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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1979-03-14, Page 2Brussels Post !MUSSELS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 1979 ONTARIO 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 • - Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. eNA More progress .SPRING FEVER? These Brussels youngsters took advantage of the warm weather on Friday to practice skipping. The nice weather didn't stay around for long th ough as it got cold and snowy on the weekend. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Brussels is showing more signs of progress. With the old Fina station re-opening and construction of an apartment building approved by village council, Brussels is realizing its potential. Brussels has something good in an industrial commissioner like Ken Webster who is out to get industries in town and something good in a council that realizes what new businesses and industry could mean for the village. It's good to know that there are people in Brussels interested in keeping the village alive and helping to have a bigger and brighter future. It's also good to know that people from outside the village such as developer Gerri Glenniare interested in seeing the village develop. The apartment building will help fulfill a need for both the old who no longer wish to live in a big house all alone and the young who work in. Brussels but have trouble finding accomodation here. There are many ways that Brussels can be promoted. The apartment building is just one path into the future. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Are we too independent? One of the things that has made Canada different from other countries is that we have chosen to accentuate our differences rather than adopt a melting pot theory. That same kind of thinking hvs grown from the beginning here in Huron County where each town and village fiercely guards its independence and its individual identity. We have in recent years seen both the good side and the bad side of this policy on a national and local level. It's impossible in a country so big for people t) think the same, to have the same successes and problems all across the 3,000 plus miles. Our common experience is small compared to our differences: differences of historical background, differences of distance, dif- ferences of climate, differences of temper- ment. One of the things that has always fascinated me is the ability of communities to take on aunified personality. We've seen that right here in our own area where two towns of about the same size only 10 miles away from each other can have completely different personalities. Somehow the sum total of all the per- sonalities of the people in the community and the historic background of the com- mu..nity blend together to fofm a com- munity personality. One town can be aggressive and "modern" while a town just down the road can be concerned more with preserving its past. If communities so closely situated can have marked dif- ferences, how much more likely is it for regions or provinces to have differences. Canadians have clung strongly to the idea of "vine la differeree,when it comes to such things. The fight for provincial rights has been one of the toughest battles fought in this country, Locally we have fought hard against provincial government attempts to homogenize us into huge regional governments and at least for the moment we seem to have won. This concern with individualism in communities and regions can add much to the interesting composition of our country but it can also add problems. Locally we can get - too carried away With the independence of each of our communities to the point where there is a hopeless duplication of services and resources. We are in danger of building city states of the kind that were evidenced in ancient Greece. Our towns and villages have been obsessed with having every facility pos- sible so they won't have to depend on other communities for any service. The recent rebuilding of arenas, for instance, has left us with some facilities that will alivays be under used and runningup costs. How many dance halls and banquet halls seating 400-500 people can we really support in Huron County? And in Clinton right now they're planning to build an expensive new swimming pool, one that will obviously lose money and have to be supported by the taxpayers when in Vanastra which is almost a suburb of Clinton, there is already in indoor swimming pool which is also losing tons of money. Yet the people of Clinton are so independent that they don't want to have anything_ to do with the sharing of facilities. Oh people claim that transportation is a problem but if they were really interested in a common sense approach the transportation issue could be solved. Well, that's they're problem, except that through senior government ‘grants we'll all be chipping something in. (Continued on Page 3 ) I've been helping a student, the lively and lovely Julie Noack, to prepare her speech for the Lion's Club public speaking contest. She wrote it; I just listen and make critical comments. We've had a few laughs. Her speech is in praise of travel in. Canada, instead of taking our lame dollars off and spending them on the often spurious attractions of other countries. It's