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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1979-01-03, Page 2*POSSE ONTARIO WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1979 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community, Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois..- Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association 111 CNA Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9,00 a Year. Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each. IIITAsiANNED ,117 Brussels Post A committment to children Children are people too. That's something that should be remembered as the General Assembly of the United Nations has proclaimed 1979 the International Year of the Child. As the future adults who will shape the world's coming events it is important that their needs inculding health, education, are looked after. But everybody will have to participate to see that childrens' needs are mgt.. Some of the suggestions made by Margaret Birch the Provincial Secretary for Social Development are setting up a Block Parent Association, inviting a guest speaker to your club organization as Home and School Association to talk about positive parenting, education, day care, handicapped children, or children with special needs. Other suggestions for individuals include contacting Childrens Aid or Big Brother/Little Sister Association about doing volunteer work or becoming a foster parent; setting aside extra time for your children and grandchildren, and developing family projects involving your childrens' creative talents. The list of what you can do to really, make this the Year of the Child is endless. Help shape the future of tommorrow's adults. Make a committment to a child today. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston T B. lx lir da to th Cl da da M WI Ct an Sti an sa th ho M Be thr dit Bli sp an far Ba fix the Er M M Sa Ca Mc an M Lo Ril an W. Ci Ja Se wi Pr LO Hi BE Here we are staggering into another year, and nothing done, not a single resolution made. Ah, well, I don't believe in resolutions anyway. except for the fun of breaking them. A man does the best he can, and all the well-intentioned resolutions in the world won't make him do any better. Looking back over the last year, I find it was much like any other: ups and downs, topsies and turveys, ins and outs, sideways and backward, no real progress, but no real retreat, either. My son managed to survive another year among the pirrhanas and phythons and poisonous snakes of Paraguay. He is now a graduate masseur and acupuncturist, hoping to make enough from his new trade to come home for a visit, after five years. I can hardly wait for him to arrive. My teeth and hair are still falling out, my arthritis is giving me hell, I have a bum back, and I could use a little free massage and aeupuncutry. Even though I'd prefer a masseuse. And an acuptincturess. My daughter lurched front one crisis to another, as is her wont, but managed to chalk up another degree and Charm or Weasel her way into a job as a high school teacher, after six month of dearth. Any year Or any decade now, she Won't be expecting handout's freni the Old man. My grandboys got a year older, survived various fatal diseases, acquired some very colorful expressions that I cannot repeat, and elicited from one beleaguered babysitter the statement that they were the worst kids she'd ever tried to handle. The Old Battleaxe and I battled it out for another 12 months, lost a little skin here and there, each won a number of skirmishes, but neither won a decisive battle, and the war goes on, sometimes cold, sometimes hot. We had a great trip to Europe that lasted three weeks and cost me so much that I won't be able to retire until I'm 83, at last reckoning, Everything went up again: insurance, taxes, heating. And everything else came 'down: snow. ice off the roof, the Canadian dollar, the confidence of the Liberal party, branches off my big oak tree, and the number of years left to live.• It was a year like any other: fraught with terrors and horrors and pian and misery and depression and loneliness all over the world and in our private lives. But also replete with simple joys and sadden hap- piness and special moments and Over- whelming love and occasional peace, Wender what '79 will be like, Heck, I don't have to ask. I know. It'll be the same as last year, Only more So: The last few weeks the big news in Canada has been made, not by Ow politicians for a change, but by the businessmen. Un- fortunately, the news they've made hasn't been any better than the news made by the politicians, The fascinating world of big business has been taken out of the stock markets and thrust onto the front pages in recent weeks. It's like Monoply on a huge scale to watch the offers and counter-offers, the takeover bids refused, accepted, and reversed. For we ordinary mortals its a little hard to understnad just what it all means, In the long run to the companies in question such as Simpsons, the Bay, MacMillan-Bloedel and the rest, it probably doesn't mean much at all . The op will stay much the same, None of these were wereAll were prosperous. Now a faceless bunch of stock holders has been replaced by another faceless b unch of stockholders. The rest of us won't likely notice much either, at least at present. Things will likely go along much as before. But we're still losing something and continuing a very dangerous trend. Simpsons, for instance, may have been just one big impersonal company being swallowed up by another but it was until recently an independent company. There was some hope that it might retain its independence so that if a rival like The Bay started getting out of line, it could be a counter balance. What if The Bay thought it had a market cornered and either began raising prices or its service became poor. There was always the hope with the independence of Simpsons that it might step into the market and provide good corn- peition. Now that hope is gone. As a country we have already had the problem of being dominated by large companies. Usually the large companies have been those controlled outside our borders. Now even the companies