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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1978-08-03, Page 4Times-Advocate, August 3, 1978 System is wrong? Fruit and vegetable harvesting is in full swing throughout Ontario, and while the lack of moisture has reduced yields for many products, the lack of labor is also creating concern for many producers. The lack of people looking for jobs would be easy to understand if the nation’s economy was at full peak, but the fact is, over 1,000,000 people are out of work. It just doesn’t make sense. The farmers are in a squeeze, because the federal government has also placed a freeze on the number of foreign workers in an -effort to en­ courage the use of domestic help. Many of the unemployed just won’t consider the back-breaking job when the pay isn’t much over what they collect from unemployment insurance. However, the fact remains, that the system is wrong when crops are allowed to rot in the fields while people who could capably fill the jobs sit at home and draw unemployment payments. Think small by Jim Smith The Power of Positive Thinking Pot is boiling The educational pot is boiling across Canada. What is happening in Ontario is suggestive. The Supreme Court of this province recently said “no” to North York’s plan to set up a Jewish school with compulsory religious classes. The Board of Education — in a policy switch from the sixties — wanted to in­ tegrate a private school into the public system. About 400 junior high school students at the Associated Hebrew Schools would have been involved. Having rendered this verdict. Judge John Holland, in a personal com­ ment, said “Religious instruction of all denominations would appear to have merit from an educational viewpoint.’’ However, he noted that this would re­ quire substantial changes in the legisla­ tion. The fact is that a system, conceiv­ ed by men like Rev. Egerton Ryerson, is dead. We now have a concept of public education that is neutral or agnostic. So the pot is boiling. Ryerson travelled abroad to get ideas. We would do well to take a good look at the Netherlands. The constitution of Holland lays down that the cost of voluntary schools (fulfilling certain conditions imposed by law) is to be defrayed from public funds on the same scale as public schools. State primary schools are run by municipalities, voluntary schools’by the organizations that set them up. State supervision is exercised by the schools’ inspectorate. Suffice it to add that in the Netherlands, although state and volun­ tary schools are not on the same finan­ cial footing when it comes to higher education, even at the university level voluntary institutions receive state aid varying from 70 percent to 90 percent. Those who cherish the spiritual heritage of our own country, a heritage affirmed in the opening words of the Canadian Bill of Rights which acknowledges “the supremacy of God”, should be prepared to do some very careful and vital thinking. Those who would not hesitate to in­ voke this statute if they felt deprived of justice even in an area under provincial jurisdiction, should also be ready for vital and careful thinking about im­ plications of “freedom of religion”. There may be separation of Church and state in Canada. But this does not mean that there is Or should be separa­ tion between God and government, between religion and the state, between people and public support to band together for education according to the dictates of conscience. It is an historic position which is ab stake in a new ecumenical climate. It is a primary position which is bound to be attacked by various individuals or groups for a variety of reasons. . Contributed The readers write Dear Sir, The chief focus of media and public attention since the release of the Government’s Constitution­ al Amendment Bill has been on the provisions in regard to the Supreme Court and the Senate. However, I believe that citizens should be aware that the Bill proposes revolutionary changes in the Constitutional Monarchy, changes which are in many ways more important to the average Canadian than any other of the Bill’s proposals' The Bill presents a monarchial facade: behind lurks a republican reality which removes the Queen from being part of Parlia­ ment and which concen­ trates power in the hands of the Prime Minister’s ap­ pointee. the Governor General. The Governor would exercise power in his own right, giving way to the Sovereign only when she was present in Canada. Not only is this a gratuitous insult to the Queen, whose labours and interest have been directed so evidently to Canada, but it also would allow for a government to consolidate its own power, without checks or balances by keep­ ing the Monarch out of Canada. The deceitful