HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-04-02, Page 2WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 1900 ,
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community,
Published each Wednesday afternoon 'al 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.
The darn in winter
Behind the scenes
BLUE
RIBBON
AWARD
1979
by Keith Roulston
Easter We're altjusi people-
Springtime! Easter! Springtime when the earth awakens from rest
and blooms again. Blue and sunny skies, fresh green of grass. and
'eaves, the beauty of spring flowers and singing birds. New life after
winter's chill. Easter—Resurrection after Crucifixion. Our way for Life
Eternal if only we believe. A time to renew our faith, for rebirth and
new springing of our spiritual lives.
,Flhat do you think?
Often people are disappointed not to see a story about themselves,
family, friends or relatives in the first Brussels. Post that comes out
after they have given an interview.'
They can-also be disappointed when they hand in an item of news,
and it does not appear in the paper right away. Sometimes they are
upset when they spot a photographer at an event snapping a number of
pictures and then see only two or three pictures of that event in the
paper.
The key to this situation is that a newspaper is a business, abusiness
that depends on advertising,. Advertising pays the bills and the amount
of advertising determines how many pages of the paper can be devoted
to stories and pictures. If there isn't room for all that week's news and
pictures, they will have to be left until the next week.
If you do have a photo you. want us to take for the Post, however, it
is best to call in advance, preferably at, least a day ahead of time. The
photographer should also be given a specific time and you shouldn't
expect him or her to wait an hour before shooting the picture.
A reporter or photographer's time is as valuable as anyone else's is.
We're happy to come out to report and photograph events in the
community, but please show us the same courtesy you extend to
others. You don't keep your caterer waiting so please be prompt with
the photographer as well.
Perhaps you as a reader would like to see more photos on our pages
and maybe you have a suggestion on what news we could cut down or
omit in order to get more photos in. The Post will soon be conducting a
survey to find out what you enjoy reading, what you would like to see
added, deleted or retained.
This will be your chance to tell us what you would like from your
hometown paper. Look for the questionnaire in a coming issue of the
Brussels Post.
Sugar and spice
By Bill Smiley
March broke?
Well, admit it, sourpuss. It's been a great
winter, hasn't it? January, unbelievable.
February cold but clear. About half the
amount of snow of an average Canadian
winter.
My snow removal bill is about half what it
was during a formal winter. And that makes
me wonder. What are all those towns and
cities and villages who put aside in their
budgets so much for snow removal and
disposal going to do with all the money they
haven't spent?
I'll tell you. They'll switch it to some other
department, and spend it on something
equally as non-producing as snow removal:
so much for Straightening bent parking
meters: an allottnent to the fire department
for three new checkerboards; a little
dispensation to the Parks Board to repair
vandalism; a portion to the Board of Works
to pave over some grass for 11CW parking
meters: expenses for a councillor to go to a
conventiOn in Hawaii to study racism. You
name it, but it won't be a refund to the
taxpayer.
By 'the time this appears in print. the
March Break will be over. This annual affair,
which used to be known as the Easter
Holidays, has grown into a gross exercise in
lowering our national balance of trade with
the U.S.
It involves hundreds of thousands of
Canadians, parents and children, students,
school teachers, in a massive airlift to the
south, where they spend several millions of
our sick Canadian dollars getting a sunburn.
Somebody should put a stop to it. It's a
waste of energy, with all that oil and gas
going up in smoke. It's a waste of money.
And it's a Waste of time.
Maybe you think I'm just jealous, when all
the teachers, and half the students, tell me
they're off to Jamacia, Hawaii, Florida, the
Barbados, Texas, for their One-week break. I
am.
But I'll be diddled if I'm going to spend a
thousand bucks, and another on my Wife, to
line up in confused air terminals with all the
other peasants, fly clown south at sorni
ungodly hour, stay in some hotel that has
With the emphasis onthe individtial these
clays. peePle seem to talk more and more
about the differences of people. •
We have, for instance with the growth of
the women's movement, the belief that only
women can really understand women. With
the problem of western alienation only
westerners can understand the, West.• Only
Quebecers can understand Quebec. And on
and on it 'goes.
Yet for all that people are still people.
Whether they come from Toronto or Tim-
bucto, they still, have more things in common
,han they have differences.
A couple of times' recently, those thoughts
lave come to nic. The first was a couple of
veeks back '-sitting in a Toronto theatre.
I'hrough years of being closely in'volked in
heatre in Western Ontario I had • heard
heatre people say that yes, the response to a
play was very good in Huron county but they
didn't really .knoW if. a Toronto, audience
would like it. The implication in their tone of
voice was, that the Toronto audience would-,
n't like it at all.
