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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1985-12-11, Page 4My husband eats like a horse. The world view from Mabel's Grill There are people who will tell you that the important decisions in town are made down at the town hall. People in the know, however know that the real debates, the real wisdom reside down at Mabel's Grill where the greatest minds in the town (if not in the country) gather for morning coffee break, otherwise known as the Round Table Debating and Filibustering Society. Since notjust everyone can partake of these deliberations, we will report the activities from time to time. TUESDAY: Jealousy is one of the motivators of large amounts of the conversation at Mabel's. Hec Gregory, for instance, is too busy to ever show up at Mabel's for coffee (he has a secretary makes his own special brand from a Toronto specialty store which she has to grind before she makes it.) But it isn't the special coffee that makes people jealous (anything that ranges from dark brown to tar- black is fine with them) or even the secretary (although she has started a few conversations around here too), but Hec's success in town. Everybody knows he's a crook. He must be because he's made lots of money. And he's made it in real estate. Billy Bean is always coming up with schemes to make money like Hec has. "What I need is a building in a prime location that I can pick up cheap and turn into a good office building, one for doctors or lawyers, those people who have plenty of money for everything but new magazines in their waiting rooms," he said this morning. "But you know, yesterday, I was watching the news and the idea hit me. I figure I can have the best building on main street fora song. I mean if the government will buy a company like deHavilland, spend $750 million in it, then sell it for $90 million and give tax writeoffs to boot, I should be able to pick up the post office real cheap." WEDNESDAY: Julia Flint did something that nobody ever does at Mabel's: she ate something. Now as far as the regulars of the Filibustering Society know, no- body ever eats at Mabel's. She just keeps the whole place running on coffee at 40 cents a cup. This break with tradition was enough to make some of the oldtimers say they knew things would only go down hill letting a woman sit in on things but Julia Continued on page 23 cizen [640523 Ontario Inc.] Serving Brussels, Blyth, Auburn, Belgrave, Ethel, Londesborough, Walton and surrounding townships. P.O. Box 152, P.O. Box 429, Brussels, Ont. Blyth, Ont. NOG 1H0 NOM 1H0 887-9114 523-4792 Subscription price: $15.00; $35.00 foreign. Advertising and news deadline: Monday 4 p.m. Editor and Publisher: Keith Roulston Advertising Manager: Beverley A. Brown Production and Office Manager: Jill Roulston M•111=1.. PAC-j.!, 4. Wf. CITIZEN WeDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1985. Editorial. Writer wants changes More than one way to skin a cat it was a little difficult to get work done around The Citizen office last week. The Kitchener-Waterloo Record had been up a few weeks back to do an article on The Citizen and the way the two communities had rallied together to start their own newspaper. The article appeared last week and went on the Canadian Press Wire Service and appeared in the London Free Press and the Toronto editions of The Globe and Mail and in newspapers across Canada. That was followed by requests for radio interviews by stations as far away as Alberta. This in turn was followed by a call from a publisher who has been battling to get a paper started to serve several smaller communities near Sudbury. What intrigued all these people was the idea of people in a community working together to start their own newspaper. New newspapers start up every day but seldom does a whole community get together to make it happen. But what was a unique event for people in other parts of the country seemed a natural solution to a problem here in Huron county. Our people have been doing this kind ofthings for years, starting co-operative farm supply businesses, credit unions and the first dairy and poultry co-operative that became the United Dairy and Poultry Co-operative and finally Gay Lea Foods. You won't find many more staunch supporters of free enterprise than the natives of Huron county but people around here have long learned that there is more than one way to make free enterprise work for you. If you sit around and wait for someone with a lot of big bucks to come along and do things for you you're liable to wait a long time. A century ago Patrick Kelly the reeve of Blyth who operated several businesses that needed to be exported to other parts of the country, realized his business would die without a railway. He persuaded the railway company to build the "butter and egg special" north from London to Wingham by persuading municipalities along the way to pitch in with money. Salt wells were drilled in Blyth a century ago by having local people buy shares in a company to do the work. We've learned that there is more than one way to skin a cat or to solve a problem. Today we face problems of finding industry to keep our small towns going. We can sit back and wait for industrialist to come to us, we can wine and dine people who say they might be interested in setting up some small factory and it will get us nowhere. On the other hand, we could explore alternatives. Perhaps we could look at the