danger of the Bill is that it maintains many of the Crown’s trap­ pings, while these symbols would in fact stand for altered ideas and a quite different institution. Equal­ ly, it would preclude Prince Charles or Prince Andrew from serving as Governor .General, it would eliminate reference to the Queen’s Canadian Forces and it would abolish the happy status quo whereby ’ both Queen and Governor can ex­ ercise their powers fully, within and without Canada. Canadians determined to preserve their institutions should write their provincial and federal legislators to protest the Bill’s provisions. A detailed statement outlin­ ing its threat to Canadian Constitutional Government may be obtained by writing the Monarchist League of Canada, 2 Wedgewood Cresc.. Ottawa, Ont. K1B 4B4. Yours sincerely, JohnL, Aimers, Dominion Chairman ¥¥¥¥ Dear Editor It is with a sense of urgency that we approach you for help in the dramatic fight to save Niagara foodlands. As you know these lands are under escalating pressures of urban development from municipalities wishing to expand. THE PRESERVATION OF AGRICULTURAL LANDS SOCIETY has been the driving force behind the fight to save this irreplaceable resource. For the past few years we have been actively working towards- our goal by presenting briefs and rasing .public awareness wherever possible. We have had some very good news coverage including a TV documentary and radio interviews. A lengthy Ontario MunicipalBoardHearinginto Niagara Regions Urban Boundaries brings a new element of emergency to the issue and forces PALS in an order to fight the case properly to raise funds to obtain legal aid and expert witnesses to fight for urban boundary reductions. Therefore we must escalate our efforts to arouse public opinion and need all the help we can get at this time to do this properly. Your publication could make a valuable contribution towards this end by allowing us to either place a free advertisement in your next edition or by allowing us to write an editorial or article for you. Another possibility would be for us to give you enough background in­ formation on the issue for you to write an article or editorial. We feel that this latter method might be most effective. Thanking you for your considerate attention to our request we remain confident that you will help us in some way to fight for the best land in Canada for ours and future generations. Sincerely Robert Hoover Chairman PALS While summer is not the ideal time in which to test yoyr ability with com­ plicated puzzles, some area baseball fans may have fun trying to figure out one quiz which we ran across lately. All you have to do is sit down and figure out how a team failed to score a single run while being credited with three triples, one double, two singles and two stolen bases in a single inning. Give up? Well, here’s how it was ac­ complished. The first batter hit a triple. He then took too long a lead and was picked off third. The second batter smashed another triple, and he too was picked off. Two out, and nobody on base. The third batter doubled. Number four hit a single, but the baserunner was held at second. These two then engineered a double steal, putting runners on second and third with two out. The fifth man at the plate got a single, but again the base runners were held at second and third. The bases are now full. The final hitter slammed what looked like an inside-the-park home run and all runners came in. However, the man from third failed to touch the plate and was tagged out, ending the inning with no score. The last batter was credited with a triple. Can’t you just imagine the brawl that would take place in the dugout if that happened to the New York Yankees? ★ * X Quebec’s “language police” are hard at work enforcing sign provisions of the province’s new official language act. The aim is to purge the province of public signs on commercial property which contain non-French words. Some companies have had to drop the apostrophe (Eaton’s) from their stores, because the language police have ruled that an apostrophe is an English construction which cannot be permitted on a Quebec sign. At the same time, reports have been received from some parts of the na­ tion, that federal bilingual signs are be­ ing defaced. A favorite method appears to be spray painting over such words as “Bureau de Poste” on the bilingual signs in front of post offices. We are not alone in this kind of non­ sense. In Wales, the minority who can still speak the Welsh tongue are carry­ ing out similar depredations. The number of citizens who can speak Welsh fell from 26 percent to 20.6 per­ cent in the last 10 years, yet the nationalists have begun overpainting or smashing English signs. When the government installed bilingual