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The Brussels Post, 1980-11-05, Page 2itIff gAilV WO i5P0,01 rpt 'Itt d4 1:11ittli Brussels WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1980 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.. Published each Wednesday afternoon, at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Pros, Publishers Limited Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian. Community Newspaper Association and Ontario. Weekly Newspaper Msociation f.ef 1 -....ca wa.— '11SPApif1,.‘ Short Shots Have you forgotten yet? Look down and swear. by Evelyn Kennedy —Siegfried Sasson— * * , As we honor the memory of our loved ones foreign think nloatndof ortheumndebrenaenathocetahne, sso wil, of s Remember them when they are young, full of life and laughter. They would not want our tears but for us to recall, the happy years when they were here and life was good. ****** The cadets will be selling poppies (the flower of Remembrance) in Brussels, Walton and Ethel on November 8th. After the service at the Cenataph on November 11th the church service will be held this year in Brussels St. Ambrose Church. *4*** ,Ghost, goblins and other strange charact- ers were abroad on. Hallowe'en on their "Trick or Treat" calls. The scary characters calling at my door were not as' numerous as in the past. Those whoa did call were exceedingly polite. Not one greedy, grabby hand dipped into the offered bowl of goodies. The pranksters left their ,nsual. calling cards on the .windows of main street stores. Unfortunately there were some persons who carried their pranks much too far. There were reports that several tires on cars and trucks were slashed. Such vandal- ism is vicious and costly to the owners. ****** Congratulations to Doug. Cousins. He was the winner of the 1981 season's roller skating pass, valued at $100 at the Howick Community Centre. ****** It is hard to believe that a Premier of one of Canada's provinces could behave as he vowed he will. Premier Lougheed of Alberta has stated he will cut out production by 15 per cent over nine months. This is his. response to the Federal Budget in regard to oil pricing. It means that he is' bent on inflicting his outrageous anger on the people of other provinces by imposing on them economic penalties. It looks like an attempt to bend Ottawa to his will. Better invest in some red flannels and prepare to shiver through the winter. By the slain of war. • YOu'll never forget. Remember, please Next Tuesday is Remembrance Day--a sad time for some as they remember the relatives they lost in the war. Some people who had no involvement in the wars might sometimes wonder if there is any point to having a day of remembrance anymore. But as one of the young people at Brussels Public Schools° .succinctly put it, "They went to war for us so the least we can do is have a day for them." On November 11, take a little thought for those who went to war to fight for our freedom and wear a poppy to show you're grateful for the sacrifices •that were made. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley re 14/41tT ,t1 Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston An example for us It's Canada's best Do you like Autumn? I do. For' me, it's the epitome of all that's best in Canada. You can have your spring, glorious spring, with its drizzles and its mud'and its chilling winds. You can have your summer, with its particular pests - tourists, bugs, visitors. And you can most definitely have winter in its every possible aspect. Just give me about six months of that September October weather, and you couldn't drag me out of this country to the island of Bali. I know that, according to the rhythm of nature, fall is supposed to be a time of dying, of melancholy, of shrivelling on the vine, or preparing for the deep, dead of winter. Maybe Canadians are just contrary, but they don't react in the way they're supposed to at all, in the fall. Instead of carefull preparing for winter, drawing in their horns, and going around with long faces, they bust out.all over as soon as that first nip is felt in the morning air. Perhaps they're just fooling themselves, but Canadians act as though they love the fall. They come tc lite. They bustle. They form committees, make plans, have parties They even start going to church. Perhaps., it's just a last hysterical fling, a frantic escape from reality, with the grim prospect of six months' winter 'ahead, but they certainly burn with a clear, gem-like flame while it lasts. Where is the sober house-holder who should be chinking up the nooks and crannies, putting on the storm windows, getting in his fuel supply, and battening down all the hatches for the bitter voyage that looms ahead? I'll tell you where he is, on his day off. He's standing in ice water up to his nipples, trying to catch' a rainbow trout. Or out on the golf course, so bundled with sweaters he can hardly swing. Or he's sitting with a noggin, watching the football game on television. That's where he is, And where's the guide-wife, who should be knitting. Woollen 'socks, putting down, preserves and canned meat ; airing the flannelette sheets, patching the family's long underwear, and quilting a quilt? I'll tell yoti where' she is. She's on the phone, talking about what she's going to wear to the tea. Or she's off in the car to attend a wedding. Or she's out playing bingo. Or she's taking in an auction sale. Or she's sitting around with her feet• up, watching the afternoon movie. That's where she is. It must shake our pioneer ancestors rigid to look down, or up, from their present abode, and see us preparing for winter. About this time of year, grandfather was killing a beef, shooting a deer, salting down a hog, making apple cider, stacking vast piles of firewood and hustling his wheat to the mill. • It must rot his celestial socks to look down and see his grandson hunting deer for a holiday, buying his pig pre-cooked at the meat counter, and laying in his fuel supply by picking up the phone and calling the oil dealer. And what