HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1972-12-14, Page 44 Citruinti News-Record, Thursday, December 14, MO
Editorial commen
The Clinton circus?
One can almost see the benefits of
regional government after the sideshow
that went on at the Clinton Town Coun-
cil last Monday night.
Councillors argued for more than an
hour on whether they were going to pay
overtime to Clinton Police Chief Lloyd
Westlake and Town Clerk Cam Proctor.
The "debate" degenerated into nearly a
free for all, and at times it looked as if
some of the council members were
engaging in personal vendettas rather
than debating rationally about the point
at hand.
Since most of the council is leaving, it
was their last meeting and it looked, to
this observer, that they wereg-Jfing as
many last "digs" in as possible.
But the basic problem that arose out
of the overtime "debate" was the
question of fairness to all town em-
ployees. A couple of council members
argued that all employees should be
treated the same, or'.that people on
salary shouldn't be paid overtime.
However, %Mb is not the case, Some
town employees who are supposed to be
on salary are paid overtime.
Too, the amount of benefits the town
pays for its employees also varies from
department to department. For instance,
the Town pays 100 percent of the
hospitalization for the police, but only 50
per cent for the Clerk and the Public
Works Department,
Maybe the new council next year will
straighten up things. It's tough enough
just to get a good job done without
having to fight your employer too.
1111111 we kill Capital Punishment?
On December 29, 1972, Canada may
reinstate capital punishment. Whether
she does or not is up to the individual
Canadian. Surely the Christian position
is clear. The faith which is based on
hope, which seeks a change, of heart, a
new man, cannot countenance the ad-
mission of hopelessness which the use
of capital punishment implies.
The Old Testament, frequently called
upon to support capital punishment,
calls for the death penalty for a number
of other crimes. Among them (listed in
Exodus), are striking one's parent,
procuring slaves, witchcraft, sodomy
and sacrifice to any other God than Yah-
weh. Other recipients of the death
penalty are adulterers (Leviticus),
rebellious sons and unchaste brides
(Deuteronomy). If we claim to be, con-
sistent followers of the Old Testament,
then we are remarkably lenient in only
punishing murderers with the death
penalty! In this age of rebellious sons
and unofficial marriages, literal
followers of the Old Testament will keep
the hangman well occupied.
Enlightened churchmen and citizens,
however, will surely strive instead to
look to the spirit of Jesus and to bring it
to bear upon the issues of our time. The
New Testament nowhere deals explicitly
with the subject of capital punishment,
but one of a number of events that relate
to it is that of the woman taken in
adultery, whose guilt was not
questioned. According to the legalistic
application of the law, she should have
been executed. Jesus brought about her
release.
In a complex age such as ours we
cannot approach an issue like this by
quoting texts. We must bring an
enlightened and compassionate con-
science to the issues. The total message
of the Bible interpreted in terms of our
own conditions is the relevant •thing.
Many murders are crimes of passion
and the enraged killer does not consider
the consequences. Many such people
are not beyond rehabilitation — in fact,
their rate of reform has been documen-
ted as being higher than other types of
criminals. The cold professional killer is
another matter. He knows he is risking
the death penalty but, hired by affluent
gangsters as he is, he can afford the
best legal defence. With money on his
side, his, chances,. of escaping capital
punishthent are: good,.
,
:kpot so with, ;the
poor, the black, the illiterate, whose cir-
cumstances may have caused his
crimes. Thus we execute the poor and
release the rich.
Such a brutalizing, revenge-filled, un-
balanced system cannot do anything but
harm the fibre of our society in the long
run. Reform toward offenders will benefit
the society in which they live,
Man's inhumanity goes on and on and on
stg:41.i7rti
!,!,
"Everything I do lately seems to annoy you."
The Christmas problem
THE CLINTON VEW 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 BUTeall.
of Circulation (ABC)
second class mail
registration number - 0817
'SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (in advance)
'Canada, $8,00 per year; U.S.A., 0.50
JAMES E, FIT2GERALD-,-Editor
J. HOWARD AITKEN - General Manager
every Thursday at
of Huron County'
Clinton, Ontario
Population 3,4$
rue HOME
PADAR
IN CANADA
Published
the heart
There's a typical Canadian
tragedy in the. making right
now, and it may be too late to
avert it, unless there is a hue
and cry that will rattle the
halls of parliament.
I use the word "typical"
because it has happened again
and again in this country, and
we have lived to regret it,
Prompted by political or
pecuniary motives, Canada has
gone a long way toward
destroying its very self and the
things that make it most dear
to the average Canadian.
I am referring to pollution
and the disturbance of the
balance of nature. In the name
of progress we have fouled our
own nest, time and again, until
an outsider would think we en-
joyed living in our own mess.
