HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-07-30, Page 2rimaii—opw
WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 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,
Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year.
Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each.
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BLUE
RIBBON
AIARD
1979
The old Brussels Continuation School
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Sugar and spice
By Bill Smiley
How can we
celebrate the beaver and the flag.
While the rest of you were winging
, mum_ ..ne country, smashing up and down
the highways, belting about in a boat, or
whining because you hadn't got the
Monday off instead of the Tuesday, I, like a
good citizen, stayed home and had sober
thoughts on Dominion Day, Canada Day,
or—the Firsts July, as we called it when I
was a kid, I even put them down on paper.
It's difficult to write something succinct,
sincere, and sentimental when you have a
lump in your eyes and tears in your throat.
But I tried.
Like most moribund Canadians, I -didn't
run into the back yard and run the
whatever-it-is up the flagpole. We don't
have a flagpole. The nearest we come is a
cedar post that holds one end of the,
clothes-line, the other end of which is
attached to a cedar tree.
Nor did I' set off any fireworks. We have
those practically every day around our
house, and they don't cost a penny.
What I did was slump before the slob
machine and listen to a flood of flatulence
from a posse of politicians who doggedly
dragged out every old chestnut that had
already been opened and exposed as
wormy.
Not only hope but anticipation of the
future/My anticipations are a huge heating
bill, higher taxes and worse arthritis. Our
immense size. The Incredible Hulk? Our
vast riches. Mostly owned by foreign
companies. Our confidence in the future.
Of the Canadian dollar? Our unity in
by Keith Roulston
The dog days of summer they call it. It's
the time when the people in the news
business tear their hair out when they look
at a front page to be filled with interesting
news or a 15 minute air time to be filled on
television.
There are days of the year when it's hard
to decide just which of many news items
should get top billing in the paper or on the
radio or television news spots, but those
times aren't in mid summer. The problem
this time of the years is that whether the
news is happening or not the newspapers
must still publish and the every-hour-on-
the-hour newscasts still get beamed out
through the air. If nothing important is
happening then something must be found
to fill the space and time. The media
cannot have a vac until. Unlike the
entertainment side of the television that
goes into reruns for the summer the news
business can do reruns. It has to have fresh
material and if it can't find something that
deserves page one treatment, then
something normally scheduled for page 10
will have to be elevated to the top spot and
treated just like it was real news.
Most of us get smart in the summer. We
know there isn't much on during the
entertainment hours of a television evening
so we turn off the set and go to the garden
or the beach or a drive-in movie. But when
the news' hour comes around we still tune
in, determined to keep up with the world,
diversity. Albertans letting us freeze and
Quebecois letting us do it in the dark? And
so on and on and on.
It was so moving that 'I had to go to the
bathroom.- Especially when the• CBC types
involved in reporting the whole dump job
kept telling us that it was just peachy-
dandy that we now had an official national
anthem, 0 Canada.
When I heard this, I felt a real surge of
something. I can't describe it in a family
journal. What do they think the organ has
been playing at hockey games for years,
while the players slouched around at the
blue line, scratched their jocks, chewed
gum, and looked bored.
What do they think the kids in my
classroom have done every morning for the
past few years, just before the principal's
announcements that we - beat Hayfork
Centre yesterday in basketball, and that
'the Christian:Moslem Fellowship Group is
meeting at 4:05 beneath any cars left in the
parking lot, and then says, "Please rise for
our national anthem ." ?
I'll tell you what happens. A doleful
dirge which even the' kids know is 0
Canada comes over the P.A. system. We
all respond.
I stand like a guardsman, chin in, chest
out, 'ollow back, thumbs aligned with the
seams of my trousers. Encouraged by my
stance, the kids also eagerly respond to the
stirring tune and inspired lyrics that fill
them with pride, hope, confidence and
such.
even if in the summer the world is barely
turning.
Frankly, I think we'd be wise these days
if we-ignored the news side of things the
way. we do the entertainment. There are
some weird things happening these days
that we'd be better either not listening,to at
all, or taking with a large grain of salt.
One of the big news happening these
days of course is the Olympic games in
Moscow. We're boycotting the games of
course but that hasn't stopped our
newsmen from going there. We're getting
daily reports about how had things are.
The government organizers, we're told,
aren't allowing the ordinary people of the
Soviet Union to see things like the Olympic
flags being raised in place of national flags
by many countries as a protest against the
Ruisian invasion of Afghanistan. The
government is doing this and doing that all
in the name of propaganda.
