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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1973-10-11, Page 4we get letters -Editorial comment Busing cost money Many things have been cited as being part of the cause of spiralling education costs in the past few years but the cost of busing children to school has been largely overlooked: Twenty-years ago, it is safe to say, a' very small percentage of children were taken to school by bus, Today, however, according to a report released last week by the Ontario government, 25 per cent of all elementary school students and 29 per cent of all high school students, ride to school by bus. Ontario had a two billion dollar education bill last year and 2.8 per cent of that was made up by the cost of busing, in a county like Huron, that 2.8 per cent would be much higher. It's safe to say that probably half the children atten- ding school in the county go by bus. It is inevitable, of course, that buses will be used more, and thus cost more, than back in the 1950's. In those days of the one room country school, nearly all chtlylren in the country walked to school. The centralization trend that started in' Support the CNIB Chances are those oven mitts you wear, that curling broom you use, or that bean bag your child plays with, were made by a blind person. Every day over 550 blind people working in 20 CNIB industrial shops across Canada are producing such marketable items as brooms, mops, brushes, doll carriages, bassinets, wicker trunks, jardinieres, dresses, aprons and placemats. Sub contract work is another phase of the industrial shops, In one shop packaging 75,000 flashcubes and 1,000,000 light bulbs for an electronics company, assembling toiletry products for a leading drug store chain and packaging boxes of greeting cards were recent projects. N Outside4,companies-find it easier and leiNaaper----te—contract- CNIB to do collating, packaging, sorting and weighing than doing it in their own plants. The basic products are delivered to the shops and picked up when finished. There was a time when the only the late fifties and eddy sixties made it essential that buses be used. Yet the cost 'of busing also throws a' different fight on the economics of some school consolidations of the past. Some schools were closed, not so much for educational reasons, but for economic reasons. Taxpayers were sold the idea that it would cost less to have the two schools operating out of one building. But was the increased cost 'of busing really figured into the new cost situation? The trend to Consolidation seems finally to be ended in this part of Ontario and the increase in the amount of busing probably has too and any attempt to cut down on the amount of busing such as making children walk a little far- ther to meet a bus would not be popular. So, we are likely to stay at the present cost level for some time. We should not, however, overlook the cost of busing in any decisions about location of schools. (Blyth Standard) source of income for some blind people was begging. Many of them returned af- ter World War I to find that vocational training facilities and employment op- portunities were non existent. Then, in 1918, the CNIB opened the first in- dustrial shop for men, a broom factory. A shop for women established two months later enabled them to learn a variety of trades - making reed baskets, machine sewing, machine knitting and loom weaving. By March 1920 there were 138 men working in shops in Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver and 45 women in Toronto. This humble but significant start evolved into a network of industrial shops which are providing meaningful employment and ,,work vexperience for blind Canadians in the seventies. Keep this in mind when the canvasser calls on you. Your donation to the 1973 campaign for funds makes It possible for CNIB to run its shops and to provide sheltered employment for the blind people who need it. Sugar and Spice/13y Bill Smiley A Bob, a barmaid and a brigadier The Jack Scott- Column 11111 11111 The Bottom Drawer Momber, Csinadiiirt Community Nowspapor AssoblitIon ME HURON NEWS-RECORD Esloblishnd 1851 cuvroN NEW EIM Estoblishrul 1865 A >11(4w/truth-id 1924 'IP CNA opOIAN Published every Thursday at Clinton, Ontario Editor Jetties E. Fitzgerald General 'Manager, I. Howard Aitken SecOnd Oise* Mali registration nO, 080 NE HOW ter INWAr IN tivrADA. flitombar, 'Ontario ithirolay Notrolipaolit Asiociation 4---,CbRiTON NEWS-RECORD,. T SPAY, OCTOSER 11, 197$ Last week I was talking of the fun of meeting people when you are travelling, It's not that your friends at home are dull. They're probably more in- teresting than some of the types with whom you become bosom buddies on short acquaintance. But the people you meet on holiday are a refreshing affir- mation that the earth contains an infinite variety of creatures of the human species. This week I'd like to finish these thoughts by introducing you to three greatly different people we met in England: a Bob, a Barmaid, and a Brigadier. Hurtling from Edinburgh to Chester on a train, we