Item. Lake Erie, with some
friendly help from our old bud-
dies, the Yanks, has been tur-
ned into a vast cesspool, which
is almost unreclaimable.
Item. Paper mills and other
industries have been pouring
their poisons into Lake
Superior for years.
Item. If you took a drink of
water out of Hamilton bay,
you'd probably be rusting
within twenty-four hours.
Item. Huge industries con-
tinue to belch into the air over
our big cities, until you'd think
there was a continual fall of
black snow.
Item, Two of our magnificent
rivers, the Ottawa and the St.
Lawrence, are running, open
sewers,
That's a very brief sampling,
And now that, idiot Bourassa,
prime minister of Quebec, in an
attempt to save face after
mishandling everything from
the PLQ kidnappings to the
unemployment situation, has
launched the James Bay
Project.
Maybe you don't know much
about it, and it's all so far
away that it's like a flood in
China.
But that's what we thought
about all the other signs of
"progress", is it not?
"Oh, they'll never pollute the
Great Lakes. They're too big.
So dump the garbage boys, and
flush out the tanks,"
`What? Pollute the Ottawa
and the St. Lawrence? Im-
possible. Too much running
water. Why should we build a
sewage disposal plant? Let 'er
run into the river,"
"Don't be stupid, Squawk
about the big plants polluting
and there won't be no jobs for
nobody,"
We've said it all, and heard
it all. But what heritage are we
leaving behind for our children,
and theirs? A great big pile of
you know what.
Letting Bourassa and his
boys play around with the
James Bay project is like let-
ting a couple of bright science
students play around with a
nuclear bomb.
Here's the picture, The
Quebec government plans a
hydro project in the James Day
area, one of the last great
wilderness areas in eastern
North America. It is a math-
tnoth scheme. Some estimates
place the cost at $10 billion,
Yep. Billion. Where is that
kind of money going to come
from?
Plan is to tinker with up to
ten dams and seven rivers
which run into James Bay, 'The
damage to the area affected,
170,000 square miles, larger
than the whole United
Kingdom, is incalculable,
The sub-soil, known to be un-
stable, has taken hundreds of
years to build up on the solid
rock. The tremendous weight of
Water in the artificial lakes —
some of them 70 miles long —
could cause earthquakes, land-
slides, who knows what?
The lakes themselves are big
enough to affect the climate of
the whole area. Worse, the
change in freshwater flow into
James Bay could delay the
spring breakup in the Bay, and
make winter longer. This could
affect the temperature of the
water flowing out of HuelS'on
Bay, which joint the Labrador
current going south, and this in
turn could make the whole
eastern seaboard colder,
.Project this a little further
and it could affect the entire
fishing industry on the Atlantic
shores.
And worst of. ail is the
callous disregard of the native
peoples of the area. They are
Cree Indians, who eke a
meagre living from the fish,
geese and moose of this bleak
area. These people have never
been conquered, never sold
their land, and never ceded it
by treaty. They are to be
uprooted and transplanted,
So we have the ironic spec-
tacle of the federal government
on the one hand creating vast
new national parks, and on the
other, condoning, if not ap-
proving the possible destruction
of another vast area. This is
not progress. This is rape.
And for what? Sure it will
create temporary jobs in
Quebec for a large number. A
few people will become
9vealthy.
But it will do nothing for the
long-term unemployment
situation in Quebec, where
unemployment seldom goes
below ten percent. In a few
years the jobs will be finished,
a few guys at push-buttons will
be left, and the U.S. will have
another source of power, At
what cost?
Almost everybody seems to
agree that Christmas ain't
what it used to be and, upon
reflection, I have concluded
that one of the reasons is The
Child Who Has Everything,
A department store executive
I met at a small soiree the
other 'night was telling me
about some of the requests
made by tiny tots upon the
knee of an unemployed carpen-
ter who is occupying the part-
time position of Santa Claus in
his toy department.
A little girl asked for two
weeks at Disneyland. A small
boy wanted a membership in an
exclusive winter club. Another
allowed as how he'd accept his
own television set--color,of
'Course~ •
At first glanCe- this 'would'
seem to indicate that there's
still a good, wholesome element
of greed which made Christmas
so exciting when you and I
were young.
We should note, too, that
there are the usual campaigns
for the "needy" or "under-
privileged" children---the poor
children, as we used to say
coarsely in times gone by. I
fancy these youngsters have a
pretty avaricious appetite for
gifts, second-hand though they
10 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 13, 1962
After unseasonal dry and
Almost tropical weather last
week, Clinton and the rest of
the Bruce-Huron snow belt is
reeling under the impact of one
of the worst and longest lasting
snowstorms of recent years.