signs, these in turn were van­ dalized on the grounds that the English words should be in second place or eliminated entirely. It’s hard to believe that some people have so little to do with their time. * ★ ★ One of the “duties” of some vacationers who travel to distant parts of the world is to bring home some souvenir for the people back home. So, we get miniature lobster pots from the east coast, oranges from folks retur­ ning home from the south, etc. etc. However, most readers will be able to sympathize with a lady from Hong Kong who wanted to send her grandson a truly Welsh item during her visit to the old country. Finally, she found just the thing to make the boy homesick at a local all­ Welsh shop — a floppy hat with a patriotic emblem and a Welsh slogan on it. She was about to wrap it up for mail­ ing when she noticed the tell-tale label: “Made in Hong Kong”. Come to think of it, where can one find a souvenir to take home to someone in Hong Kong or Taiiwan that they couldn’t buy by visiting nearest trinket factory? ★ ★ ★ Speaking of holidays, a couple in Dorking (you look it up) were happily married for 35 years without having been separated for as much as a weekend. They decided to take separate vacations and the wife- now reports, “we enjoyed being apart so much that we are now getting a divorce”. •k -k ir A British union leader has come up with a make-work proposal so breathtakingly impractical that it’s a wonder no one except teachers and un­ iversity professors thought of it before. Terry Duffy wants to give workers evepr 10th year off on full pay,reason­ ing is very simple: it would mean more jobs, especially in companies with a number of long-service employees. Knowing the way most employment contracts are negotiated, one editorial writer has suggested that the next step in the program would be a sabbatical after working for nine years, then eight, and so on, until every new employee would start work by having a paid year off. Soon, everyone would be doing nothing on full pay. Some employers would suggest they already have some staff members in that category, but it surely would lick the unemployment problem. There are people - poor, deluded people, as we shall demonstrate who believe that Ottawa’s policies are de­ termined by the Prime Minis­ ter. There are also people - equally wrong who think that the opposition parties • have some influence over the course of the nation’s busi­ ness. And then there are the other folks who mistakenly suspect that the civil service controls our destiny. The true facts about pow­ er in Ottawa are only now beginning to seep out. Inves­ tigation shows that the true leader of our federal govern­ ment is,in fact,Norman Vin­ cent Peale. Countless politi­ cians and bureaucrats now base their decision-making on belief in the power of posi­ tive thinking. We’ve already seen how the power of positive think­ ing has been implemented in the anti-inflation program. And there's been no end of positive thinking (and’re- markable little else) in the unity campaign. So it really shouldn’t come as any sur­ prise to discover that Jack Horner, Minister of Industry, Trade & Commerce, has pick­ ed up on the same philoso­ phy. The result of Horner’s conversion is something call­ ed “Shop Canadian”. “Shop Canadian” isn’t an entirely new concept. For years, government has been admonishing us to “buy Ca­ nadian” and this is essentially the same thing. The only dif­ ference is that Ottawa is now recommending that we care­ fully investigate price and quality, buying the Canadian- made item where other fac­ tors are the same. In other words, “Shop Canadian” is a watered-down version of an old favourite. Well, you’d never know that we’ve had this kind of program for years if you'd attended the 1T&C press con­ ference where Horner unveil­ ed his brainchild. “Purchas­ ing competitive Canadian- made goods,” Mr. Horner said, “will provide more jobs, build a stronger Canada where all Canadians share in higher living standards and help increase the industrial strength of all our regions.” Horner, of course, is quite right -//Canadians were buy­ ing home-produced goods and if our producers could somehow manage to keep prices competitive with those of foreign manufactur­ ers. However, there’s noth­ ing in the “Shop Canadian” program that is going to bring that idyllic state of af­ fairs to pass. Once we get past the positive thinking, “Shop Canadian” is intellectually bankrupt. It merely adds SI,715,000 to the govern­ ment’s annual advertising bill and creates the illusion that Ottawa is actively helpingCa- nadian manufacturing. The trouble with “Shop Canadian” is that the mes­ sage doesn’t appear to have sunk in back in the nation’s capital. Loto Canada recent­ ly ordered many millions