I'm sure the Soviet government is
pushing as much propaganda as it can at
its own people and visitors during the
Olympics. But propaganda can come from
more than one side: Every time some' of our
sporting teams go to Moscow they come
back talking abput rooms being bugged
and poor living conditions and a hundred
other complaints. These remarks always
get played up in our media here in North
America as evidence of how horrible life is
One knocks her entire math set to the
floor, stoops to pick it up, and is aided by
classmates who kick calculator, set squares
and compass in all directions.
Another, lost in a world of his own, sits
silently until the 4th bar, then leaps to his
feet and begins to disco.
A third rises with the speed of an
anaconda emerging from a deep freeze,
leans on the window-sill and watches the
dog across the street doing his business.
A fourth is back down at her desk and
scratching obscenities on it before we hit
the second, "We, stand on guard . "
For. at least: a decade, our Olympic
athletes have stood, hand on heart,
listening to what they thought was our
national anthem. Tears have flowed freely
over that repetitive song, written about a
hundred years ago by a couple of guys
nobody ever heard of, but who weren't
Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Now, by an act of parliament, to which
all parties‘agreed, because it didn't involve
the building of a new post office, the '
paving of some highways, the funding of
some losing industry, or the' cutting down
of some trees to make' a new national
parking lot, we have an Official National
Anthem.
It figures. We don't move too fast in
Canada, but we move. It took us only 100
years to beget a national flag. It is a maple
leaf, a piece of foliage remarkable by its
absence in about 95 per cent of the country.
Our national emblem is the beaver, a
in the Communist world and how lucky Nye
are to live'in North America.
Well I'm happy to live in North America
and dislike the Soviet way of doing things
but I'm not too darned sure what to believe
when I read it anymore. I mean whenever
people travel in a foreign country they will
find things that are diffIrent than they ate
used to. It's easy to jump to conclusions,
especially when you aren't enamoured. of
the government of that country in the first
place. But how accurate 'are those con-
-elusions?
I'm afraid I don't put much stock in all
the talk coming from the media about the
Moscow games. I just keep thinking about
what drivel the Soviet people are being fed
about us in their media these days and
thinking, that if they can be getting a false
picture so may we.
Closer to home we have the American
political scene, one of the few really
newsworthy events ,happening in the dog
days of July. Soon the American people
will be having to make a choice on who will
lead the country in the next four years, a
choice that because of the power of the
U.S. in the world, will effect all of us
everywhere.
That choice should be made on fact but
what chance is there that it will be. For
people to make a wise decision they must
have all the necessary information. But in
large rat which specializes in cutting down
trees, building dams. , which flood farmers'
fields, and doing nothing whatever for
anybody except other beavers.
Don't get me' wrong. I'm not being
cynical. I think the beaver is a fine animal,
if yowlike fat rats. Some of my best friends
are beavers.
I love our flag, too.. Every time I see a •
Canadian flag that has been out; in the
weather for a week, something sweeps
thiough me—like a desire to mop up the
kitchen counter.
And I love that song. I must admit I had
a certain leaning toward the other old
one—the Maypull Lee, .that we all learned'
in public school. The second line goes: ,
"Fouremblumdeer." But it's long gone
and I doubt if there are many Canadians '-
,who would remember,- or dare, to sing,
"Wolfe, the dauntless hero came... "
What the heck. We can always depend
on our money. I just checked my wallet.
Sure enough, there was the Queen, looking
not a day over twenty. But what's this?
Horrors? On a ten dollar bill was John A.,
looking as though he'd never had anything
but a Canada Dry in his life. Even worse,
on a fiver was Sir Wilfrid. Laurier, looking
like Pierre Trudeau without been through
Margaret.
And the whole wallet would have bought
me a box of strawberries, a quart of rye,
and a gallon of maple syrup.
Oh Canada!
the U.S. at present there seems to be a lot
of opinion and very little information. The
media speculates. about Ronald Reagan's
age Can he last a term? How about his
past right-wing activities? How about his _
record in California when he was governor?
We get opinions everywhere the camera
turns, not real facts.
On the other side we see the ridiculous
side show of the investigation into the
activities of Billy Carter, the President's
idiot brother. We hear that people in the
Democratic party are thinking of a "dump
Carter" movement at the Democratic
convention. We hear people comparing the
incident with Watergate. You don't know
whether to laugh or cry.
In a democracy the media has one of the
most important roles. It must provide the
information the public needs to make the
right decisions. Just as we must have a
good education system to provide people
with the basic knowledge -they need to
function in democracy, we murst have a
good communication system to keep up•the
on going education of the populace.
Unfortunately, too often the communica-
tion. we get is distorted.
It's like looking in one of those fun-house
mirrors that makes tall thin people look
short and fat: it may be good for a laugh
but you wouldn't want to order a suit tosed
on the picture the mirror gives you.
Behind the scenes
The news througA a fun house mirror