HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1979-07-18, Page 2WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 1979
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published each Wediesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario
By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited
Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Msociation
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4Brussels Post
Good work Bluevale
The Bluevale Community Hall could be staying open thanks to the
efforts'of community people who care about what could happen to it.
Not every community rallies around to show its interest in a building
that could possibly be destroyed. Often people do protest such things
but are not given enough support by their fellow community members.
That doesn't look like it will be the case in Bluevale where people were
eager to offer their suggestions for uses for the hall and came up with
many ideas.
One of the main uses identified for the building was that of an
activity area for senior citizens, and teenagers who are not old enough
to drkie. Although somebody suggested that even if there were
activities•for teenagers they would still go out of town for their fun,
another man suggested that with the energy crisis, people will be
-sticking closer to horn'e and need such an activity area.
Another thing the people of Bluevale should be congratulated on is
*their attitude toward the public meeting on Monday night. They were
quite willing to voice their opinions, worked co-operati vely in groups
to come up with some ideas for the hall and showed that they cared
about what was happening in their village.
And during the meeting they even came up with a plan of action to
have a committee look at the various things it will take to get the hall in
shape again, and come back in six weeks time with what they've found
out.
Hopefully at that meeting, even more of the Bluevale community
will come•out and show their support. But the people who were out on
Monday night did just fine in their actions to save the hall.
Every community needs just such an active, willing to get involved,
population.
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Behind the scenes'
by Keith Roulston
Unity and diversity
Two opposing principals have been
propounded widely in Canada in the last
decade or so, both with their advantages
but both with their dangers as well.
Canadians have been simultaneously
advocating unity and diversity at the same
time. We've been promoting national unity
and regionalism. On a more personal level
we've been trying to get people to think
more of their neighbour and at the same
time pushing for more and more individual
rights. Ideally, maybe we can have the best
of both. Unfortunately, we may instead
have the worst of each.
For the last dozen or so year the push of
the federal government in Canada has
been to build a unity between Canadians. It
often seemed like a hopeless task. There
were, however, just enough successes to
make people hope it could indeed be done;
that Canadians could develop a sense of
togetherness.
Perhaps the most successfuly of these
government promoted unity promotions
came in 1967, Canada's centennial year.
When Prime Minister Lester Pearson set
out that year to get Canadians involved in a
celebration of our 100th anniversary, many
felt it couldn't be done, that such a thing
couldn't be promoted by the government.
Mr. Pearson's government put several
years of planning into the event which
many said would be a flop, but the idea
seemed to catch Canadians at just the right
time and people took part in the Centennial
celebrations in far greater numbers than
anyone predicted.
Those celebrations and the feeling of
patriotism they promoted have done a
great deal to change the entire direction of
the country.
It's hard for us now to remember
accurately just what the country was like
before 1967. It was however considerably
different. The spirit of '67, the spirt of
caring about one's country and promoting
being a Canadian has led to an outburst in
such areas as the arts. The idea of having
our own local theatres producing plays by
Canadians and for Canadians would have
been impossible to comprehend before
1967. The idea of Canadian books outsel-
ling imports was ridiculous in the pre-67
days.
Yet at the same time we were promoting
unity we were also promoting diversity in
Canada. We were praising the fact that
Canada was not the "melting pot" concept
of the United States but was a place where
the various races and nationalities from
around the world could co-operate together
while still retaining some of their old
cultures. In recent years this has developed•
into a concept of regionalism in Canada,
where the differences between the Mar-
itimes and Ontario, between the West and
central Canada would be understood and
even fostered. •
The new government under Joe Clark
won election promising to promote regional
interests even more than they have been.
Mr. Clark particularly attacked the former
Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau, for his habit
of fighting against provincial premiers who
argued that more power should go to the
provinces. Mr. Clark apparently agrees,
feeling that the provincial governments can
more easily meet specific regional needs
better than the federal government.
Celebrating our diversity must certainly
make Canada different than any other
country on earth. It's a daring concept in a
world where people are apt to distrust
anything strange or different. If we can
pull it off, it's a marvellous victory, a
victory for understanding over distrust of
love over hate.
Yet in Canada, a country already
burdened with handicaps such as different
languages, different cultural , backgrounds
and long differences that keep people from
meeting and getting to know each other, it
seems something like a death wish to
promote the very things that separate us.
Unity through diversity, an amazing
concept. Yet it is a concept that is so
important that it makes it even more
important that Canadians keep their coun-
try together. If we can make it work, if we
can find the delicate balance between our
feelings of unity and our feelings of
regionalism or cultural' differences, we
have an important lesson of understanding
to show the rest of the world. It's a
challenge for us all: a chance to put into
action the teachings of our own religion
that we must love our neighbour and
tolerate the differences of others.
We often downgrade the role of our
political leaders in Canada but in giving us
this challenge of building unity through
diversity they have given us a chance to be
really a great nation not just in the sense
that we have power, wealth and influence
but in the sense of really contributing
something to the world: the example of a
place where different people from dif-
ferent backgrounds, even different lan-
guages can still work together to make a
united nation.