picked up at the ancient and bloody old city of Carlisle, near the Scottish border, an addition to our compartment. I didn't mean that Carlisle is bloody in the sense of bloody awful. But it did change hands several times in the bloody bor- der wars. And it was there that William Wallace, the great Scots rebel, was put on public view in a rage, before he was hanged, drawn and quartered, and his parts faked on various pikepoles about the city, as a lesson to the Scots "rebels", in the fourteenth century. Anyway, Bob Mitchell proved an agreeable travelling 'companion. He was interested, interesting, and affable. We'd been in the same war, he on corvettes in the navy, I in the air force, We nattered about taxes, housing costs, com- parative incomes. As we rattled ugh the Lakes District, he went to pains to point out things and sights of interest. He suggested a good restaurant in London. A veritable gentleman, in this age of boors. TrIe proved this whets We stop- pod to change for Chester. I started wrestling with our luggage and An incipient coronary. Before I could say, "Bob Mitchell', he had whip- ped the two big suitcases off the overhead rack, nipped out and put them on the platform. You'd have to be a basket case for this to happen to you in Canada, During our earlier conver- sation, he told me he had a cousin in Neepawa, Mart. I told him my column was in the Neepawa Press. So here's his message to his cousin: "Ask if Fred Crook remembers his visits to the Roman Wall area of Cumberland and Northum- berland and his walks along the beach at Southborupe." There you are, Fred Crook, The Barmaid. I'd been telling my wife for years about the barmaids of Britain. They are NOT the busty, blowsy bar- maids of fiction. But they are a breed of their own, with their, "Wot'il it be, duelcs?", and "Ta, luv." Ta means thanks, But they seemed to be a vanishing breed, supplanted by young women with too much make-up, wearing slacks and a bored expression. I was beginning to despair of finding a real English barmaid, But we did. She was Heather, in the Tudor, Westminster Hotel, Chester, She was 100 percent iroof of everything I'd been telling the Old Lady. She ran that bar like the ringmaster of a three-ring cir- cus. Excellent service, a joke or a personal word for the regulars. No play for tips. jpkeanuts or potato chips for anyone who looked as though he needed it, jand all the time hurtling a song, pirouetting behind the bar, actually en- joying life. A delightful person. And nobody, but nobody, got out of line in that pub. It was not a Matter of rules, or threats, but of personality, Then there, was the Brigadier, He was another ket- tle of fish, a borse,of a different Colour-, or, rather, of a number of different colours, like a chameleon. He was either a Scottish lord or the biggest liar in London, and I lean toward the latter. We had a casual drink together, and he was friendly, I swiftly learned that he was 58 (he looked 42), had been in the Cameron Highlanders, was a retired Brigadier, had been With British intelligence, "But we mustn't talk about that, of coo /se,' ' That's when I began to suspect. When he told me he spoke Hungarian, Roumanian and Polish without an accent, my suspicions deepened. When I said, in my blunt Canadian way, "How come?" he answered airily, "Part of the job, old boy." When I asked his name, he aaid "Just call me Cameron," It seemed he was the Lord of Lochiel, and he muttered about the Camerons and their feuds with the McDonalda and others. He had an onarierving habit of drining six Pernods while was worrying through two half pinta. Then he'd get quite stoned and mumble on and on, "I'm drunk. t say, I'm drunk. I'm as drunk as a lord. But of course I am a lord, so it's all right." We parted after several en- counters, and I asked for his address. He wrote down, "Cameron" and an address in Edinburgh. Then he thought better, and abve "CXAMERON` WROTE, "Lord of Loeheil". Thee he thought again, and in front of that wrote, "At, Hort," Only thing, he couldn't spell tochiel. Later that week, in Edits- brugh, I was tempted to check at the address he'd given, but decided against. Didn't want, to spoil a beautiful myth. Well, 'there you are, A Bob, a Barmaid, and a Brigadier. A mania for tidiness in- variably grips me when there's a change of season, I am a relentless basement-cleaner- outer in the Spring, a dedicated leaves-raker-and-burner in the Fall, Come early April or early Oc- tober I always buy 35-cent ledgers and enter all my debts in them in painstaking, impec- cable figures. It makes me feel that I am well organized, But for years- now this illusion of orderliness has never been quite complete for the simple reason that, carried away by the zeal for a place for everything and everything in its place I am emboldened to tackle The Bottom Drawer-- wait itist a 'moment, I'll ac- tually measure it so that we may consider the whole thing scientifically. Yes, it's just two feet square and a mere eight in- ches in depth. But this is the Grand Canyon of drawers. It is a combination of midden, tomb, archives, filing-cabinet, tool