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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-10-29, Page 2WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 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 Atsociation LOOKING FOR A GOOD HOME—The Brussels Post has acquired a newshound in the most literal sense. of the word.. This dog, astray, was apparently let out on -the street in Brussels to fend on its own. Dog or Pooch, As he is called, is very friendly and a quiet dog but he can't make his permanent home at the newspaper. If anybody, out there is looking for a good dog, please let us know. (Photo by Ranney) Be kind to animals The reporter at the Brussels Post recently found a stray dog on the main street of Brussels. Apparently someone brought it into town and dropped it off. It's a real shame that anyone could choose to treat an'aninial in this way. This particular dog was obviously somebody's pet at one time as it does the traditional dog tricks of sitting, shaking a paw, and loves,to go for car rides. If people have to move to a new area and find it impossible to take along their favourite family pet, they can try to get a home for it at the Humane Society. Even destroying it would be kinder than dropping it off just anywhere, where. death could be a slower and more painful process. Dogs in particular are more dependent upon people so it is especially cruel to leave them in the middle of nowhere to try and find food and shelter for themselves. If you have a family pet that you 'have to get rid of, find a more humane way of disposing of it. Childish pranks Hallowe'en pranks. Somebody has been having fun playing pre-Hallowe'en jokes in newspapers recently, advertising events that aren't happening and articles that aren't for sale. Pranksters may think these are great jokes to play but in reality they are quite cruel as the unsuspecting victim gets phone calls about an , advertisement he has never placed. It's hard for a newspaper to control such things especially if they're done by phone or paid in cash over the counter. Little do we know, if that person is who he or she claims to be. But we will be more cautious about accepting an advertisement that looks questionable. Playing a joke on a friend you know will see the funny side is one thing, but playing cruel jokes.on somebody you might hold a grudge against is hardly a fair way of dealing. It would be more courageous to go to same and air your difference with them than to do something cruel and childish. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston This is a time of year when my heart goes out to city-dwellers. It's a time when rural or small town. living is immensely superior to .that in the concrete canyons, the abominable apartments, the sad suburbs of metropolia. In the city, day ends drearily in the fall. There's the long, . wearying battle home through traffic, 'or the draughty, crushed, degrading scramble on_ public ttanspoita- tion. The city man arrives, home fit for nothing but slumping for the evening before the television set. And ,what greets him? The old lady, wound up like a steel spring because she hasn't seen a soul she knows all day; there's nothing to look at but that stupid house next door, exactly like their own, and the kids have been giving her hell. He's stuck with it. For the whole evening. That's why so many city chaps have workshops in the basement. It's much simpler .to go down cellar and whack off a couple of fingers in the power saw than listen to Mabel. Life is quite different for the small town male. He is home from work in minutes. He surveys the ranch, says, "Must get those storm windows on one of these days,"' and goes in, to the good fall smells of cold drinks and hot food. His wife saw him at breakfast, again at lunch, has had a good natter with the dame next door, and has been out for two hours, raking leaves with the kids. She doesn't need him. Instead of drifting off to the basement, the small town male announces that this is his bowling night, or he has to go to a meeting of the Conservation and Slaughter Club, and where's a clean shirt. And that's all there is to it. While her city -counterpart squats in front of TV, gnawing her nails and wondering why she didn't marry good old. George, who has a big diary farm now, the small town gal collects the kids and, goes out to burn. leaves. By Bill. Smiley There is nothing more romantic than the back streets of a small town in the dark of a fall evening. Piles of leaves spurt orange flame: White smoke eddies. Neighbours call out, lean on rakes. Women, kerchiefed like gypsies, heap the dry leaves high on the fire. Kids avoid the subject of bedtitite, dash about the fire lit& nimble gnonrtes. Or perhaps the whole family goes to a' fowl supper. What, in city living, can compare with this finest of rural functions?. A' crisp fall evening, a drive to the church hall through a Hallowe'en landscape, an appetite like an alligator, and that first wild whiff of turkey and dressing that makes your knees buckle and the juices flow- free in your cheeks. ,) But it's on weekends that my pity for the city-dweller runneth over. Not for him the shooting-match on a clear fall Saturday, with its good-humOred competition, its easy friendliness. Not for him the .quiet stroll down a sunny wood road,—shotgun over arm, partridge and woodcock rising like clouds of mosquitoes. It's not that he doesn't live right, or doesn't deserve these pleasures. It's just that it's physically impossible to get to them easily. If he wants to crouch in a duck-blind, at dawn, he has