of dollars worth of computer equipment-from theUnited States. Canadian firms were not even given the opportu­ nity to tender bids. Ottawa is rife with similar tales. And even the Council For Cana­ dian Unity, a private body subsidized by Ottawa, went to Japanese-made scarves for a unity program because there was no comparable Ca­ nadian product. Advertising gimmicks are desirable in their place. But the tragedy of “Shop Cana­ dian” is that IT&C’s thinkers were wasting time on window dressing when they should have been tackling the fun­ damental problems of Cana­ dian industry. "Think small” is an editorial message from the Canadian Federation of independent Business 1 55 Years Ago Timet Etlablithed 1873 aimes -Advocate Editor — Bill Batten Assistant Editor — Ross Haugh Advertising Manager — Jim Beckett Composition Manager — Harry DeVries Business Manager — Dick Jongkind Phone 235-1331 (♦CNA SUBSC Advocate Established 1881 SERVING CANADA'S BEST FARMLAND C.W.N.A., O.W.N.A, CLASS ’A' and ABC Published by J. W. Eedy Publications Limited LORNE EEDY, PUBLISHER Published Each Thursday Morning at Exeter, Ontario , Second Clot* Mail Registration Number 0386 Paid in Advance Circulation September 30, 1975 5,409 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada Si 1.00 Per Year; USA $22.00 Sugar and Spice Dispensed by Smiley Preoccupation with death Canadians have a great pre­ occupation with death. It is common knowledge that we carry more life insurance than any other nation in the world, on a per capita basis. I wonder why. It must be a great country in which to be selling life insurance. Even Simp- sons-Sears, Limited, is getting into the business. Only in Canada would a big department store be selling insurance. Pity But it’s a fact. In my wife’s last computerized, machine-signed letter from that august organization, one L. Visosky, General Credit Manager, talks earnestly about an occidental death policy, exclusively for Simpsons- Sears account customers. It pays up to $100,000 in benefits and “protects you while you’re driving, riding, or walking — even when you’re at home or at work — everywhere in the world! NO MEDICAL EXAM! NO AGE LIMIT!” Well, I don’t do much driving, riding or walking when I’m at home, or at work, but perhaps it’s a good idea. It costs only $3.50 a month for a family. Does it mean that children under five can be insured for up to 100 grand for accidental death? Does it mean that people over ninety who decide to jump in front of a bus, accidentally, can leave their heirs set for life? Somehow, I doubt it. It’s far more likely that Simpsons-Sears just want to be dang sure they’re paid off, if you’ve managed to get into them for a few hundred dollars on your charge'account. Perhaps Canadians are not so foolish in their concern about death. A pretty good English playwright, Will Shakespeare, was fascinated by the subject and speculated upon it in Hamlet’s soliloquies. And a thousand thousand other poets and playwrights have attempted to probe into the meaning of death. A quick look at Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations shows more than three solid pages of references to death. Thus we learn that Death among other things, such as the end of Life, “borders upon our birth, breaks every bond, is only a horizon, is the fatal asterisk, is like a friend unseen, is the end of a journey, is but the long, cool night; a debt, a trumped ace, a boat­ man, a road we all must go.” And so on. They all sound like cliches, don’t they? Brother Death becomes more familiar as you grow older. Children are completely unaware of him, young people are barely so. It’s a rather distasteful thing that happens to other people, mostly old ones. When I was a young fighter pilot, I was very close to death, fairly often. But I didn’t even feel his cold breath, nor smell his slightly mouldy scent. A few times I was almost literally scared to death, but not of death. When you begin seeing school friends in the obituary columns, when a brother dies, when a colleague dies, all of them in their prime, you begin to feel and smell the Old Boy. It’s not par­ ticularly frightening, merely a bit disconcerting. In your heart, you are twelve years old, with a little sophistication plastered on the outside. In your head, you’re a couple of years away from retirement, a decade or so away from senility, certainly on nodding terms with Brother Death. Holy Smokes! I hope this is not too lugubrious a column for a family journal. It was that thing from Simp­ sons-Sears that got me going. And then my wife suggested I make a list of my insurance policies and the junk in my safe deposit box, and leave it all in the hands of my brother-in-law, the lawyer, before we embarked on our trip, what a gloom-box way of