In doing so each of us carries the burden
of promoting our own cultural background,
language or region but in a way that is
positive, not negative. While we promote
our own 'uniqueness we must remember
our, resporisibility to be part of a larger
whrile and must fit ourselves in to that
whole like a piece of jigsaw.
It's quite a challenge. Can you do your
part?
Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley
A couple of big anniversaries are coming
up for weekly newspapers, or community
newspapers, as they re called these days.
In July, the Canadian Community News-
papers Association is celebrating its
diamond jubilee at a convention in Toronto.
In Wiarton, Ontario, the Echo is celebrat-
ing its 100th birthday this July. I'd like to
take in both, as a member of the former for
eleven years and editor of the latter for the
same period.
Some of the happiest years of my life, as
far as work goes, were spent in the week .ly
newspaper business. And as work goes, it
went a long way about sixty hours a week.
It requires a certain type of personality
and outlook to be a happy weekly editor. Or
it did when I was one. It's a lot different
now, with young, hard-nosed editors, fresh
out of journalism school, imitating tech-
niques of the dailies.
First of all, you had to have a complete
lack of material desires. 'rod could make a
living, but you never gof rich, or even well
to do.
Next, you had to keep your back shop
happy, the printing staff. And anyone who
has ever tried to keep a printing staff
happy knows that it's about as easy as
attending a picnic of rattlesnakes without
being bitten.
Then, of course, you had to tread the
thin line between being fearless, inde-
pendent and mitspoken, arid selling
enough advertising to keep body and" soul
together. The • guy who attacked town
council for sortie nefarious bylaw, and the
guy who went out and tried to sell ads to
the six merchants on the town council were
the same guy, very often.
There were the inevitable typographical
errors to harry the obfuscated editor. In a
wedding write-up, the bride often came out
as the "bridge." In funeral accounts, the
pallbearers were apt to be described as
"six old fiends" who carried the coffin to
its final rest.
In a small town, there are currents of
jealousy and antagonism and family feuds
that run deep and strong.
Praise a local politician for making a
good move, and his third cousin from the
other side of the family would call you up
and tell you, with vivid detail, what a
snake-in-the-grass your first man was.
Venture to criticize, however gently, an
athlete or public figure, and you'd have
your ears scorched by eighty-four close
relatives who normally despised the guy,
but rallied to their roots when an aspersion
was cast on the clan.
Hell hath no fury like a Women's
Institute whose boring account of its
meeting, including everything from who
said Grace to what they ate, was cut by the
blue pencil.
And then, of course, there were the
drunks who would call you up at 3 a.m. to
ask you to settle an argument about who
scored the final goal in the 1934 Stanley
Cup playoff. And the kooks who would call
,you up and try to plant a libellous rumour,
or demand that you come out to the farm
and take a picture of their home-made
threshing machine.
There was always some country corre-
spondent furious because her "news",
consisting of who visited whom on Sunday
afternoon, was crowded out by a rush of
late advertising. "Why don't you leave out
some ads?"
There was no lack of variety in the
weekly business, when you were reporter,
editor, advertising manager, proof reader,
and general bumboy for the tyrants in the
back shop.
I distinctly remember a St. Patrick's Day
night, when there was an unexpected
heavy fall of snow. An elderly gentleman of
Irish descent had been celebrating the day
in the pub. When he hadn't arrive home by
ten o'cloel his housekeeper called for help.
The local pubs were alerted, and the
hockey rink,, where there was a game in
progress. Most of the male population, at
least half of them half-lit, stormed off to
search for the missing man. We found him,
covered in snow, abut a quarter-mile from
his house. Back to the rink and the pubs,
I remember shouting at deaf old ladies
who Were celebrating their ninetieth
birthdays,and getting some of the most surprising answers.
"How long has your husband been
dead?"
"Nah, he never was much good in bed."
"To what do you attribute your long
life?"
"Yas, I was always a goodr wife!! And so
on.
To be a successful editor, though not
necessarily a good one, you had to
continually straddle fences. This becomes
a bit of a chafe after a while .
You had to be able to write on demand. I
remember one week when there was
absolutely nothing to fill a two column, four
inch' space on the front page. In about
twenty minutes, -I knocked out eight
column inches of sparkling prose in which
the reader had to read to the end to
discover that nothing worth reporting had
happened that week.
It sounds as though I'm knocking the
game. No so. These are fond memories.
And there were rewards, most of them
intangible. It was kind of nice to be
introduced to strangers as "our" editor. It
gave satisfaction when a subscriber from
away dovvri in the States dropped in on his
way to the summer cottage and said, "Sure
liked that piece about the deer hunt."
And there was a certain quiet pride in
one's status. My daughter, aged eight,
produced the fitting requiem when I left
newspaper work and went into teaching.
"But Daddy," she observed,
nraecialynsagyroode'dre. not the Editor any more. I