to drive half the night to get there. Maybe on a Sunday or Holiday, in the fall, the city family decides to head out and see some of that beautiful autumn foliage. They see it, after driving two hours. And with 50,000 other cars, they crawl home in late afternoon, bumper to bumper, the old man cursing, the kids getting hungrier, the mother growing owlier. Small town people can drive for 15 minutes and hit scenery, at least around here, that leaves them breathless. Or they'll wheel out a few miles to see their relatives on the farm, eat a magnificent dinner, and sit around watching TV in a state of delicious torpor. ,Yup. It's tough to live in the city, in the fall. Sugar and spice The writer of the letter to the editor seemed to sum up the confusion about the whole constitutional debate. She was disappointed, as were thousand of others in the province she said, that premier Davis chose to support Prime Minister Trudeau on constitutional reform. Her confusion showed when she said that the constitution shouldn't "be dominited by any one political party". Yet she was just complaining because a ,Conservative Premier had supported a Liberal Prime Minister. She then said a Trudeau was a dictator for his actions .in bringing home the constitution and said the constitution shou- id only b e ammended by a free vote . in the house and by a referendurn. Yet it's the referendum possibility that is the biggest sticking point in the opposition to the proposed constitutional changes. I think we're all pretty confused these days about our whole political system. It seems not only the constitution but the . . whole political jargon about democracy needs reworking.. How about the issue of citizen's rights. For years people in the media and politicians have been complaining that we need more guarantees of civil rights. The' American system of rights has ofter been held Up as an example we should emulate. Thelmain target of peole seeking guaran- tees of rights has often been the man who is now Prime Minister. He has been portrayed as a Machiavellian dictator scheming to take away everyone's indivi- dual rights. , So now when this same man wants to write individual rights into the constitution as the Americans haVe sud- denly many are saying it is a dangerous action. It's turning us into , a republic,, they say. It's taking our protection away from the legislators who we elect and putting it in the hands of judges over whom we have no control. WHERE ARE THEY NOW? So where were these people in the last decade when Others were arguing the needs to guarantee.' rights? And where are the civil rights people who argued the need for these changes now that the changes are being proposed? All the fuss about polls can be a bit bewildering too. Both the federal and provincial governments have been under lire over taking polls to see hoilipeeple feel about situations. Now one thing I can agree with the critics on is that governments should not be able to take public 'money to have polls taken then keep the results secret. That seems to be using our money to give the party in power an advantage over the opposition parties. But when people, the press in particular, complain about the growing dependence on polls by politicians I can't get worked up too much. It seems tome that the pollsters are just doing what good politicians have always done. Your local politician out kissing babies and shaking hands has always been conducting unofficial polls as hp strolls through crowds. It used to be called keeping his ear to the ground, or keeping in touch with the grass roots as a politician chatted to people and listened to their problems at the local fall fair or grand opening of this or that public building. Now what does the politician do with this information once he's got it from either his own research or some official poll? Well if he go es with public opinion and changes his policies he is often called wishy-washy and with out principles ready to do anything to get elected. If he ignores public opinion and sticks to his principles he is Often labelled arrogant for not listening to the wishes of the people. . DISCIPLINE And how about the matter of party discipline? I listened to a cabinet minister from another province the'other night talk about how in order to get a controversial bill through the legislature the party had to apply "the whip" to bring backbenchers into line. I asked myself, is this democra- cy? Just because you happen to belong to a political party do you have to throw away you own principles? Parties that have good discipline, like the Liberals in Ottawa (and the Tories in Ontario) are often ridiculed in the press as being machines, being not • quite hutnan. Yet' the parties that tend to have revolts in the ranks, where the back benchers refuse to bend their principles for the sake of the party (such as the federal Tories and the Provincial Liberals) are ridiculed the other way by the press for bring fractious and ineffective. This is democracy? And then there is the whole matter of referendums and the controversy that surrounds them. Now I'm the first to admit that pure democracy is not always best. When 'the majority can do whatever it ,wants we can often get bad government, in effect mob rule. But this paranoia politicians have about referendums seems a little strange to me. Referendums, to listen to many politicians are a danger to democracy. How horrible to actually let people make decisions. People, after all, don't really know enough to govern themselves. • So pardon the confusion about just What democracy is in Canada in 1980.