com­ mencing a summer holiday. I told her I would, but never got around to it. If we’re hijacked or go down in the Atlantic or die of sea­ sickness on our voyage down the Rhine, let somebody else sort out the mess I’ve left behind, I’ve been sorting out their messes long enough. Let’s see, now. There are two in­ surance policies in the bottom drawer of the dresser, beneath my thermal underwear.There’s another with the county school board. There’s a stock certificate somewhere in my desk drawer, worth $94.00. There’s a house, paid for, and two cars in the driveway, worth $250 each, on a good day. As for my safe deposit box at the bank, I lost my key the first week I had it, and the girl told me they’d have to have a chap drill it open, with me present. We were to make a date mutually agreeable. That‘S was six months ago. I don’t know what’s in the thing anyway. My wife has a sewing machine that’s worth more than our two cars. The color TV is ten years old, but going strong, ever since we had the TV repairman put back new knobs where the grandboys had ripped all the joriginals off. My colleagues in the English department are perfectly welcome to split up my reference books, my filing cabinet, which has not been opened in ten years, and my picture of the Queen, .the one with the moustache drawn in. Any left-handed golfer with arthritis may have my clubs and cart, which are so old and shabby they almost qualify as antiques. There’s a pretty good fishing rod down in the basement, with the Christmas decorations. A few patches and there’s a dandy pair of hip waders to go with it, They’re in the trunk of the old Dodge, along with a case of beer that froze last winter. There, I think that pretty well clears the decks. If Brother Death gets over­ friendly, my daughter won’t need a job for the next three years. It’ll take her that long to sort out the estate. Bum Voyage. The hearts of the youngsters of town have been made happy the past week by Mr. W. F. Abbott, who. has installed on his playgrounds near his home teeters, slides and swings for the boys and girls. Mr. Abbott is laying out ball grounds and a tennis court. Harvesting of the Duch set onion crop is in full swing. The crop on the whole is not up to other seasons. The Exeter Bowling Club held their annual bowling tournament on Wednesday of last week. R. N. Creech’s rink, comprising W. E. Sanders, T. R. Ferguson and W. J. Heaman, won the Heaman Trophy for the third time. The annual Ford picnic at Grand Bend on Wednesday of last week in which Ford dealers and their friends from all parts of Western Ontario was an unqualified success. The weather was ideal for the thousands who crowded the village. 30 Years Ago Mr. W. R. Goulding was adjudicator at the juvenile contest conducted at the Kirkton garden party. District men went on an old-fashioned bear hunt Monday afternoon and beat through an eight-acre bush in Usborne township north of Exeter looking for a mother bear and four cubs seen by Bill Rowcliffe at the edge of his farm. A teacher in 1887 in Dash­ wood, Mr. A. J. Styles, has returned to Seaforth from Hollywood, California to visit boyhood scenes. Exeter council voted to call for tenders for a new Exeter District High School. At magistrate’s court at Goderich Thursday, tribute was paid to the late magistrate J. W. Morley, K. C„ of Exeter. 20 Years Ago Brewer’s Retail store at Grand Bend was the last in Western Ontario to close after a province wide strike created a beer drought this week. Fire started by lightning destroyed two large barns, over 2,000 bushels of grain, 4,000 bales of hay and con­ siderable machinery on the farm of James Gardiner, Thames Road early Wed­ nesday morning. The loss is estimated at $30,000. Usborne Township school area this summer completed the installation of oil bur­ ning air conditioning units in all its schools. In addition to the tri­ service drill squad which formed the guard of honor for Prime Minister Diefenbaker at Wednesday’s CNE opening, Centralia will contribute a smoke-writing team for the afternoon air show September 5 and 6. 15 Years Ago John Anderson, Hensail, broke 97 out of 100 targets in the handicap event at the Quebec provincial trap­ shooting championship. His score equalled that of the winner of the event, but as an out-of-province competitor, he could not qualify. Recreation Director Don "Boom” Gravett is one of 50 candidates who has been chosen to attend the CAHA Hockey Leadership Institute at Kingston next week. Helen Shipway won the most Lucan Awards at the swim meet Friday night. She took part in four events. Gar Myers, superin­ tendent at the Pinery Provincial Park estimated this week that about 156,000 people visited the park in July. That’s about 3,000 cars and 12,000 more than last year.