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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1972-02-24, Page 4(Editorial comment A waste of our time It's tbo bad that there isn't some way of stopping the kind of bickering in Ottawa that precedes the calling of an election, Everyone expects an election soon and it has been obvious in watching. the workings of Parliament this past week, that there isn't going to be much accomplished until the election 'takes place. The government has some bills it would like passed but hasn't brought in a heavy program for this session. It has been obvious that the Opposition is already operating as if the election campaign were underway. The result is that our papers and the airwaves are filled with stories about name calling and how grown men make themselves behave worse than children. When this election mess is over it would be a good idea if the new government would set up .a committee to study the whole election process and see if a better system can be found to keep the Parliament at work until the election is actuallycalled. It's bad enough we have to listen to this bickering during a whole election campaign without having to put up with it for six months before hand. Go down to the rink The annual Clinton Bantam Hockey Tournament gets underway tonight and will provide exciting hockey action for the next three weekends. If you haven't seen these youngsters play, you don't know what you're missing. Bantam hockey has become a showplace for some of the best hockey talent around. Youngsters of the Bantam age category still enjoy the game for the sake of the game and yet they are old enough to skate and check well and have a knowledge of hockey far beyond that known by youngsters of that age in years gone by. Clinton residents should be proud that their town plays host to a tournament which is gaining wide reputation across the province as one of the best around. Our tournament may not yet be as famous as some of the other tournaments, but it is quickly building itself into one of the major tournaments in Ontario. In thepast, those from far away centres such as Toronto have been impressed by the tournament but local residents have not given it much support. Get down there this year and see why so many people from out of town come to Clinton for the tournament. You'll be glad you did. The double standard of terrorism Ireland is a place that doesn't make much sense anyway these days but there seemed to be less logic involved in the prostestations over the killing of the 13 civilians than in anything else. It is.always amazing how terrorists such as the IRA think they have the God-given right to murder anyone yet whenever the authorities fire back it is an atrocity. It has yet to be proved that the troops involved in Bloody Sunday actually • opened fire before they were fired upon, but even if they did, an outsider could hardly blame them for being edgy enough to make a mistake. For several years every soldier in Ireland has lived with the fact that at any moment he might be marked for death by the IRA. They have fought riots without being able to fire back. They have taken abuse from both sides in the conflict without retaliating. Under such conditions, something was bound tb happen sooner or later. When it did, the country turned against the troops and called them murderers. They blamed them for everything wrong in the country. Yet these same people give shelter and food and support to the IRA who every week murder as many people as the troops have killed in all the time they have been in Ireland. How do the Northern Irish Catholics hope to win support from the rest of the world when they remain such hypocrites? The way it was .for Billy The Kid "Strike a blow for the underprivileged," my wife said at breakfast this morning and handed me a clipping date-lined London, England. "Mothers," it read, "need a break from their 'noisy, dirty, wailing, snivelling' children, a leading British child expert said today. R. S. Illingworth, professor of child health at Sheffield University, suggested that, for the good of their health, wives should have occasional weekends alone with their husbands." "That's rough on children," I 'said when I'd read it. "What mother thinks of her children as `noisy, dirty, wailing and snivelling'?" "Every mother thinks that though it may be their own sometime, often ,nightly," my drying, if you follow me, and I'm wife said. "There comes a !sure., you do:: To much togetherness can be as dreary as none at all. A thinking man would arrange for periodic escapes so that he could renew his acquaintanceship with his wife far from those beady little eyes and dirty little ears." "Well said," said I, "but surely the family holiday does the job, doesn't it?" "Never," said my wife. "No woman can be either romantic or relaxed when she is playing housemaid, life guard, f i re-maker, janitor, cook, master-of-ceremonies and the rest. More can be accomplished for a marriage in one weekend One solution for happy marriage girls. The professor doesn't mention anything about husbands. He's probably a bachelor, anyway, with a cosy little pad and Mantovani records. I know those child experts." "The word is 'romance'," said my wife. "It is just as important for the man as for the woman to be removed occasionally from the thunder of those little feet. If there were more illicit weekend affairs between husbands and wives there'd be fewer divorces." "Gee," I said. "You're being racy this morning." "The trouble with marriage," my wife went on, "is that men find it hard to be romantic about somebody's mother, even moment in every mother's life when she has only one thought for her children. The guillotine." "I feel that in the Heavens above the angels, whispering to one another, can find some thing-something-something none so devotional as that of mother. Edgar Allen Poe." "Have your little joke," said my wife, "but if you will just write a little column about this, some woman may prop it up beside her husband's breakfast and you'll have made a happy man." "A happy man?" I said. "I thought this was