HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-08-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 2013. PAGE 5.
“You put your right foot in; you put your
right foot out. You put your right foot in and
you shake it all about.”
Canada has officially been a metric
nation for more than forty years. I still
don’t get it.
I continue to think in inches, feet and yards;
I feel in Fahrenheit. A beautiful day is 75 and
sunny; a miserable one is ten below with
driving snow.
I’m partially converted. I recognize a metre
as a yard-and-a-bit; a kilometre is half a mile,
give or take.
I wouldn’t know a hectare from the Higgs
Boson particle.
But it’s not just reactionary codgerism at
work here. I’m a writer. Words excite me and
the metric system is as mind grindingly boring
as Harper stump speech.
Our old tried-and-true system had cables,
rods, fathoms, gills, pecks and acres. In
metric, ‘gram’ is a racy outlier; everything else
is milli, centi or kilo something.
Accurate, yes. But hardly the stuff that
poems are made of:
Two-point-eight kilometres, two-point-eight
kilometres, two-point-kilometres onward.
Into the valley of death, rode the six
hundred.
Or perhaps what Shakespeare really meant
when he wrote “Full fathom five, your father
lies; his bones of coral made” was:
Full nine-point-one-five metres your father
lies….
Why, my right foot contains more lyricism
than the entire metric system. I can have itchy
feet, feet of clay, one foot in the grave or two
left feet. I can get off on the right foot or be
caught with my foot in my mouth. I can put
my best foot forward or shoot myself in the
foot. I might choose to put my foot down to
take charge, put my feet up to relax, put my
foot in the door or wait on someone hand and
foot.
Or I can be a heel. Or cool my heels as I
wait for the bus, dig in my heels to be
obstinate, bring somebody to heel who’s
giving me grief or even expose my nautical
Achilles heel by allowing my sailboat to heel
over in a squall.
One of my favourite activities: to go outside
on a clear night and watch the stars dance heel
and toe.
Which brings us to the other pedal
extremities – the toes. To stay on one’s toes
means to look sharp; to tread on someone’s
toes means to interfere with someone. On the
other hand if I toe the line, I’m minding my
manners.
Not to mention putting my best foot
forward.
Yessir, those boney flippers attached to your
ankles are a treasure trove of linguistic
possibilities. You think the metric system has
anything comparable to offer?
My foot it does.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
Standing on our own two feet
The level of municipal services in Huron
East has surfaced once again with
councillors demanding a meeting this
fall, perhaps as early as October.
The issue was first raised after budget
deliberations last year when Councillor Larry
McGrath came to the budget table armed with
a holster full of reality, telling councillors that
between depleting reserves and attempting to
not raise taxes, there is simply a finite amount
of money from which Huron East can draw.
This led to the inevitable “level of service”
debate, which is being held all over the world
these days, better known as strategic planning.
McGrath, along with Huron East Mayor
Bernie MacLellan, said that the municipality
simply can’t continue to offer all of the
services under the sun, while not increasing
taxes at the same time.
Huron East boasts some of the lowest taxes
in Huron County, a region known for its low
cost of living, and corresponding low wages.
McGrath had put the issue on the table
before, saying perhaps there needs to be a year
every five or 10 where all roadwork in the
municipality is halted in order to save money
for the future.
As the downloading of bridges from Huron
County to Huron East has continued,
MacLellan has reignited the debate, saying that
in future decades, as bridges and culverts that
don’t see much traffic continue to decay, there
may come a time that they simply don’t get
repaired, because it doesn’t make sense to
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars
repairing a course travelled only a handful of
times a day.
The debate is akin to the one that was had
just a few months ago when a factory in
Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,100 workers
making clothes for Joe Fresh and Walmart,
among others.
Westerners who heard the story were
appalled by the death and destruction. They
couldn’t believe the conditions under which
the workers had to operate and the pittance the
workers were getting paid.
There is, however, only so much money to
go around. So when people want to get paid a
lot of money to do what they do, and they feel
everyone else should get paid a lot of money
for whatever they do, but everyone wants to
pay next to nothing for everything, the system
is destined to break down. There is no way a
system like that can sustain itself.
The fact that cheap clothes and goods started
showing up decades ago came alongside a lack
of questions and an increase in workshops
shipping overseas. It simply doesn’t make
sense to pay as little as we do for some of the
things we buy.
The same debate applies to municipal
governance. When people want to pay little or
no taxes, predictably, services are destined to
decline.
Having sat through as many years of budget
deliberations as I have, I have realized that
there is only so much money to go around and
that small municipalities like Huron East aren’t
the money factories some people see them as.
Expenses are painstakingly debated with
councillors applying their best knowledge to
situations. There will always be missteps and
there will always be hindsight, but in most
cases, the old adage that “you get what you pay
for” holds true not only in retail, but in life.
So when councillors have to start making
tough decisions about what their municipality
is going to offer, it’s a sign of the times,
because low taxes and unlimited services just
don’t add up on the bottom line.
Everything to everyone
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
My vacations, since graduation about
five years ago, have always involved
a lot of the same thing; explaining
what life is really like when you exit the four-
line highways and drive an hour or two on a
two-lane highway to my friends from Toronto,
Guelph, Kitchener, Cambridge and beyond.