concept of development corporation to build an industrial mall to help small industries get a start. We can look at ways, as we did with The Citizen, of putting our money to work in our own communities instead of sending it off to build apartment buildings or shopping malls in Toronto and London and Kitchener, thus using our own money to help kill off our towns with competition. Our greatest resource is our resourcefulness, our imagination and our ability to work together to solve problems. We can't afford to sit back and hope things will happen. We've got to get out and make them happen. Then maybe we'll be on the radio and in the newspapers again explaining how our communities did what everybody else said was impossible. THE EDITOR: This letter is written to request the support of your newspaper and its readership to address a concern held by many parents of minor hockey players. Recent rule chang- es, sanctioned by the Ontario Minor Hockey Association and the Canadian Amateur Hockey Asso- ciation have introduced permissive body contact to the pee wee age group. This follows an earlier change which sanctioned a similar regressive step for bantams. Many parents and coaches see this as a regressive move. The requisites for being an effective player seem to place brute strength as a priority over skating skills, stick-handling and teamwork. Wide differences in the physical size and development of this age group also create a significant safety hazard. When the pre- pubescent four-footer collides with a gangling six-footer, the results are not amusing. As this season of minor hockey unfolds, the games I'm watching verify growing aggression and negative competition. It's not Continued on Pg. 5 Why have a country? The federal government's decision to sell deHavilland Aircraft of Canada to Boeing at a cost of only $150, million has to make one wonder if Mr. Mulroney and his people really believe it makes sense to have a country at all. If we look at things from a strictly economic basis, as the government seems committed to do, we should forget this talk of free trade and just petition the Americans to add a few more states north of the 49th parallel. Let's face it, it has never made sense economically to have a separate country in the northern half of North America when economies of scale could easily include supplying all Canadians with barely an increase of the capacity of American plants. Canadians have always believed, however, that it was worth paying a little more to keep our options open; to agree with the American giant when we wanted but to be independent when we disagreed. Mr. Mulroney, as president of a corporation that operated in Canada but was owned in Cleveland, has had a different viewpoint than the average Canadian. He was quite willing to carry the ball for the American owners of Iron Ore Company of Canada when it came to close down an entire town. This deHavilland sale makes little sense from so may ways. It is, first of all, a victory for doctrinaire free enterprise over common sense. The government said it would sell the company and it damned well would, even if it made a pretty silly bargain in doing so. Canadians have already poured hundreds of millions into developing the technology of the short take off and landing aircraft of deHavilland but we're willing to give it all to Boeing for the cost of a couple of their big jets. Boeing has so little invested in deHavilland that it has little incentive to keep it going in the long run once the tax writeoffs expire and sales for newly-designed aircraft drop off. Moreover, we're selling off one of the prime companies that could be a prime defence contractor in Canada to a foreign power. Would the Americans, free enterprisers that they are, ever let one of their defence contractors be bought out by foreigners? In addition, the takeover would probably never have passed if it had taken place in the U.S. between two private companies because unlike Canada, the Americans have laws against conglomerates becoming too monopolistic. The argument here isn't that the government has decided to get out of the aircraft business: there can be good arguments to do that. But why sell out to a foreign buyer at such a bargain-basement price when there were Canadians ready to buy. Why not take a little longer and put together a truly Canadian private company? What the government is saying with this sale is that Canadians are incapable of running such a company. There have been comparisons between this deal and the infamous cancellation of the Avro Arrow which killed off a complete Canadian aviation company and led to a brain drain of aerospace scientists and engineers from Canada to stock the American space program. These comparisons aren't altogeth- er fair. Yet what will happen if Boeing finds some bright young minds in the deHavilland design rooms that could aid the parent company in Seattle? Are they likely to leave these people to work in Canada or are they likely to transfer them to the U.S. parent? The government seems to be saying the border doesn't matter, the money is money and owners are owners. We in this area who did without a newspaper for three years know that absentee ownership does not serve anybody (country of community) as well as local ownership. Mr. Mulroney, like Mr. Diefenbaker before him, has made a decision that may make sense at first glance but makes one wonder if he really sees any sense in having a country at all.