therapy for the "I don't know if I'd ever make 0 go od grown-up — I don't hate anyone!" Mrs. Ina F isher stands at the edge of the street allowance in front of her house to show how far her husband had to shovel to get out of their driveway. Writer angry about snowblowing in Wintercourt THE CLINTON NEW ERA Amalgamated THE HURON NEWS-RECORD Established 1865 1924 Established 1881 ' Clinton News-Record A member of the Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) second class mail registration number — 0817 :SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (in advance) tabada, $8.00 per year; U.S.A„ $9.50 KEITH W. ROULSTON — Editor J. HOWARD AITKEN — General Manager Published every Thursday at the heart of Huron County' Clinton, Ontario Population 3,475 OF RADAR IN CANADA THE HOME 4--Clinton News-Record, Thursday, February 24, 1972 Ina nostalgic mood today, I've been thinking that, with the onslaught of the Speed Age, many of our fine old Canadian traditions have fallen by the wayside, died on the vine, or simply lain down and curled up their toes. One of the first to go, of course, was the blacksmith. It hurts me to face the truth: that most people today under 30 have never known the sensory joys of a blacksmith's shop. At this time of year, small boys used to squeeze through the ramshackle door, and edge as close as they could to the fire, freezing their hums and roasting their cheeks. There was a fine acrid stench of horse manure and scorched hooves. There was the leaping flame as the bellowdblew, There was the ringing clang as the -smith beat out the white-hot metal between hammer and anvil, and the satisfying hiss when the hot metal was plunged into the cold water. At a certain age, most male kids would have settled happily for the life of a blacksmith, a free soul who spent his days doing the most fascinating work in the world, The decline of the smithy, of course, was brought about by the gradual phasing out of another tradition—the horse-drawn vehicle. I wonder how many kids of this generation have ever spent a winter Saturday "catching bobs" This was our term for jumping on the backs of farmers' sleighs. All day long the farmers 'came and went to and from town. And all daylong we hopped on behind a load of grain, left that for a load of supplies going the other way, picked up a sleigh piled with logs for the return trip, and shivered with delighted fear as the farmers shouted at us, and even sometimes flourished their whips in our direction. As we grew a little older, about 12, we graduated to catching on the wing a cutter. This was more daring and more dangerous because they could really fly, the runner was much smaller, and the farmer could turn around and belt you one on the ear, Most of them, of course, were pretty decent. I know now that they were more worried about us getting hurt in a fall than they were about the extra weight their horses had to pull. Then there were the butchers' cutters. These consisted of a sort of box with runners beneath, and a step at the back for the driver to stand on, The horses were not plugs, but real road-runners that went like a bat out of hell. They were every bit as exciting as a Roman chariot, and the drivers were the envy of every boy, in fur caps, reins in one hand, whip in the other, as they tore through the town like furies. And I wonder how many boys have played hockey all day on a frozen river, when a hard shot the goalie missed might slide for a quarter of a mile:. We never had to worry about ice-time, or changing lines. We could play until we were pooped, then sit by the bonfire until rested, and have another go. And there were always 20 or 30 playing at once, so everybody got a whack at the puck. Some great stick-handlers came out of that era. Think of the depths to which we have sunk. The smithy, with its light and shadows, its reds and blacks, its earthy smells, its sense of life, has been replaced by the garage, a sterile thing with its cement floor, its reek of gas and oil, and its unspoken assurance that this-is-gonna-cost-you- plenty-buddy. The cutter, swift and light as a bird, no longer skims the snow, It has been replaced by a stinking, snarling, skidding beast that only modern man could abide—the snowmobile. No more meat-cutters, careening around the .corners on one runner, delivering in any weather. Now, we plod like zombies through the supermarket, to moronic piped-in music, and pick up the odourless, antiseptic, cellophaned packages the great gods Dominion, Loblaw or Safeway have assigned to us, and carry them humbly to our cars, three blocks away. Our kids have to get up at five a, in. to play hockey, and if they're not real "killers", get about four minutes ice-time. Ah, thohe were the days! And I haven't even begun on the most vital of all winter equipment—the puck consisting of a frozen horse- hun. TEN YEARS AGO J. William Counter, on Monday night, accepted a position on the board of Clinton Public Hospital, stepping into a vacancy there made by the retirement of his father, G. Morley Counter. Mr. Counter, with a broad smile, commented that he was completing his seventh term of three years, and felt it was time he retired. Industrial committee chairman, George Wonch said Tuesday night he had written to Brig. A, H, McKibbon, C.D., area commander, Western Ontario in London to request that a sub-unit of the 21st Field Regiment RCA be located in Clinton, Plans are proposed that the reserve unit occupy the vacant premises of the Clinton Hosiery Mill Ltd. on Mary Street, FEB. 22, 1962 15 YEARS AGO Feb. 21, 1957 A farewell party for G. W, Montgomery, retiring agricultural representative for the county will be held in the Seaforth District High School next Friday evening, March 1, at 8:30 o'clock. Douglas H. Miles, who will come to the County as agricultural representative on April 1, has seen 10 years in the ag, ; rep, service in Frontenac County with headquarter8 in the, city of Kingston. Miss Marie Lee, daughter of Mr. and Mrs, C, Lee, Clinton, received her cap on February 8, in a special ceremony at the Ontario Hospital, KingSton, MiSS Lee, who gained her secondary