HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-04-23, Page 2Here's "chance!.
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.
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Brussels Post
We're not psychic.We can"t possibly keep up`with everything that's
going on in Brussels and its surrounding communities, unlesesomeone •
out there lets• us know of some newsworthy event.
Sometimes we only hear of news through a casual conversation or
sometimes we don't hear about things at all just because people
assume. we already know.
We don't always.
So if you know of any interesting news items, please don't hesitate to
call and tell us.
And speaking of news, this week the Brussels Post is/ conducting a
survey to see what you, the readers, would like to see in this paper.
Now is your chance to tell us. Look elsewhere in the paper for the
questionnaire.
By filling' it out, you will be,doing both the Post and yourself a favor
by indicating just what it is you want out of your paper.
We will then try to improve the Post in the ways you have suggested,
if at all possible.
Behind the scenes
by Keith Roulston Spring is nature's revenge
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 1980
MUSK LI
ONTAJIKI
The snowdrifts shrink to nothing: The
soggy groUnd begins to firm. The sun
shows off its new strength. Age old
mysteries reveal themselves again.
In a world increasingly controlled by
man, where scientists vie with engineers to
see who can manipulate nature the most,
spring brings the revenge of nature. There
are so many ancient rituals repeated each
spring that scientists with their computers
and slide rules and test tubes have not
been able to explain.
From the warm blue southern sky a
raucoust sound approaches. At first the
specks are so tiny they could be a swarm of
bees. But the specks grow larger and the
honking grows louder until finally one of
nature's most magnificent sights, a flock Of
Canada geese winging northward, can be
seen clearly in the bright spring sun. How
do they know it's time to head north? How
did they come on the energy saving
V-fOrmation that is their trademark? What
secret instinct leads them to seek out the
same flight path year after year? What
secret power leads them back to the area of
their birth after a flight of thousands of
mi
In
les?
the barnyard ducks and geese are
heeding ancient instincts, sitting on
clutches of eggs. The duck eggs crack
under the beating of the fragile ; body
inside and the slimy little creature tumbles
out exhausted. In a few minutes though the
less-than-elegant youngster has become
one of nature's prettiest gifts: a fluffy,
curious duckling. His mother gives him a
few sweeps with her beak and the
impression stays forever. A bond is formed
with that contact, a bond that makes the
duckling always know his mother from all
the other mother ducks in the barnyard.
Scientists have been able to trick baby
ducklings. They have performed this
bonding with hens, with old rags, even
with men, but they haven't been able to
explain it.
There are ancient stirrings in man too.. In
the countryside you can see the farmers
hauling out their machinery, tinkering with
it for hours on end. You can see them
walking the land, testing it daily to see if it
is drying, even though they know it can't
possibly be dry enough to work yet.
But the moving inside the farmer is not
just a practical thing of being ready for his
work like a good carpenter laying out his
tools. The urge is universal. In any small
town or city suburb you can see
homeowners working in the warmth of the
sans doing anything to get them close to
the land. Even apartment dwellers begin
looking at planting boxes for their
balconies where they can plant even a few
seeds and get vegetables or flowers.
Totally domesticated city-dwellers find the
lure of a seed rack in a supermarket too
much to pass by. Garden and landscaping
shops in city suburbs are so'busy they need
extra parking spots.
The urge to claim a piece of land, to
cultivate the earth, to plant the seed and
tend the crop and reap the harvest is one of
those old, inexplicable urges of nature.
That drive is so strong that it can't be
denied. It led people to climb into leaky
ships to spend weeks on stormy seas amid
disease as they sought a new world where
they could at last own a piece of land of
their own. The drive kept them going as
they fought to tame the forest, to clear the
land and build a home.
It has led men to r isk their lives in other
ways as well. Karl Marx predicted his
world-wide Communist revolution would
come from the workers in the factories
rebelling against the factory owners. Bti. ,t
in nearly all cases where the revolution has
taken place the rebels have come not from
the factories but from the fields, from the
ranks of desperate men wanting a little bit
of land to call their own, to love and work.
With. The revolutions have come mostly in
countries where land ownership has been
concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy
individuals,
cientists and politicians and sociolo-
gists and busineSsineti understand this
urge of man for the land no more than they •
understand what makes the Canada goose
travel the same flightpaths year after year.
Today we have people saying. that
Canadians will have to learn' that not
everyone can expect to own a home and a
bit of property. The system. can't change to
fit the people so the people must change to
fit the system. People must learn to live in
apartments &"tacked like cages in a ..hen
house for 30 stories in the air. They must
foresake the dream that brought their
ancestors to this country in the first place,
the dream of being not just tenants biLt
owners.
But history shows that people will not
change to fit the System. The system will
eventually be changed to fit the people,
whether the leaders who try to control the
system like it or not. People must have
some control in their lives. But today we
have the majority of people working for
someone else and we are told they niust
also get used to living in someone else's
house. The ancient urge to be near the land
to have a little piece to call out own, where
we can be the boss is too strong to make
people live with a System where they
control nothing. If we don't change the ,
system to meet the needs of the people
then in Some future spring when the urge
to be on the land rises from deep within the
people again, there may be another -kind of
uprisjng. '
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