And So I sat nervously in the audience that
night as Ted Johns prepared to present "his
look at the 1978 Huron County teachers
strike for the first time to a. Toronto
audience. Would big city people laugh at the
same jokes that' Western Ontario residents
thought were so funny they sometimes came
hack two and three times to see retold?
Would they laugh at all, or would the doings
of far off Huron County not raise any
emotion in them at all, like looking at
pictures of Amazonian headhunters in
National Geographic?
The lights dimmed. A nervous Ted Johns,
filled with many of the same questions of
doubt, strode onto the stage . in a dress,
playing the character of Miss Heartwright, a
teacher in an old one-room school house.
The audience laughed just as the audiences
in southwestern Ontario did while the show
was on tour. Just as the'audiences did when
the show played 17 times at Blyth Memorial
Hall, And they continued to laugh in nearly
all the same places as all the previous
audiences on all the previous nights. When
the show ended they rose to their feet as so
many other audienceS' did to pay their
highest compliment to the performer: a.
standing ovation,. So much for the "differ-
ont" big city audience.
On the weekend I was in London for a
conference on getting the most Out of an
organization. It was quite a mixed bag of
individuals from small towns and larger
cities all across southwestern Ontario. There
were people from YMCAs, people from
recreation departments, people from sym-
phony orchestras, people from community
about as much style and class as a
McDonalds' hamburger joint, be ripped off
for everything eat and drink, and come
home broke and exhausted and peeling.
Not when I can do the same thing for
about two dollars, four months later, and not
be burned, frustrated, Or even tired, by just
driving but., to the beach, opening the
thermos, gently broWn, swim in clean water,
and come home relaxed:
People who Can't cope with March by
staying in Canada for the March Break
should be picked up at the border, locked
into box-cars and sent up to James Bay.
And that's exactly what I contemplate, as I
write. Instead of heading for the sunny
south, and a sybaritic Week pretending I'm:
colleges. city hall employees, teachers,
housewives, .architects and recreation direc-
tors. The question on everyone's mind the
first hour as they got to know who else was in•
the room was: am I in the right place? Can
really learn anything when everybody else
here is' so different from me?
gut over the next two days what became
obvious was that it was not hi-,vv different hut
how similar we were that mattered. Those of
tis who worked with volunteer organizations
Found out that whether that volunteer
organization was "a YWCA or the board of
directors of a symphony • orchestra the
problems Were amazingly _similar. People
found out that , whether they were dealing
With a professional staff or a volunteer one of
the probleMs was still people working with
people.
In the tests and games designed to let us
see how we would react to crisis situations
we found that despite our dissimilar back-
grounds we had marked tendencies to react
the same way to challenges. And we found
out that the people we worked with had the
same desires, needs and fedrS; so that when
we went back home, whether we , were
dealing with people from'a big city or a small
town, a recreation department or a commun-
ity college staff. we could apply what we had
learned to understand why people• in the
organization reacted the way they did.
Focussing on the individual, on the
community, on the region, even on • the
nation is important. But by focussing on the
particular, we mustn't get so narrow a vision
that we forget the general and the fact
people are pretty much the same no matter
where they are. -
We in Canada have spent the last couple
of decades turned inward. We needed to.
We needed to discover ourselves, realize we
had a great country, not just a poor sister to
the giant to the south. Yet we have created
problems by looking inward too long. We
concentrated on our differences from the
rest of the world. Then we started concen-
trating on the differences of our province or
region from the rest of Canada. Then it was
our community and how different it was from
the rest of the communities that make up our
county or region. We've even gone so far as
to concentrate on how different each
individual is from the rest:
It's been an interesting voyage of dis-
covery. But just as individual pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle don't make much sense,
neither ,do the individual pieces of a
community, a country, a world. It's time to
put the pieces back together as part of a
whole picture. If we don't we may end up
with only the pieces and no picture at all.
We have to remember, no matter Where
they live, people are still people.
rich and elegant and Swinging, I'm planning
to head for the frosty north, and a frig id
week pretending. I'm poor, tough, and
hardy. It takes a lot More guts than flying to
Barbados, bolting rum punches, and getting
stung on the foot by a sea urchin.
I'll be training to Moosonee, bolting rum
punches, and getting squeezed all over by
human urchins. My grandboys.
It's only a twenty-four hour ride on the
Polar ExpresS, and I love trains. I can sleep
ea and rd and conteMplate the inanities of
the human race far better than on one of
those great cattle cats they call jumbos.
There's a four-hour stop in Cochrane, and
I doubt that I'll have to line up to see the
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