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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-09-24, Page 2The country* suffers While premiers at the Constitutional talks argue about their misplaced power to the point of making Canada an extinct species, the country suffers. Just when Ken Taylor and Terry Fox have brought honour to this country at a. time when it was sorely needed, Canada's power-hungry premiers are threatening to destroy that with their own greed. Are these premiers acting according to the wishes of their people or merely acting on their own without advice or consent? When these men argue over each separate, entity of the Constitution, we don't yet have, they threaten Canada's very existence. Are we like. other countries before us, about to become split-apart and -fighting various factions because ten premiers and the Prime Minister couldn't agree? Lately, Canada has gained a lot of respect from other nations around the world. Are we to have that quashed merely because the people we elected to represent us no longer care what people think as long as they themselves maintain power? It isn't fair to Canadians. It isn't fair to the country. What's going to 'happen to Canada now? WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 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 russe Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Criticism of others Is always easy until the shoe is on the other foot. Apparently some of the local spectators at a Brussels Bombers ball game On Sunday night found a number Of 1 faults with the players, criticizing not only their plays, but alio making insulting comments about some of the players as well. Such criticisms might have been expected (but still unjust) if it had been the epPosition team they were yelling at, but it was the home team to which they were directing their disparaging remarks. Every ball team can be expected to have a bad night at some time and those are' the times when fans are most, needed4or encouragement, not discouragement. It's easy to get depressed when everything, is going wrong and it, doesn't help to have people who aren't even playing; yelling and _pointing out mistakes to the team. They're aware of the errors they've made and feel bad enough .without. having people rub it in. The fact that the Brussels Bombers team made it to the finals speaks h ighly` of the expertise of the piayers and of their coach. What the Bombers needed was some of those encouraging remarks usually directed at home team players by their fans. At least knowing they had some support out in the crowd could have rallied their spirits. Ball teams. and hockey teams should be commended for the entertainment they bring to the village. 'Get out and show them you're with them, not against them. Let's remember, the few Behind the scenes by Keith Rouiston It is not a good time to run your own business. Hard economic times are here and the number of bankruptcies is increasing. The economic wheel of fortune is turning once more and when it comes around there will be fewer independent businessmen and more employees. We are becoming a nation of employees. The grandsons and daughters of the people who came to this country seeking the freedom to be their own bosses are more and more just employees of big business or government. It's a process that has been going on at least since the Depression years. Survival of the fittest, some call it. Times get tough and the big companies have the biggest ability to survive so while the little guy goes under, the big company sits tight and when the bad times are over it is richer than ever. We've seen it all recently. While hard economic realities are driving many out of business we've seen a few big businesses increasing their economic power. We've seen Lord thompson increase his control on the Canadian economy by taking over more newspapers, killing off any that didn't meet his idea of proper profits. He's taken over stores. Yet while there is money for this growing bigger on the part of some companies, many employees are paying the price for this concentration of ownership. Unemployment lines are growing. It's .interesting that while the tough businessmen are all in favour of survival of the fittest when they're on the winning side, the belief can quickly disappear when the going gets tough for them. Conrad Black of the mighty Argus Corporation may decry government interference most of the time, but when his Massey-Ferguson is in trouble he's quick to ask the government for help. Chrysler Corporation may claim the govern- ment shouldn't be ordering so many safety and environmental regulations but demands government help to stave off bankruptcy. And because the company is so huge and the repercussions of its going under would be so fax teaching, the government complies. The long arm of big business is reaching today even into small towns. Where once towns were proud of having their businesses 9wned by local people, today chain operations from supermarkets to shoe stores. are decimating the local business` communities of many towns. And the people are welcoming them because they somehow" believe that they are going to be better off being served by some huge, city-based corporation than by their own neighbours. And so once-proud independent business- men become employees. This shouldn't be made sound like a conspiracy of course. Many people prefer to be employees, prefer not to face the risks and vagaries of business .life but to have a nice nine-to-five job with a guaranteed pay cheque. They are happy to work for big business or the government. Just as happy to see the trend are the unions, because unions have only employees as members. The more employees, the more members of the unions, the more power to union leaders. In most cases union leaders aren't even too worried about the concentration of business power in fewer and fewer hands because over the years unions and these big employers have come to a mutally agreeable working arrangement. They may fight each other from time to time but both recognize the existence of the other and they're no longer bitter enemies. And why shouldn't people by happy. The living standard in Canada today, despite people's cries of hard times, is higher than ever before. People have more leisure time and