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.