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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-02-27, Page 2Canada and the Olympics It is without a doubt, that many Canadians watched the Olympics with the hope of seeing Canada win a gold medal or a medal of any kind. Canada did manage to get a silver and a bronze medal, but in hockey where we should have outshone everybody with the exception perhaps of the Soviets, we felt well down the line and into sixth place, People probably never,expected the Canadians to beat the Soviets in the first place, and the-team did play a good game but if the U.S.A. can beat that strong Soviet team, why can't we? An even worse insult than that was to have the Canadian hockey team beaten by those smaller countries, where hockey is not the major sport it is in this country. Are all our hockey hopes just slated for the NHL and nothing else? In figure skating we also seemed to place well below the medal winning champions but once again the U.S.A. was right up there placing second in the women's division. Steve Podborski in skiing and Gaetan Boucher in speedskating did give us a couple of bright moments in the sun, but in sports other than those two, Canada just didn't seem up to par with other countries. Perhaps we even lowered the present high feeling the. U.S. had about us from the rescue attempt in Iran, when they saw we couldn't achieve the same excellence in sport that they had. Hopefully Canada and the athletes can figure out the solution to our problem in the near future. Canadians do seem to have an inferiority complex about their abilities, a feeling that has probably extended to our athletes. In the future, let's give our athletes the financing they need, but more importantly the encouragement that shows them the country believes in what they can do. Then if Canada does attend the Olympic Games in Moscow, or at other international sports events, we just might walk away with a few more medals and do this country proud. Behind the scenes ..tassels .,by Keith tI:o14.4.t:o..n • After the election I". /git $41,*441, wwt WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1980 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 BLUE RIBBON AWARD Post Election Thoughts ,, In the, wake of the election many explanations have come forth for the incredible turnaround that saw Pierre Trudeau returned to power with" a majority governmeet nine months after he was defeated at the polls, Which one you choose often reflects what you felt before the election took place. Supporters of Joe Clark seeking for an explanation why their man fell. so fast have picked the media as an excuse, The media. they say,, made a fine, intelligent thoughtful' Man look like an incompetent boob. They seem to ignore the factlhat the media made Joe Clark look more foolish before the last election than in this one. They also tend to ignore the fact that by virtually ignoring the media during the campaign Pierre Trudeau earned the hatred of media personel even more than he . has in the last half dozen years. The melee likes to think it can make and break political leaders. It made Pierre Trudeau in 1968 and it felt it' broke him in 1972 and 1979. In 1980 it found out it couldn't break him no matter how negatively it reported his campaign. The bitterness was evident on the election night . telecast. Listening to some of the media experts one would think it was the telecast of a wake, not an election victory. *** Why is it that people can always find good words to say about someone who's on the way out? Commentators who had hated Pierre Trudeau's guts managed to say something nice when the man announced his resignation last fall. When Joe Clark went down to.defeat last week suddenly the nice compliments began to flow from the months of the commentators who never had much good to say about him at the time. It reminds one of a funeral of a thoroughly despicable man who is eulogized so eloquent- ly that people at the graveside suddenly can't figure out why they didn't like him in the first place. * * * Joe Clark, like Pierre Trudeau last spring, showed a lot of class in accepting defeat (unlike John Crosby who must have made about the most graceless speech on election night.) One can't help feeling sorry for a man who wanted so badly to be prime minister since he was a boy who got the job but only just a taste of it. The personal tragedy is something overlooked in these national spectacles. * * * One of the promises that sounded best when Clark was elected last year was his pledge to pull Canada together. Part of the disintigration of his government may be due to the pulling apart of this premiSe, like taking the wings Dff flY, by his fellow Conservatives at the provincial leVel, Clark blasted Trudeau for confrontation politics with the provinces becaese the constant bickering for power between Ottawa and the. provinces and the struggles of one part of the country against another... Yet despite his best MUderating attempts Clark was having no better luck bringing peace to federal provincial relations than Trudeau. He solved the Quebec problem by ignoring it, but.it was his friends Davis in Ontario and Lougheed in Alberta who did him in. For the last few'years these two have played their ends against the middle. The've won, battles in their provinces by battling not the opposition parties but the Liberals in Ottawa. We need a strong voice to keep thOse scoundrels in Ottawa from stealing every- thing, they cry. It's kept Dvis in power, barely, but it's virtually destroyed democracy in Alberta with hardly any opposition members elected in the provincial legislature. That worked fine when the hated Liberals were in Ottawa. But they couldn't turn off the act when Joe Clark moved in. They still made out Ottawa was the enemy even when. Joe Clark was ready to give them all the power they wanted. Thdy had to have somebody to blamerall their problems' on, to keep the voters back home from looking at provincial issues. The result was Clark got treated the same way Trudeau did. No doubt an NDP government in Ottawa would be treated the same way by NDP provincial politicians looking after their own turf. The greatest danger, it is obvious, is provincial politicians why try to cling to power by playing themselves as the saviours of the regional interests from some other part of the country or Ottawa. We don't need Premier Davis talking about the greedy oilmen of Alberta, nor do we need Premier Lougheed spreading hate about easterners who want to keep the westerners poor. We don't need Quebec premiers who cry the rest of the country doesn't Care about the problems of Quebec. We need people who think of the whole of Canada, not petty personal or regional interests. That's why I hope, and pray, that Pierre Trudeau can find whatever it takes in his last term in office to build understanding in this country. Unity isn't just a matter of keeping a strong central government but of making people understand we have to look at the whole not just our own little part. It's a tall order'we should all pray he succeeds. Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 2S cents each. 4101110M oar. a w"I14%r 41"44.4P44. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Thinking about selling the house Comes a time in life of every couple when they start thinking, and then talking, about selling the house. After all, they solemnly nod in agreement, it's a bloody white elephant. Who needs four bedrooms for two people? Who needs a tax bill that goes up every year? Who needs to heat a white elephant, or any other color, at today's oil prices? Each of the aging pair thinks his/her own selfish thoughts. And don't tell me otherwise. The Old Man says to himself: "No more beefing about the lawn being shaggy, the walk not shovelled, the basement not swept, the garage falling down, ice on the roof, my utter incompetence when it comes to repairing anything." And the Old Lady thinks: "Why should I run up and down stairs, ordinary, cellar and attic, eight times a day? Why should I have to call and fight with the,plumbers, the electricians, the TV repair man, because He's never here when something breaks down? Why should I scrub hardwood floors that are immediately scratched, and clean rugs that are immediately soiled by Him and his two damn' grandboys?" At about this point they get together and agree that they should sell the beast and move into an apartment. No snow shovel- ling, No grass cutting. Laundry sewm in the basement. Wall-to-wall rugs. No decorating. No tax bill. No fuel bill. No bill for cleaning the driveway. At this point they're almost euphoric. Wow! No more problems. A nice little two-bedroom apartment on the tenth floor, overlooking the lake. And so cheap. They bought the old house for a song, spent only about fifty thousand dollars on it, and could probably get sixty for it. That would leave them a handsome profit of about $422.79, which they could invest, and drag in all that extra income. People approach them with a gleam in their eye. "If you're gunna sell, I want first chance." A colleague of mine, with six kids to sleep, and us with four bedrooms and an attic that could be made into two more, lights up like a green light every time she sees me, and urges the sale. And this is about the point where the couple commences to shoot sidelong looks at each other, have second thoughts, and beging to query the wisdom of the whole deal. The husband thinks, "Jeez, she drives me nuts in a big house where I can go fa' the bathroom when she starts playing the vacuum. In an apartment she'd have it going all day, and I'd wind up like one of those old gu y, squatted over the daily paper in the public library." - And the wife thinks, "Wouldn't he like to stick me in an apartment Where he'd be underfoot every hour of, the twenty-four? I can scarcely stand it now when he's on a weekend or holidays. I like to get him OUT of the house, so I can get something done." And they both think of the kids, and the grandkids. Sure, we have to live our own lives, but what about Christmas? They can't afford a motel, and that's silly, anyway. And the wife thinks, "The little devils can do enough damage to the house to keep us happily miserable for three weeks after they leave. What would they do to an apartment? We'd be kicked out." And the husband thinks, "How can I teach them hot to climb a woodpile in an apartment? Row can I teach them not to squirt me with the hose in an apartment? How can I teach them how to fish in a rotten apartment? How can I teach them how to stickhandle a puck in An apartment?" And the wife thinks, "We'd never get the grand piano into an apartment. And the Indian rug. It's old, and it's shabby, but it's beautiful, and it would never fit into one of those dumb little boxes." And the husband thinks, "Where would I put my fishing tackle? Where would I store all those pictures of me as a half4back, that are now in the attic, somewhere?" And they both think, "What would we do without the fireplace, a constant bone of contention, because nobody wants to clean out the ashes? But we do love those late winter afternoons, With our oven oak and maple sending out heat and hues, and the grandboys sprawled before it, asking crazy questions about life?" And the wife thinks, "Some days, when I stand at the sink doing dishes, andlook out at the green and the sun and the flowers, I have a piercing sense of joy, arid I don't think I could ever get that looking out a tenth-floor window." And the husband thinks, "What would I have to worry about if there were no fifteen-foot icicles, hanging like so many swords of Damocles, right over the back - door, where the Old Lady's music pupils come in?" . And he goes on thinking, "What would I do in summer, if I couldn't listen to the birds, and watch the cheeky squirrels, and gaze up thorugh the filter of my massive oak into the gold-blue sky?" And she thinks, "I can cut down the phone bill, and make my own clothes, and shop tighter, and stop buying expensive presents for the kids." And he thinks, "I can stop smoking, and buying booze, hang onto the old car for another year, give up one of my two daily papers:" Andby some peculiar osmosis, they agree,• despite the figures, which are conclusive and multitudinous, that it is a lot cheaper, healthier, arid generally more beneficial, to hang onto the old house tot another year or two. f