a sort of travelogue of Canada, and sounds pretty good. But at one point she broke me up. We have just crossed the Ottawa River from Quebec and are cruising around the capital, "where dwell," according to the speech, "our Prime Minister, ambassadors from all over the world ; and..." She slurred the "ambas- sadors" a bit, and it came out, "Our Prime Minister, bastards from all over the world..." I couldn't agree more. Another one that shook me up was when she said that, "Canada is more than 'a few acres of snow', as the French writer, Voltaire dismissed it." Voltaire came out as Volare. The powers of television! However, one point in her speech got me thinking along a different track. She pointed out that, despite the vast variety of vistas this country offers the tourist, it is expensive to travel in this Canada of ours. Too true. Hotels and motels are ridiculously costly. Many of the big new hotels in the cities want an arm and a leg for a place to lay your head for a few hours. Motels want from $20 to $36 for a plastic room, no room service,-often not even a place to get a cup of coffee, and get out by one p.m., no matter what time you checked in. Restaurants in this country are equally usurious, with a very few exceptions. I don't mind going out and spending a day's pay at a good restaurant, with suave service, food carefully chosen and cooked with care, and nobody hustling you out the minute you've sipped your last drop of fifty-cent coffee. But it burns my butt to be served a leathery omelet with the inevitable piece of limp lettuce, the inexorable one slice of green house tomato, and the ubiquitous helping of french fries, none of which you want, and charged enough to feed a fair-sized family a good meal, at home. Then there's the inark-up on drinks, anywhere from one to two hundred per cent, Don't believe me? Check it out. A bottle of beer at home costs about 35 cents.' In a restaurant it'll cost you about one dollar. A chink at home will cost you approXittately 45 cents for all ounce and a half, with free tap water thrown in. In it bar or restaurant the saint': drink will Cost you froth $1,25 to $L6( depending on the decor, for an ottnce and It quarter, And if you prefer wine, they just triple the price. No wonder so many restaurants and bars go broke. The business is so profitable that too many people want into it, ,and the law of supply and demand looks after the rest. _ Travel in this country is equally unappealing. Internal airfares are ridic- ulously high. It costs almost as much to fly from Toronto to Vancouver as from Toronto to London, England, a thousand miles or more. Trains are a dying species. They have lost their old grace of- service, good food and excitement, cut off all their branch lines, and become a rather wistful anachronism for people who like rough road-beds, frequent break-downs and abandoned stations. Buses are better. Some have crept into the twentieth century with air-conditioning heat in the winter, and fairly punctual time-tabling. But all this is ruined by the bus depots, which are pure 1970s Sleaze, diry, impersonal, and with the inevitable drunk sounding off. Or throwing up. Another aspect of travelling in Canada that puts people off is the service, or lack of it. There's very little service with a smile. Too often it ranges from grudging to surly, from indifferent to sullen. Waitresses slop coffee into your saucer or wipe off your plastic table with a dirty damp rag. Waiters stand with their backs to you when you are in a rush to catch a plane. Hotel doormen are all smiles when you are checking in, and non-existent when you are struggling out with three heavy bags. Hotel clerks are almost invariably insolent, exuding the atmosphere that they are doing you a favour by letting you sign in. Car jockeys come squealing up to the front door of the hotel, jump out, hand you your keys with one hand while holding the other out, and disappear to let you, with your bad back, load the bags into the trunk. You can spend ten minutes looking for a clerk in a supermarket. You could spend the rest of your life looking for a porter at an airport. You can turn purple in the face waiting for service in a department store, while two clerks chat about their night out at the singles club, and a third burbles away on the phone to her boyfriend. Occasionally you get a genuine smile or a real thank you, but more often they are perfunctory or non-existent. Why? Is it that native-born Canadians ; feel themselves above the service trades, so that they take out their resentment on their customer. Is that why most jobs in these fairly lucrative trades are held by immigrants? Is that why our minority of good restaurants arc operated by immigrants. Julie is right- The country is magnifi- cent, Mit high prices i bad food and bad manners make it less than a paradise for travellers, Advettleihg aecepted on the condition that 'lei the event of a' typographical error the advertising space occupied by the erroneous iteitt„ together with reasonable allowance tat tipriatttre, Wilt net be charged tot but the hitiatiee of the adVertiseiheht *ill be paid for et the aPPlitable tale. While every ettott will be made to insure they are bandied With care, the publishers cannot he responsible for the return et ttetoaelted -thetttetipts: Or photos.