more money to enjoy that time off. There is more international travel than ever before. People are going out on the town more, eating as much as one meal in every two in a restaurant, while at home they have more luxuries to make life easier than grandmother could have dreamed of. Yet I can't help feeling that we're heading for a fall with this trend. Karl Marx when he envisioned his wolrd revolution turn each country into a .Communist state saw it as a revolt of employees against the men who controlled them. Of course things have changed a lot since Marx had his vision. Employees aren't so exploited today as they once were, what with the standard of living so high. Yet people must get more than money from their- work to be happy. Some people have always been quite willing to be employees . but there is a streak of independence in many that will mean they are always unhappy as long as they cannot 00 ntrol their own destinies no matter how well rewarded they are financially. And of course in hard economic times when the Conrad Blacks of the world protect their money instead of people's jobs, the discontent will be higher. Then too we are building the very class sytem in Canada that our forefathers came here to escape. We are building a controlling class of the super rich and a majority of ordinary people. I can't help feeling that somewhere up there (Or down there depending on your view) Karl Marx is smiling. It's the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Britain; and there are air force reunions in Toronto and Winnipeg, to name only two. Bald-headed, bifocalled, pot-bellied old guy-S, who were once lithe and lean and sexy and with 10-20 vision, will foregather and have a few drinks, and embellish the old days with fantastic embrdidery until their •wives drag them off to bed. After the, Friday and Saturday night hilarities, they will totter out of bed, don their blue blazers and berets and march rather shakily, all ribbons on display, to a cenotaph or something, and quietly snatch forty winks while an ancient padre intones some paraphrases of Winston Chruchill, like, "How could so few show up today when so many were talking last night about how many owed so much to so few. . ." or something like that. - . Ninety-seven per cent of then.' 'were. not in the Battle of Britain, 'which was fought in August and September of 1940, bUt they were old airmen, or "ancient combatants,' as it says on my measly pension cheque, and a good excuse for one last fling before they are put out to pasture. Bless them all. I i light even turn up myself, if only to compare whiteness of hair (or none at all), waistlines, and "partial plates," a eup- hemism for false teeth. Despite all thi.. and despite the fact that the Battle of Britain means no more to today's young people than the Battle' of Thermopylae, it was a major turning point in World War II. How about a little review? The Battle of France was over. The French had been soundly licked. The British had too, but declared it a "victory" when they managed to scramble about 300,00'0 bodies out of the Dunkerque trap. Germany ruled almost all of Europe, and was poised to attack Britain, with vastly superior forces. Hitler danced a gavotte in a railway car where Germany gave up in 1918. ,- Churchill came up with one of those great orotund orations, with a little help from. Shakespeare, his speech writers, but delivered with that raspy half-lisp that became so familiar that it raised the daunted to the point of dauntlessness. In June, 1940, he ended a great rallying-cry with, "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear - ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour '." Jolly good speech, though there's not much left of the British Empire, and the Commonwealth is: pretty dicey. Fact is, the British did brace themselves; when fat Hermann Goering threw all his toys at them, first by day, then by night. Vastly out-numberpd, out-gunned, less experienced, "the few" who constituted the RAF fighter force savaged the German Luftwaffe so severely that .the invasion of Britain was first postponed, and eventually never occurred.? It was purely a defensive action, but by the time it ended, the RAF was 'in very shaky condition. The actual "Battle" commenced July 1, 1940 and ended October 31st, 1940. More than 500 pilots of the RAF were killed during that time period. Twenty of .them were Canadians. One was from the 'U.S. The Poles lost 30 out of 147 pilots. Of the Australians, 63 per cent were killed. South Africa lost 41 per cent. France lost none. Just over 3,000 aircrew were engaged in fighter command operations during that period. Just over 2,500 survived. What happened to them?' Before the war was over, almost 1,300 of the survivors were killed in action. Add it up. More than fifty per cent of "the fey'?" were killed, and this does not take into the account the many who were wounded and sent to secondary duties, or honorably discharged, or posted to. training positions. Those who didn't survive were blown to pieces, drowned, burnt to death, or taken prisoner. During the B. of B., these young fellows' lives consisted of eating, sleeping, flying, drinking and sweating. Most of them, knew that however many medals they acquired, . or how quickly they rose in rank, their number was written on the slate. They were a gallant lot. I wish I'd been one of them, but I'm also glad I'm alive. But I was just one of the young fellows who finally decided the war was getting serious and we should join up. I trained on both the Hurricane and the Spitfire, the two aircraft that tore the guts out of the Luftwaffe, but eventually wound up flying Typhoons, and hanging around for endless months waiting for the' invasion of the continent. It's ironic and sad that, 40 years after this battle, which saved the western world from at least decades of darkness under an amoral mutt and his pals, that Germany is one of the richest countries in Europe, the British Empire has virtually vanished,, and the Canadian dollar, after we contributed more than 70,000 aircrew to the struggle, is worth 47 cents. But that's nothing. Lei's give a thought. to "the few," those great young guys who went "once more into the breach, dear friends," when the rest of us were whining about gas rationing and only one quart of booze a month.