of Canadian nationality are becoming so huge, so concentrated in control that they are in a position to manipulate the public. As has been pointed out, if Canada had the same anti-trust legislation that is on the books in the U.S., most of these mergers would never have been allowed. But in Canada, our legislation is virtually ineffective. The concentration is dangerous to the whole health of the country because to have a strong economy, we must have not only competition but growth from the bottom. We need a steady stream of new enterprises, enterprises that are more flexible and more' imaginative than big corporations tend to be. The new companies will try things because they have nothing to lose while the big corporation with stick with old, tried and true methods because they don't want to take the risks. Yet this movement up from the bottom is becoming non-existent in Canada. For one thing, there is little encouragement for My two rotten old rusty cars will be even rottener and rustier, and I'll have to buy a third-hand turkey to replace them. My students will be even thicker in the thatch than this year's crop, and I'll have to reach even further into the well to try to motivate them. There's only so much water in that well. Then it turns to mud. So be it. My wife will go on thinking that listening to her worry about her daughter, her son, her brother, her rather, her grandchildren, her sister-in-law, are more important than my reading the paper. My grandboys will go on being a source of utter delight and utter despair to me, sapping my strength at the same time as they give me new life. My pay will go up six per cent and inflation will go up 13 per cent. So I'll stop eating beef, which is hard to mangle with partial plate anyway. I'll make about 800 decisions. Based on past performance, 738 of them will be wrong, according to my wife. She will make 400 decisions and 400 of them will be right My son will wind up with a total of $24 from his new profession and wire me for air fare horhe tor a visit. lose a few more chunks of my corpus. people to get into business these days. For another thing, the competition from the big companies is so stiff that survival if very difficult for any upstart company that is seen as a threat to the giants. Moreover, with the giants being able to put so much leverage on our law-makers, taxation and other legislation is helping to guarantee that the laws are stacked in favour "of big business and against small. As a case in point there is the government's COM- petiton bill" that has been stalled since the early 70's because of opposition from big business. That bill would have halted mergers such as those that have recently taken place. It's easy for us, the ordinary guy in the street to sit back and feel we're helpless pawns in the whole stuggle and that we can only hope for government to act. In many ways we are just that, but in other ways we're the people who not only make such concentration possible, but indeed promote it. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else, I suspect. When I'm out of town, say on a visit to a nearby city and need a quick bite to eat, nothing fancy, just a quick meal so I can be on my way where do I stop? Many thoroughfares in cities are lined with quick take-out restuarants. They're usually a mixture of nationally known chains and local small businesses. So what do I choose? Well usually I'm chicken. Rather than take a chance on one of the small places that I know nothing about, I'm likely to stop in at the nationally known one. The MacDonald's or A & W or Burger Chef. I may be turning down a tremendous meal for the bland assembly line job. When you go to the store to shop and there's a brand of toothpaste there that you've never heard of beside six brands that spend millions on ' advertising,' which do you choose? I'll make a bet for the, nationally advertised brands every time, even though the other may actually be better because more money is spent on the contents anc less .on advertising. The spread of shopping plazas through the area has also meant more and more people are lining the pockets of big corporations and putting independent businessmen out of business. Where once nearly everyone around here shopped in a store owned and operated by our neighbours, today people are travelling miles to huge ,shopping complexes with supermarkets big enough 'to swallow half of the main street of our old hometowns. Yes, we must hope for the sake of the country that the government takes some action in this growing concentration of business but things will never really improve until we stop being led like sheep by the companies that can afford to pay most to get our attention, until we're smart enough to go beyond the glitter and get down to real value and quality. If we don't, I guess we suckers deserve what we get. This past year it was a few teeth and a piece of nose. In '79 it could be anything: gall bladder, liver, prostate, or other unmen- tionables. I've got lots of parts. The ice will back up on my roof this winter. and crash through the new plaster on 'the living -room ceiling. I'll tell my wife it's a mercy we weren't sitting there when the roof came in. The picture tube on my TV will expire 'right in the middle of the Stanley Cup final. I'll hustle over to my neighbor's. My daughter will be fired from her teaching job for making certain accurate, but colorful remarks about the ancestry of the school superintendent. I'll tell her she was absolutely right, they're all the same. and send her money to assuage the loss: I hope you don't think this is a pessimistic column, l am never a pessimist; merely a realist, That's life, and that's the way the bright new year will go: People are scared of another big hike in the priee of oil. Not me Energy crisis? We don't have one. If all the politicans in Canada were laid end to end, they'd produce enought hot air to heat every.hOuse in thetotintry. See? It's simply a matter of attitude. Think of the worst things that could happen in the New Year. And they probably Will. But you can cope With their.. Have a happy. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Another up and down year