The storm started to settle in
on Monday about noon, and
with the exception of nights
that are clear and star-studded,
the time since has been almost
continual snowfall with drif-
ting.
Approval of a new site for
Clinton's new post office was
given at Monday's meeting of
the town council. Selection of
the Canadian Department of
Public Works is that now oc-
cupied by Ball-Macaulay Ltd,
on King Street.
Mr. and Mrs. I.W,
Coiquhoun and family have
moved from their home on
Highway 4, just south of Clin-
ton, into town. They are oc-
cupying half of the house op-
posite Murphy's garage on
Highway 8, a half black north
of the main intersection,
15 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 12, 1957
Representatives of the Union
Gas Company met with coun-
cillors of the Town Council on
Thursday evening to present
facts concerning the request for
a franchise to serve the town
with natural gas. Mr, O'Con-
nor, solicitor for the 'company,
spoke to council.
Clinton is the first
municipality in this part of On-
tario- to meet with officials of
Union Gas, The move to use
natural gas is the result of ex-
pectation of gas coining from
Western Canticle soon,
may be.
But it does seem true that in
the common ground between
the over-and the under-
privileged, in what we loosely
call the middle-class, the child
of today is comparatively
loaded with possessions ..and
thus a good deal less covetous
about what's going to be
waiting under the Christmas
tree.
Because of this some of the
contagion of sheer lust that was
transmitted from child to
parent has gone. If' the gift isn't
something special--a replica
say, of the Taj Mahal or a
kiddy-sized Mercedes-Benz--
there is a predictable sense of
anti-climax,
over- •'With
'9friends of my own vintage,
whose most vivid memories of
'Christmas stem from the
depression years of the early
30s, I find that they all remem-
ber specifically what they got.
Just as I, myself, could
describe for you in fine detail
every precious inch of a
Paragon 22-inch-drop bicycle
that was waiting for me there
35 full, years ago, they all have
fantastic recollections of par-
ticular presents.
The explanation is simple
Fifty dollars in prize money
will be awarded in the Christ-
mas Home Decoration Contest
sponsored by the Clinton
Citizens Horticultural Society.
The first prize will be $25;
second prize $15; third prize
$10. One half the prize money
is provided by the Horticultural
Society and the other half by
the Clinton and District Cham-
ber of Commerce,
25 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 11, 1947
Ralph G. roster, a former
school teacher has been appoin-
ted by the Clinton Public
School Board, as itg represen-
tative on the Clinton Collegiate
Instittife Board.
Donald Miller, former reeve
of teen town, is now Mayor of
the organization.
Thomas Churchill received
the trophy from the Huron Fish
and Game Club for catching
the longest bass in 1947. It
measured 18 1 /2 inches, and was
caught in the Maitland River.
Dr. H.A. McIntyre has been
chosen president of the Clinton
Branch 140, Canadian Legion.
Tuckeramith Township
passed the necessary by-law to
authorize erection of street
lights in the village of'
rrucefield.
40 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 15, 1932
Clinton came fifth in the
igarette Wrapper contest,
which has been running for
some time, This means the
Legion will have 75 Christmas
gifts, valued at $2 each to
distribute among needy
children at Christmas time,
JA Allen, formerly of Clime
ton, hag been elected mayor of
enough. We just never got
anything except at Christmas,
and so a good amount of the
whole lovely hysteria was
motivated by cupidity.
Some remarks in a television
interview the other night by
Selma Diamond will illustrate
this, Miss Diamond said that
for five or six years her favorite
doll--in fact, her only doll--was
a wooden clothes-peg with a
face painted on it.
She adored this doll, lavishing
maternal affection upon it and
was reminded of it the other
day when shopping for a doll
for a modern little girl. Most of
the dolls were better dressed
than she, said Miss Diamond,
and some of the talking variety
had a vocabulary' as ,high as
120 words. Miss Diamond
thought they were more
calculated to induce a cold
sibling rivalry than maternal
warmth.
But children, generally, do
have sophisticated playthings,
many of them functional
miniatures of adult luxuries,
and not a few children appear
sated with materialism at the
ripe old age of eight.
Like Miss Diamond, I've
been doing some shopping
myself for a niece and nephew
Ottawa for the third time. Mrs,
Allen was formerly Miss M.
Jackson.
Russell Jervis has been ap-
pointed manager of a branch
of the Pletch Hatchery of Strat-
ford. The branch is in H.
Charlesworth's Feed Store,
next to the Clinton News-
Record.
In the "Gay Nineties"
column it was noted that the
Good Roads Committee of
County Council was concerned
with 107 bridges within the
county.
