those of us
who live here realize how
many dances, and most of
them for a good cause, not
just Crites tOmtnercial gain
there are? Between the
Singles, the receptions, the
hockey, howling, theatre,
baseball• and historical
benefits, We could donee
every night of the week-
ends and once in awhile
during the week,
If we were so inclined.
And that's the trouble. At
our house we aren't.
Yes, I must admit the
better half's disinclination
to dance has spread to the.
Mostly because I'm not
sure I still remember how.
I perhaps could trot out
the Pearl, which I had just
about mastered when we'
got married,, but what if
everybody else is doing the
Bump? And I never , did
learn to do a proper waltz
since I started dancing
when you didn't touch
much.
Ends at Eight
I've been pretty well
resigned to a social life that
ends at eight o'clock (we go
to the suppers. the dinners
and barbecues but we leave
when the band comes)
when. along comes Clive
Guist with a dance-a-thon
with proceeds . for a
desperately needed PA
system and new lighting at
the arena.
13 hours long this dance
marathon will be, only two
weeks away on Saturday.
August 19 from noon until I
It was the first line on the
list of contest rules that
cheered me and may even
swing some weight with my
dance avoiding husband. It
says "Everyone is eligible
to enter."
And that means the kids,
the oldies but goodies and
the two left footers like me.
The second rule is where
the better half teems hi.
"Each dancer must have
a phttnae• to-enter, it says
and Who would 'let his or
her spouse dance for 13
hours with someone else? If
I get into the dance-a-thon
on rule #1, rule n will drag
in Andy.
Sheer Duration
It's the sheer duration of
the thing that ought to
ensure my participation
and that of other non-
dancers, None of our fellow
dancers will know or care
how out of date or out of
step we look.
Then too, 13 hours or in
some cases, even 50
minutes of non-'stop
dancing should have a
levelling effect. Stire
there'll be spectators but
even the best of dancers
will look as bedraggled as
the better half and I do
after hoofing it for smile
time,
I'm starting To Collect
' pledges, like ,all the other
would-be dance-a-thoners
(pledge sheets are available
at the Expositor. the rec
office and lots of other
places). And if I can talk the
better half into being my
partner you could see us
out tripping the light
fantastic (i.e. building up
our endurance after years
of absence from the dance
Separate
(Continued from Page 1)
the new school term in
September. This results
from the closing of three
classrooms. Seven class
rooms will operate as last
year; three Others will be
used for otheA purposes in
the 13 room school.
floor) at every dance the won't break a pattern of
area offers from now til many years and be my
August 19. ,,, dance-a-thon partner?
What if my husband
Don't worry, I've thought
• Kenneth Coombs, 55, of Seaforth, was
inured last week when the combine he was
driving rolled ovr an embankment,
Mr. Coombs was travelling west on
Perth County Rd. 23 near Harmony when
the combine swerved; crossed the road and
rolled over an embankment, .•
Robert Hammond' of Sebringville was
travelling east on the same road when he
witnessed the accident.
The combine landed on its wheels but-
was in danger of rolling over a second
embankteent when Mr. Hammond jumped
Farm alp
Sunday night, Seaforth fire department
made their second visit this month to the
farm of Ross Gordon, R.R. I, Seaforth.
Earlier this sufnmer, the Gordpns lost
part of their hay in a minor fire in he barn.
Sunday, a tractor parked beside the
-Gordon's barn overheated and caught on
fire. •
Mr. Gordon was concerned the tractor's
gas tank would blow, setting the' barn on
fire.
Mrs. Gordon said she phoned a
neighbour when the fire was discovered
and then alerted the Seaforth fire
department. ,
The neighbour, who has an extinguisher,
managed to put the fire out before firemen
arrived.
Mrs. Gordon said the local fire depart-
ment took only about seven minutes to
arrive after she reported the fire, and the
Man pinned in combine
into the cab and put on the brakes.
O.P.P.An officer who investigated the
accident said the actions of Mr Hammond
probably saved the life of Mr. Coombs who
was pinned inside the combine cab and
might have been killed if it had rolled over
a second time.
Mr. Coombs has since been released
from the hospital.
The Sebringville O.P.P. have recom ,
mended that Mr. Hammond be awarded a
police commendation for his quick action in
preventing the combine from rolling a
second time.
second fire in month
0.1