Sure, they visit cottages both north and
south and admire the natural world, the world
without light and noise pollution, the world
where there are more fields than apartment
buildings and offices rarely climb higher than
two stories, but they really have no idea what
life here is really like and, despite being the
verbose individual I am, I often have a hard-
time finding any words that describe it.
My friends know Blyth exists, they know I
love it here and would trade significant
biological portions of my body instead of
facing the reality of leaving.
They know that, despite the fact I can’t
explain why, I believe living in a town with no
stoplights is magnificent. They just don’t get
why I find villages like Blyth, Brussels,
Belgrave, Walton, Londesborough and Auburn
so endearing despite having been here a few
times (an event I hope to repeat numerous
times in the both near and distant future).
However, had they never visited, never saw
the big “Welcome to Blyth” or “Huron’s West
Coast” signs, I could understand if some of
my favourite stories would seem a bit
farfetched to them.
When my fiancée Ashleigh, who currently
works in Mississauga and lives in Brampton,
speaks fondly of my home and the surrounding
communities, she is questioned on the validity
of her stories. That, however, won’t happen
anymore.
While I did spend some of my vacation, as I
previously stated, at my cottage enjoying the
quiet sounds of nature, the pristine waters of
Lake Huron and the feeling of sitting at a table
playing cards (because, much to my delight,
the internet went out due to a lightning storm
and there was nothing better to do than play a
game of Yahtzee! or Mexican Rummy) I also
spent a few days visiting Brampton.
I had brought a copy of The Citizen with me
for the trip because, unlike my editor, I don’t
see every story before it makes it to the pages
of the local newspaper and I do enjoy reading
his editorial as well as the news from around
the communities.
However, after I had arrived and read the
paper, it disappeared.
Apparently it had made it to Ashleigh’s
office to dispel the myth that Blyth didn’t
exist.
Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately for
Reeve Neil Vincent), the issue I had was the
last one we had put out prior to our vacation
and featured, prominently, several things.
Primarily, it featured a picture of Vincent
making kissy-faces with the rear-end of a pig.
Secondly, it featured the story about why he
was making kissy-faces with that pig’s
derriere, lastly, it contained the story of
Campaign 14/19 and the grand plans that
accompany it.
At first I was dumbstruck that, to prove the
existence of the haven of Huron County, she
had chosen the most stereotypically small-
town thing you could; a pig-kissing contest.
The only thing that could have been more
damning as far as stereotypes goes would have
been a cow-tipping contest portrayed
prominently on the front page.
However, upon reflection, I realized that
issue of the paper, which showed the
dedication to fundraising for the Blyth
Business Improvement Area (BIA) by kissing
a pig alongside the plans to create a cultural
Mecca in Huron County, showed exactly why
I find Blyth to be such a fantastic place to be.
Sure, if someone wanted to be crass or look
to the lowest common denominator, they could
look at that photo and take it as a signifier that
there is more than a little red in our necks in
Huron, but if they dug deeper, they would see
that reluctant kissing scene between Vincent
and the pig was one of dedication to the
growth and continued prosperity of North
Huron and Huron County.
Add that to the massive story on the possible
future of Blyth via 14/19, and I think any
reader would see that North Huron, Blyth and
Huron County are all doing something that
BIA chair and local business owner Rick
Elliott said we do; we hit above our weight
class.
That issue of the newspaper, (like every
issue, I hope), shows that, even when we’re
having fun and laughing and kissing pigs, the
residents of North Huron are looking ahead
and coming together to continue the growth
that has been happening in the past few years.
I’ve seen Blyth’s downtown go from having
numerous empty stores to having thriving new
businesses existing alongside long-standing
businesses in the community.
That issue showed a little of the past, a little
of the present and a lot of the future and I
probably couldn’t have picked a better one to
serve as a glimpse into the small-town life
here. If the existence of northern Huron
County had to be proved to some city slickers,
it was the best print ambassador that could
have been chosen.
And if all they take away is that one of our
reeves kissed a pig’s south end... well at least
they know we exist.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Explaining what Huron is all about
Letter
THE EDITOR,
Wow – We asked for support and the North
Huron area always “steps up to the plate”. We
are delighted with the ongoing donations to
the Food Share over the summer months.
With holidays, no school, fewer church
services, it’s easy to forget that the Food
Share never takes a holiday. In fact we find
over the summer, our need even increases. We
recently had the opportunity to have a “by
donation” barbecue in conjunction with the
Laundry Room’s free laundry day. We were
overjoyed to have taken in almost $500 in
donations that day. All the wieners, buns and
condiments were donated and anything left
over was taken back to the Food Share to give
to our clients. A big “Thank You” to Doug and
Trish Trenter who invited us to be part of their
free laundry day. We understand that they
processed over 450 free loads of clothes on
Monday, Aug. 5.
We also need to pass on a “Thank You” to
Bill and Kathy Gibson who are looking after
the community garden behind Libro.
Apparently this is how a garden should
actually look. We are starting to get produce
from the garden every Tuesday night so that
we can make it available to our clients
Wednesday morning when the Food Share is
Food Share works
through summer
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