about Granny? In her day, fall was the time when you worked like a beaver, making sausage, spinning wool , putting eggs away in waterglass, filling the root cellar, making candles and soap. She must.do a little-quiet 'cussing tin the shadow of her halo, when he sees her granddaughter facing up to the rigors of winter: racked by the dreadful indecision of whether to buy a home freezer or a fur coat; torn by the dilemma of whether to have the cleaning woman come once or twice a'week. But, of course, that's looking at only one side of the situation. Granddaddy didn't have to worry about antifreeze; atom bombs, income tax or payments on the car. He didn't need suppositories, diets and a new tail-pipe every time he turned around. And Granny didn't have to cope with a kitchen full of machinery, kids who we. re smarter than she was, and the late movie. She didn't need sleeping pills, cigarettes or psychology. Say, come to think of it those WERE the good old days. They didn't have much, but what they had was their own, not the finance company's. No auto accidents, no alcoholics anonymous, no aspirin. Let's stop worrying about the hardships of our pioneer ancestors and get back to sweating over our own neurotic chaos. Amid the controversy over constitutional changes, the anger over energy pricing and the bickering over budgets there was a local story the last couple of weeks that I imagine few people gave that much heed to. It was the story of one local man who had been rewarded fora lonely fight he has undertaken that just may be more important than all the energy talks, all the con- stitutional changes, all the budget blather. Norman Alexander of Londesboro was given ,an award by the Huron County Federation of Agriculture for his contribution to agri- culture. How, you may ask, can the contributions of one Huron county man be as important as the happenings in the capitals of the nation? Well you don't eat constitutions. You can worry all you, want about having enough *gasoline to drive your car but if you don't have enough food to keep you alive it won't matter whether you have free gasoline. They have yet to find a way to turn petroleum into food. Norman Alexander has been working to make sure that generations from now we will still have food, despite trends begun by many farming "experts" that might have meant a few years down the road we would have been hard put to grow enough food in this country to feed ourselves. Mr. Alexander, 'a farmer and seed merchant, took up a new cause when he retired a few years back. He became concerned about what we were doing with the soil of our land. Few people in this day ofindustrialization and urbanization seem to realize that our very life depends on about six inches of precious top soil'. Dirt is not soil. Whole areas of the world have plenty of dirt but no soil. Peel off the top few inches of soil and you're left with dirt that won't grow anything but weeds. But what Norman Alexander saw as he carried out his part time job as drainage commissioner for his township was a lot of precious topsoil being washed away in the spring rains, washed down drains and creeks to Lake Huron. What he saw as he enjoyed his hobby of flying was the topsoil blowing on the harsh winter and spring winds; and the deepening gullies along the lakeshores where erosion eat away at the shoreline. Farmland on the move, he called it. He took his concerns to government agencies; he got the fast shuffle. Nobody seemed to want to take responsibility for the fact we were throwing away our future, our birthright Economic realities and changing technology had led Ontario farmers to new farming pracices. The government had given farmers grants to take out fencerows because it would make larger fields 'meaning larger implements could be used, meaning more "efficiency". It meant the wind and the rain were more efficient too at tearing away the top soil because there were no fencerows to stop them. Trees began disappearing ,too, not only because of diseases like Out ch elm disease but because if was hard to work around trees with wide farm equpment. Farmers bulldozed down bush and drained swamps to try to get the most return from their expensive farmland. Cashcropping became a way of life. No longer could you afford to pasture cattle on expensive land so sodded fields were replaced with more and more corn and grain and beans and other field crops that made money but didn't have permanent root systems to hold the land in place. It would seem like an impossible task for an individual to undertake. Mr. Alexander was faced both with official indifference and the hard economics of trying to stay solvent on the farm. He personally had nothing' to gain from it all. He wasn't going to get any financial reward. Just the opposite, he spent thousands of hours and dollars in travelling, researching, building , a model ,to' show, people how things should and shouldn't be done. And against all odds he, and a handful of others in this country, has made a difference. There is a new awareness that we must change our ways to protect the soil. I've seen the change in the reaction of Huron County farmers to the whole question since Mr. Alexander first began to preach his gospel of conservation five or six years ago. The change isn't completes heaven knows, but the influence is showing. Farmers are aware that they not only have to worry about making a living today, but having soil left for their grandchildren to make a living two generations from now. We all benefit from the work of Norman Alexander. This country way built from the soil and although few seem to realize it any more still owes its prosperity to the soil, that precious few inches of topsoil Norman Alexander has been fighting to preserve. But more than even that, it is the example that Norman Alexander sets, and the examples of others like him, that we need. We need to see the individuals can still stand up and fight for what they know is right and that, if they can't win huge vicotries, at least they can Make changes. Thank you Norman.