chest, junk yard, sewing-basket, catch-all and Pandora's box, What is it you require? A dog 10 YEARS AGO Oct. 17, 1963 Horatio Hale, lawyer and the foremost authority of his time on Indian and Oriental languages and resident of Clin- ton for 40 years will be honoured by the dedication of a plaque by the Provincial Ar- chaeological, The plaque was erected on the grounds of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Present at the ceremony will be three granddaughters, all of Clinton, and several great- grandchildren. The drought is nearing the serious stage and both wheat and plowing suffers, The tack of moisture has baked the earth and several farmers are finding it difficult to plough. The dry weather has done some good as the corn is doing much better than earlier expected after it was hit by the frost, 25 YEARS AGO Oct. 21, 1948 ?Ellwood tong, our well known sportsman, and three members of his staff, George and Jessie Campbell and Bob Morgan wort out hunting along lake Huron north of Goderieli last Tuesday and brought back seven beautiful geese five Cenadrts and two Blues weighing from seven to ten pounds each. With a Clinton team still in organized baseball competition, the first snowstorm hit the district Sunday night, Oetober 17, constituting somewhat of a record, It was the earliest snowfall for tautly years. Cliff Epps, who keeps a yearly record reports that five years ago, on October 17, 1943 anowilturriee occurred but the ground was not covered as it was this year, North Huron Plowmen's Association staged a very suc- cessful Plowing match on the farm of Stewart Plunkett, West Wawanosh. Arthur Bell won the horse class and Thomas Hallam, Auburn, won the special prise for the oldest plowman at the match. He is over 80 years old and was par- ticipating in the horse class, Most of the contestants were at the International Match near Lindsay last week, The Hugh Innes Strang memorial scholarship has been awarded to Miss Joan Scott, Goderich. She is attending Vic- toria College, University of Toronto in the household science course. Her father is principal of Goderich Collegiate Institute, 50 YEARS AGO Oct. 18, 1923 Mr, John Ransford, Clinton's C,N,11., representative, was given the honor of expressing the appreciation of the •Sanndian Ticket Agent's Association and their ladies when they were entertained at luncheon on the C.P,R. steamship. Fred Elliott has not aban- doned his athletics while et college. Mr. Elliott is attending the school in Owen Sound. Last Saturday Fred played with the relay team and on Monday won the senior championship and mile run. He is keeping up with his magnificent record set in Chilton, Mr. and Mrs. T. Corless and family went down to Burgessville 'on Friday end. spent the weekend as the guests of the former's mother and in a reunion with other members of the Corless family. 'Mr, Talbot, wife and 'children arts visiting their cousin Mrs, B. Stain", a broken electric light switch, and two women's gloves, one brown, one originally white, both for the left hand. Now. Here is a cupboard- door handle, a ball of silver paper, a leather sheath for a hunting-knife without hunting- knife, a half tube of household cement, an uncoiled, used typewriter ribbon, six torn rub- ber gloves, the handle of a brass fire-poker, five oyster- shells, a key to Cabin Eight of the C.P.R. Princess Blaine, the magnet for an automatic can- opener, a link from a boom chain, an empty holder of Scotch tape, the top from a baby's feeding bottle. Pressing on, we carne upon the blade of a bread-knife, a manual for the operation of a one-and-a-half horsepower Viking outboard motor, a broken carpenter's rule, the top of a Waterman's fountain pen, assorted pieces of a jig-saw, a tea-strainer, a ledger with a neat list of debts from some forgotten April, a toothbrush, salad fork, souvenir pennant from Juarez, Mexico, and an 75 YEARS AGO Oct. 24. 1898 Mr. Matt Ford brought in a mangold which was 28 inches long, 20 inches in circumference and weighed 20 pounds. Matt said they had a couple of wagon loads of mangolds almost as large as this one, It was a good thing they were an excellent crop for turnips are almost a failure in this area, Mts. Will Elliott has been appointed superintendent of the press department for W.C.T.U,, Waterloo county. Mr. W.H. Ford arrived last week from Kamloops, B.C. af- ter an absence of ten years. He ' has been engaged in mining and brought home a number of souvenirs, one of which is a massive ring of Klondike gold which he presented to his brother, the Councillor. He is staying with his mother Mrs. H. Ford in Holmesville. imitation ebony cigarette holder. But there, as it does year af- ter year, my inventory comes to an end. A terrible depression settles over me, a feeling of ut- ter helplessness. Very methodically I begin to pile it all back in the drawer, rationalizing as I go. Why keep the sheath for the hunting-knife? Because, of course, if you threw it away you'd find the knife the very next day, The flashlight bat- teries? Well, Soine 'of them might just- possibly have a