55 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 13, 1917
The Kiltie Silver Band,
along with the reception com-
mittee and a big crowd of
citizens met the Stratford train
Friday night when Pte, Al
Doherty, son of Mr. and Mrs.
W.D, Doherty returned from
overseas,
R.G. Taylor, Auburn, sold a
pig last week weighing 620
pounds, which brought him
$99.60.
A call from the congregation
of tender years, both dear little
suburban types who, it appears,
are as well equipped with toys
as if their father were a bona
fide maharajah.
These kids have their own
playroom that's replete already
with everything but their own
St. Nick and a full team of live
reindeer. They have toys they
haven't broken yet! Before I
could even begin I had an in-
ventory from their father to
avoid duplication,
I'm not so concerned about
them, of course, as I am about
me.
I can remember my father
having great fun at Christmas,
though fully-grown, by just
such shopping trips, sure in the
knowledge that a .39-cent game
of Snakes-and-Ladders or Ludo
would bring the roses to the
cheeks of the recipients.
With these kids I can't be
sure unless, perhaps, I get them
a completely equipped Las
Vegas roulette table or a
working model of the hydrogen
bomb.
There is a chance--just a
chance--that I could buy them
both clothes-pegs and paint
faces on them, which might
turn out to be the one thing
they'd cherish.
of Brucefield, in favour of Rev.
W.D. McIntosh, promised a
stipend of $1,200 per annum,
with manse and four weeks
holiday.
Margarine made its bow in
town this week so what you
don't know won't hurt you.
The library will be closed
three days a week owing to a
shortage of fuel,
75 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 10, 1897
Mr, Jas. Fair, with that well-
known determination of his to
have the very latest im-
provements, has filled up his
grist mill and office with elec-
tric lights throughout, run by
his own plant and power,
About 50 incandescent lamps,
16 c.p. are used and it makes a
marked improvement in the ap-
pearance of the mill at night.
The windstorm on Sunday
injured the windmill at the
House of Refuge and broke four
telegraph poles on the railway
between Clinton and Seaforth.
There is talk of a curling rink
being erected on a vacant lot on
This is the month for our
parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fred
Slotnan to celebrate their
Golden Anniversary. They
taught half a life-time on the
school-car in Northern Ontario.
Our Dad has been a patient
for six years in J. upper ward,
Westminister Hospital in Lon-
don,
He enjoys visitors immensely
and the very best golden gift
you could offer, would be to
drop in for a brief visit any
time you are in London during
the next year to talk of old
times with him,
Joan, Lisbeth, Margaret,
Fredda and Bill,
Bottle ban
Dear Editor:
Pollution Probe Oakville has
asked for and obtained a
resolution from the Oakville.
Town Council requesting that
the Province of Ontario ban the
sale of disposable soft drink
containers. This resolution will
be sent to all Ontario
municipalities in towns of
population over 100,000 for
their endorsement, before going
to Queens Park.
We had hoped that it would
be sent to all municipalities but,
our council limited it to those of
population over 100,000 because
of a heavy work-load and ex-
pense.
However, if you and the
citizens of your town could per-
suade your own council to send
a similar resolution to the
Provincial Government, it
would reinforce our effort and
increase the likelihood of a ban
on soft drink containers actually
being imposed.
We hope that any interested
people will make their views
known to their council or to our
group.
Yours truly,
Douglas H. Harding M.D.
President
Pollution Probe Oakville
.373 Ninth Line, Oakville,
Phoney money
The Ontario Provincial
Police 'Anti-Rackets Branch is
concerned with the ever in-
creasing trend on the part of
the advertising and printing
media to reproduce the likeness
of Canadian paper currency in
commercial advertising' and
other printed material says
Fred R. Blucher, Inspector.
While such reproductions
cheapen the position of Bank
notes in the public eye, many of
the formats used are in con-
travention of the Criminal
Code of Canada.
Few charges have been laid
in recent years as warnings
seemed to suffice, however,
because of the increase in
reproduction and after con-
sultation with senior Crown
Counsel of the Ministry of the
Attorney General, no further
warnings are to be given and
charges will be laid where cir-
cumstances warrant. •
The section of the Code
dealing with this subject reads
in part, "Everyone who
publishes or prints anything in
the likeness or appearance of
all or part of a current Bank
note or all or part of any
obligation or security of a
Government or Bank, is guilty
of an offence."
Mary Street.
Charlie Overbury, town, is
one of those entitled to a medal
for services rendered at the
time of the Fenian raid, in
1866. He was then residing in
St, Thomas and went to
Ridgeway with the battalion;
his application has gone for-
ward to the department,
'we get
vail=mearigi.eg
Golden years
Pear editor