education at Clinton District Collegiate Institute, is taking a three-year training course at the hospital. A Dutch auction which saw great excitement over a chicken at the February meeting of the Clintonian Club finally resulted in the bird being sold for $7.80 to the highest bidder. The event occurred at the home of Mrs. Frank Layton, who was hostess to the club. 25 YEARS AGO FEB. 20, 1947 Glennie's Lunch comprising W. Glen Cook and Frank L. Cook has purchased from C. M. Shearing that part of the McKay Block, Ontario Street, now occupied as a barber shop by L.J. Heard and as a restaurant by Elite Cafe. A feature of Monday evening's hockey match between Stratford Legion and Clinton Colts was the reading of an address and presentation to Clarence Neilans, defence player, who was married a few days previously to Miss Ruth Sharpe. F. McGregor has been elected head of the McKillop Mutual Fire Insurance Company. G. Ralph Foster has beery elected president of the Chamber of Commerce. 40 YEARS AGO FEB. 25, 1932 We had the greatest snowfall of the winter here on Tuesday night where about four inches fell. The snow plows were out for the first time this season, Joseph Gandier, elder son of Dr, J. C. and Mrs, Gandier, has been operating his home built glider since September. He has reached the accredited altitude of 125 feet and although he has made alone in a small hotel than a month at a summer camp with the troop. What this country needs for marriages is fewer family outings and more summit meetings." "You interest me strangely," I said. "What, precisely, are the ingredients for this legal assignation?" "Very simple," said my wife. "First, apartness. That includes children and those convivial friends who always want to come along. Second, no roughing it. The fishing tackle is to be left at home with the children. This is to be for the repair of the female. That means luxury. A room with a view, a telephone for room service, a little candlelight and wine. Third, not a word about budgets, mortgages,' new shoes for the children, or any discussions about the husband's problems down at the office." "Doesn't leave you with much conversation," I suggested. "A weekend for mom!" cried my wife. "A 48-hour pass from the treadmill! Why, it surprises me that the resort hotels haven't made it a package deal to fill up in the off-season months. So you just write it that way and every woman will think you are a man among men." "I will, I will," I promised. "And incidentally," said my wife. "What about us?" repeated flights, he has never had even a minor accident. He never had any instruction. Members of the London Fixing Club are considering taking Joe and his creation to London airport for a public demonstration. Mr. W. N. Manning of Sherlock Manning Co. is in the West at present in .the interests of the Company. 55 YEARS AGO FEB. 22, 191'7 Principal Bouck and family are moving this week to the brick house on High St., lately occupied by W. Walker. C. Twitchell got in a couple of cars of coal on Monday. That coal was welcome in Clinton but what are a couple of cars among so many? The Covenant Bible Class of Willis church are having a skating party this evening on the rink and will afterwards be entertained at the home of Mr. and Mrs, T. Mackenzie. The Epworth League drove up The editor, They say that one picture is worth a thousand words, Well just to Clinton to the home of Mr. and Mrs. A.B. Stephenson, Tuesday evening and conducted their monthly literary meeting. After a good program lunch was served and a very pleasant social hour was spent. 75 YEARS AGO FEB. 26 1897 The Kincardine town council has sold the hand fire engine to the village of Hensall for $150. The engine has clone grand work at fires in Kincardine and if Hensall keeps it in good order the machine will never fail to respond when the brakes are manned. We understand that Conductor Quirk was really the means of securing the sale. It is learned on good authority that the successor to the late Sheriff Mercer of Kent, will be Mr. J,R, Gemmill, for many years editor-in-chief of the Chatham Banner. When it becomes necessary to appoint a successor to Sheriff Gibbons, of Huron, one of the Liberal editors should get the position. Letters„... to the .Editor The editor, 1972 will mark the second "Talbot Shivaree". To reach the many former residents of St. Thomas and Elgin County who may now live in your area we would be grateful if you could find room-in your publication for this letter. From Monday, Aug. 28 to Labour Day, Monday, Sept. 4, the City of St. Thomas and the County of Elgin will celebrate its Second Annual "Talbot Shivaree". This letter is meant as an open invitation for all former residents of the St. Thomas area to return home for this great week long celebration, Plan your summer vacation now to include a visit to your old stamping grounds. Last year "Talbot Shivaree" was a huge success with everything from beer tents and buffalo barbecue to street dances and roving bands, Literally thousands joined in the week long festivities. St. Thomas is waiting to welcome you back. Be sure to come home for "Talbot Shivaree, 72". To you who are not former residents of the St. Thomas area, coine along and join in the fun. We can assure you it will be worth the trip. Yours sincerely,. F. Exley Home Coming Chairman Talbot Shivaree '72 to add a few to the first thousand. What can we do next? The road in front of our.home is a hundred foot circle, in the summer. During the winter for the last six years it sometimes has been non-existent. At the beginning of each winter's snowfall I have asked if the plough could plough the circle. In the first three years we were here it was ploughed as a circle. But each year since I have been told all kinds of reasons why it can't be done. It seems that now the only way it can be done is half around and back. If after the first snowfall the full circle was made it would be there to follow through all snow storms of the winter. I know that nothing can be done for this year. But please could we start next year in a circle? Thank you, Ina Fisher. CARE IN THE HOME COURSES