spark 'of life left in them. The two left-handed gloves? Well, she must have put them in here for some reason. The wheel from the toy? Discard that and I guarantee that within 10 minutes you'd hear a piping voice enquiring, "Whatever happened to that wheel from the toy car that I put away so carefully in The Bottom Drawer?" So the drawer is ,put away again, more cluttered than ever, and I hurry to my ledger and my comforting, tidy column of debts. At least I know where they came from. Johnson of Holmesville, The boys in the paring room at the Evaporator certainly do not lose any time at their job. Last week five of them W. Whitely, Jas. West, Fred Robinson, Norman Webb, and John Walker handled and pared 1500 bushels, or 50 bushels a day each. This is good work, and it is said has not been equalled by any similar staff in the west. Fall wheat and pastures are in splendid condition and nature's present appearance in- dicates that the fall season is really here. John Ransford, Clinton, is visiting the old home country, Scotland, He has visited the area where they lived before moving to this area. There he met Piper rindlater who, while considered to be a hero in this country, is just an ordinary Scotsman. Dear Editor: Enclosed is a poem I com- posed today which might give some pleasure to your Huron County readers; "Home Again" My Heart is light when I return; Her sloping pasture fields I yearn, Crowned by her virgin wild woodlots, Real food and drink to all my thoughts And I am home in Huron. I was born in Clinton, but have spent very little time in Huron, and maybe you could have a contest for the residents of Huron - that is, you could use my verse as the chorus and they could compose verses or stanzas. Clinton has a Huron District High School and I would very much enjoy reading some sen- timental verses about Huron Clinton, Seaforth, Bayfield, Goderich, Hensall, Zurich, and rural areas by natives and residents of Huron County. Please use my poem as you see fit or as pleases you. Yours sincerely, John Kilty, Toronto. Dear Editor: The recent television special prepared by CKNX-TV Chan; nel 8 (6:30-7:30 Thursday, Sept. 27, and 6:00-7:00 Sunday, Sept. 30) conveyed the idea the Inverhuron Park takeover by Ontario Hydro can be justified by drawing "a fine distinction" between the Atomic Energy Control Board's not having issued a directive requiring the park takeover, but having stated that licensing of new facilities (nuclear or heavy water?—conveniently un- specified) might not be for- thcoming if the park was not acquired. This is a misconception of the facts, a misconception arising from several. misuutiers, standings on the part of CKNX.' First, there is the misconcep- tion that there is greater regulatory concern for safety on the part of the Control Board for multiple-unit heavy water plants, than for single plants. We quote from a letter from Dr. D.G. Hurst, President of the Control Board, dated August 11, 1973, to this committee. "As regards multiple-unit plants, I see no reason for increased con- cern beyond that which is ap- propriate to the plant con- sidered as made up of separate units," (Some additional piping is required between units) Further, we quote from a recent letter to a member of this committee from Darcy McKeough, Minister of Energy for the Province of Ontario, dated September 13, 1973. "... Secondly, there is no greater concern for safety from multi- unit heavy water plants than from single plants. This too is quite correct . ." A second misconception con- veyed by the programme was that there is no distinction bet- ween considerations relating to safety, arid those relating to pollution, These were lumped together and treated as "the en- vironmental question." In fact, these are quite Please turn to Page § • NeWti-iledord readers are On- coUraged to express their opinions in letters to the editor, however, Such Opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions of the News-RecOrd. Pseudonyms may be used by letter Writers, but hO letter will be published unless It can be verified by phone. collar? A hundred and forty- five feet of twine? A button from a World War One infantry uniform? A copy of Chums for 1923? A small barrel stave? Ski wax? A carbureter for a Hud- son Terraplane? Saddle soap? The missing parts for a Spitfire model airplane kit? A lid-lifter for a Climax stove? You name it, we've got it. In The Bottom Drawer. Each year, as I did just yesterday morning, I face the impossible challenge, I take the drawer, out. I stagger wit!', it to a' cleared .sliade, usually the middle of the living room and , empt' the entire contents for sorting., Let's see, now, what have we here? Well, here's a punch for home handicraft leatherwork, a cowbell originally acquired for the purpose of calling children to dinner, an assortment of castors, no two alike, forceps, three bobbins for worm-fishing, a half tin of dried putty, 12 dead flashlight batteries and an empty flashlight, a rubber tire from a child's toy car, a tin of grease, 53 paper clips, an em- pty bottle marked "Mahogany From our early files .