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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-07-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013. PAGE 5. Authorities in Nepal will install a ladder to provide a shortcut over a steep cliff near the peak of Mount Everest. A government spokesman said the ladder would ‘ease congestion’ for climbers on their way to the summit. Hmm. As a guy with exactly zero aspirations to climb the world’s highest mountain (or indeed anything higher than that brick of mango ice cream at the back of the freezer) excuse me for asking but... isn’t the whole point of climbing Mount Everest the fact that there are no ladders? Isn’t climbing Mount Everest supposed to be hard? And dangerous? And uncomfortable? If not, why not install a series of heated escalators from base camp? Why not hot air balloons with celebrity hosts? (Kim Kardashian does Katmandu!) Sixty years ago Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay ascended Everest wearing wool and leather. They wouldn’t recognize the be-Spandexed, Rolexed and oxygen-bottled tourists who ascend the peak in catered droves these days. Modern day Everest wannabes aren’t so much brave and hardy; more rich and bored. Why do we make it so difficult to be heroic anymore? In some quarters, ‘hero’ has become a dirty word. At a Pennsylvania preschool, ‘super hero play’ and ‘monster games’ have been banned because school authorities fear they make kids ‘dangerously overactive’. One child came home and told his mother that “make-believe isn’t allowed at school anymore.” Closer to home, there’s the case of Briar McDonnell. Briar’s a Grade 7 student in Calgary who saw a kid being harassed by another student. The boy was being taunted, pushed and prodded. And then there was the knife. Briar didn’t see it, but his classmates did and Briar ‘heard the flick’. Nevertheless, Briar stepped in and pushed the bully away. A teacher intervened, the principal was called and... Briar was commended, right? Con- gratulated? Singled out at assembly as a good guy? Given honourable mention in the school yearbook? Nah. He was hauled down to the principal’s office and treated like a criminal. The police were summoned and Briar’s locker was searched. His mother was called and told that her son had been “involved in an incident” in which he “decided to play hero and jumped in”. “We don’t condone heroics,” the principal harrumphed. Briar, she explained, should have gone off and found a teacher to handle the situation. Briar’s mother wondered if perhaps, in the time it would have taken Briar to find a teacher, the victim’s throat might have been slit. The principal said that was ‘beside the point’. Mrs. McDonnell didn’t agree. “What are they teaching them?” she asked a National Post reporter. “That when you go out in the workforce and someone’s not nice to you, you have to tattle to your boss? What are we going to do if there are no heroes in the world? There would be no police, no fire, no armed forces... ” And probably no more people like Yuichiro Miura. The Japanese climber reached the peak of Mount Everest last month, becoming the oldest person to do so. Mister Miura is 80 years old. He didn’t need a ladder. Arthur Black Other Views Where have all the heroes gone? You know when you hear people say they’re not “cut out” for something? I can certainly relate. Some people, through no fault of their own, just don’t gel with a certain world sometimes. Much has been made recently in the pages of The Citizen of the term “red tape” which, of course, is the all-encompassing term for an issue being held up by some government body. Red tape is mentioned all the time, but lately it has been a central figure in the tale of the parkades several business owners wish to place in front of their shops in Blyth. Business owners like Blyth’s Rick Elliott (Elliott-Nixon Insurance, Queens Bakery) and Peter Gusso (Part II Bistro, The Station House) have expressed their frustration over the delays happening with the parkades. Once again, the story has been well documented in The Citizen because both businesses hoped to have the parkades, an idea they first brought forward last summer, in place for this year’s Blyth Festival season to both help business on main street and increase foot traffic in the village. Decisions like these, however, are at the whim, not only of local council members, but often of Huron County Council, and some- times, in cases of severances and the like, the Province of Ontario. So when Elliott, an established businessman, and Gusso, a world class chef, stand in front of Huron County Council, there is no other way of seeing it than business owners quivering in front of council like Oliver Twist asking the orphanage’s master for more gruel. So the decision comes down: approved, with conditions. Council’s next meeting, due to a summer break, is at the beginning of September, meaning just a handful of performances of Falling: A Wake, the Festival’s final show, being staged at the Phillips Studio, remain in this year’s season when the parkades could theoretically be finally approved (though there’s nothing guaranteeing that they will). There goes another year. The slow-as-molasses world of politics can be a tough one to grasp for business owners, or anyone used to doing their own dirty work. If Gusso needs a new appliance in the Part II Bistro kitchen, for example, I doubt he holds a meeting to discuss it, putting the issue on hold for two months while he weighs the pros and cons of said new appliance. He goes out and buys a new one, otherwise that’s at least two months of business he stands to lose. It’s not hard to understand why regular people, when faced with the world of politics, just helplessly throw their hands in the air. Their fate is in someone else’s hands, and those hands aren’t exactly quick like Iron Mike Tyson’s in his prime. When my old friend Sarah Mann died, her family, alongside Community Living Central Huron, began a photo show fundraiser. It hummed along for a few years, being handled by family members and friends. There came a time, however, that the show was handed over to the county, with the thought it would lighten the burden on Sarah’s family. There was no photo show that year. The next year her family took the show back and, with the help of Community Living and several sponsors, the show returned to its previous glory, remaining there ever since. Sometimes you have that ability, the ability to take the power back, but with an issue like Blyth’s parkades, it just isn’t that easy. I have no sage advice for those poor Blyth souls entangled in red tape; all I can say is that I feel your pain, and offer the familiar sports consolation “better luck next year.” Allow 4-6 weeks for... Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Earlier this week I was trying desperately, and perhaps somewhat in vain, to try and find a news story about the thousands of people in both Ontario and Quebec who were without power after the massive storms that hit eastern Canada last week. Unfortunately for me, it was Monday I was looking for the story. Monday I was ready to write a column all about being in the dark, you know, being without power. Living in Huron County has certainly opened my eyes to a lot of different weather events. I survived the cyclone and tornado in Goderich, I’ve sat through intense blizzard and early thaws in Blyth and heat wave after heat wave across the county as well as the famous ice storm of a the past few years Suffice to say, I know that being without power can be a pain. However, I was unable to find the story to get the details to write about that because the royal baby was being born. By the time you’re reading this, I’m sure there will have been a miniature explosion of pictures and videos of the baby (and whatever else people can get away with) and a name will have been announced by Prince William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The world will know everything it can about the infant that is third in line for the crown (after his grandfather and father) and likely the future king, but it still won’t be enough. People will still be ravenously looking for every tidbit. So, back to the power outage and its lack of coverage. When I opened my usual news sources, I found one thing and one thing only being covered, the birth of the future ruler of England. I don’t mean there were several different news companies covering it, I mean that each news company had a half (if not a full) dozen stories on the yet-to-be-born tyke ranging from pictures of the happy couple to a recap of the life and times of William and Kate to stories speculating what the name of the child will be to, and I jest not about this one, CNN’s genetic breakdown of the child who will have a six per cent chance of being a red-headed like his uncle Harry. At first it frustrated me. There was an honest-to-goodness news story happening right here in Ontario and in our neighbouring Quebec. Trucks and barns had been thrown the lengths of football fields, 65,000 people were without power and might remain so until Tuesday (that being four days without electricity) and here the news is focusing on the likelihood that the future King of Great Britain will have red hair and freckles. As I said, at first, it frustrated me. However, after that I realized that I shouldn’t begrudge these ‘news’ outlets for providing what their readers and viewers apparently want. Soon after that, I realized, that these kinds of news stories are pretty much what pays my bills and puts food on the table. No, I don’t benefit directly from stories about the Royal Family, but what it does is it reminds people that the internet is fickle. Sure, for me it meant not being able to find a story about people without power who are as close as a province away, but for people who are interested in what North Huron or Morris- Turnberry Councils are doing, or for people wondering what Ty Sebastian feels about his recent big win or for people wanting to know a little bit about the new pastor in town, the internet just isn’t the place they’re going to get that news. The place they’re going to get that news is right here in the pages of The Citizen (or from someone who reads The Citizen then tells them about it, but, either way, it’s still our work that’s getting out there). That’s why, when people closer to my generation ask me how it feels to be a part of the last honour guard of print news or ask me why I would get into a business that has a shelf-life, I take every satisfaction in explaining to them that the internet, radio and television can do a lot of things, but they can’t do what I do. Sure, you may get tidbits from North Huron council meetings from my colleagues on the radio, but what about the rest of the story? Television can show you what’s going on, but what about the history? What about the stories before and after an event to show how it stacked up with previous incarnations? While there is some importance behind the birth of the next king of an empire Canada used to be a part of, I think it pales in comparison to the things that are happening next door and that’s why I think that, even when it’s my generation that’s retired and taking it easy, the community newspaper will always have a place on the coffee table or the kitchen table. I guess, in my mind, the royal baby is important and there’s no debating it, however I think long-time newsman Peter Mansbridge hit the nail on the head when he tweeted the following: “Just in case you were wondering, 370,000 babies are born worldwide every day (source: Google). All of them ‘royal’ to someone.” So, regardless of whether it’s a brunette or a red-head, regardless of the odd-makers giving Alexandra a better chance to be the name than Diana and regardless of what happens next in the drama that is the Royal Family, I’ll care more about how local councils decide to deal with parkades than I will a new addition to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s family. Denny Scott Denny’s Den Apparently some royal baby was born? “Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin Final Thought