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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-02-04, Page 2'Jox 50, Brussels, Ontario Established 1872 519-887-6641 NOG 1 HO Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited IAN.DCOMM uNir Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher 4b cs's 01A Evelyn Kennedy, Editor Pat Langlois, Advertising A '. S ASS C‘P Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation: Subscription rates: Canada $12 a year (in advance) outside Canada $25 a year (in advance) Single copies - 30 cents each EST, 1872 4Brussels Post BRUSSE LS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1981 Our own champs Brussels has raised a few champions in its time, especially where winter sports are concerned. Now Kevin and Carol Wheeler of Brussels are showing us'some more of that champion hometown stock. Kevin and his partner Christine Hough of Kitchener earned a standing ovation from the crowd when they competed at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships held in Halifax last week and managed to place fourth in the novice pairs class. Carol Wheeler and her partner Michael Koshilka also did well, placing ninth in the Junior division which is quite an accomplishment considering they have only skated together since September 1980. These young people deserve a lot of praise for having the determination to stick to something like figure skating which takes hours of practice and hard work. Obviously in this case it paying off, and for Kevin and Carol and their partners as well as other local figure skaters we wish continued success. Short Shots by Evelyn Kennedy tk vloa, R . 10., aR~14:,, "Pritl "• r,„4, ***** A4A!MOAM+Ay,40,, Continued from page 1 be a Polar Dip, Thundermug races, log sawing, tug of war, Free- skating and races and the Lions Dance. Sunday will feature a Snowmobile Poker Rally and Cross Country Skiing — Emil for everyone. Plan to participate or be a spectator. * * * * * * Some naughty Spanish soldiers who used the picture of a nude woman as a target got themselves into trouble with the ladies of their country. They considered using such a target was a nasty slur on women. It certainly was no tribute to them but I wonder how much more accurate their shooting twcame after using that target rather than the more conventional kind. Can you imagine what it would do to the score of dart players if they used such a target. —Tut! Tut! Boy, she's Been some mother of a winter this time around, in these places. Six feet of snow before Christmas, three or four feet since, and temperatures that would freeze the brains of a brass money. A constant struggle with snow in the driveway, snow on the sidewalk, snow piling deep on the roof and turning into icicles like tree-trunks, and, worst of all, snow coming in over the tops of your boots and turning your feet into something like submarines around Iceland. Typical day this week. A guy was coining at 8 a.m. to whack the ice.off my roof. That usually costs about fifty bucks, plus the shingles he removes with the ice. I asked him if he had some battery booster cables, as I knew my car wouldn't start in the morning. I'd tried it the day before. He had cables. Goody. Two birds with one, stone. Next morning, I waited until twenty to nine.-He didn't show. It was below 24, and I mean Fahrenheit. Tried the car while I was waiting. Not even a grunt. Knew there wasn't a hope of getting a cab in that weather. Called the garage and whimpered for help. "Sure, Bill. Maybe in about two hours. There are forty thousand cars non-starting, all over the county." I abandoned hope, like all who enter this country in this kind of weather, and phoned a neighbor, blatantly, and without shame, asking for a ride to work. He played Good Samaritan, and I made it to the job with about forty seconds to spare. I'm not that conscientious, but dammit, I can get just as stubborn as Old Man Winter. Immediately phoned the garage and told them not to send help until later in the day, when I'd be home to flood the carburetor, reverse when I was supposed to put her in drive, get stuck in the snow-bank just after the tow truck had left, and all the other things people do that drive mechanics crazy. Fine. My wife was in bed, ill, and I'd told her not to worry about the iceman coming or the thunderous crashes as the icicles came down like Douglas firs. Just twenty minutes after I'd got to work, the iceman cameth, rang the doorbell, and kept her standing in the frigid air in her dressing-gown while he discussed a price for the job. It seemed his 'car would not start either, thus his late appearance. She thought I'd arranged a price for the job. Finally, in exhaustion, desperation, and danger of losing some toes from frostbite, she told him to go ahead with the job, at the price (fairly exhorbitant) that he suggested. He said he'd be back in a few minutes. She thought he'd gone to his truck for extension ladder, axe, and other implements for knocking off shingles, as well as ice. We haven't seen him since. She tottered back to bed, and was barely warming up, when the doorbell rang again. Once more into the breach, bless her indomitable spirit and her rage at me about the iceman. Th :is time it was a nice young fellow from ,the garage, with the tow truck. There had been a breakdown in commun- ication, and he hadn't received the word to come later in the day, when I was home to flood the engine etc. All he wanted was some keys for the car, and instructions on whether to just get the dang thing running, or to tow it away for a check-up. I had the keys at work. Another doorway encounter, with the temperature 'way below zero, her feet turning blue, and her near-pneumonia on the verge of turning into double-pneumonia. The only thing that kept her going was the increasing heat of her fury at me for not organizing anything except two young men who were forcing her to make decisions when she had scarcely enough strength to decide whether to go to the bathroom or just curl up and die. Again, she rose to the occasion, found another set of keys and told him to do whatever he wanted, though she felt like adding a few other suggestions. Naturally, he towed it away. Know what they rap you for a towing charge these days? I can't bear to mention the figure. By this time, in her weakened condition, she couldn't even go back to bed, she was so passionately angry with her slob of a husband. She called me at work, tracked me down, and gave me a piece of her mind. It was a fair-sized chunk, about half a glacier, I'd say, not hearing a word of my explanation of how clever I had been in my morning arrangements, against impossible odds. It ended in one of us hanging up. Me. And instructing the girls in the office not to accept any more calls for me that day. It all blew over, of course. After work, I picked up the car, and when I got home, she had several errands for me to do, out in the blizzard. My whole and only point in this essay, or true story, is that a good, old-fashioned Canadian winter can not only break you physically, economically, 'spiritually, and emotionally, but even maritally. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Our winter can break you The comfortable liberal minority Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Faced with the obvious dangers of simple majority rule, we in Canada have for years now been concerned with the rights of 'minorities. Sometimes, it seems, we've got minorities so much on our brain they become more important than majorities. Majority_ rule can, of course, lead to many evils. Prime example of hardship brought by the will of the majority are seen in what happened in Germany with Jews and what happened in the U.S. where the white majority conspired for many years to keep blacks as close to slavery as they could. This interest in minorities especially by the educated middle class liberal elements of our society, (exemplified by the media, the arts and the academics) has often tended to have a reverse double standard. Somehow the minority becomes more important that the majority. This can be evidenced in as harmless an area as music. That thought came to me on 'the weekend as I was reading an article in a magazine about a Canadian composer and performer who had struck it rich with a pop song. Now if this composer had written a rock piece or an opera that had, been so internationally popular he would have been hailed by the Canadian intelligensia as a hero. But this poor fool decided to write something generally referred to as "middle of the road" music and thus his hit song was referred to as "a harmless little tune" and the whole article Was full condescension from our writer who wanted everyone to know that he wasn't one of those no-taste, "over 30 females" who made this composer a big success. The composer, aware of this view of his kind of people, spent the whole article alternately defending and almost apologis- ing for his work. The same can be seen in just about any area you want to look at. Canadian., playwright Bernard Slade is a huge inter- national hit so he is a hack, while some barely known writer who writes plays only_ other writers, actors and drama professors understand, is a giant in Canadian literature. Th the same magazine there was an article about a Canadian actress .who is now an international movie star. She recalled her girlhood where she was a bit of a rebel and the wild kid at a very civilized private school. She, of course, being in the minority, was the real person, the other girls were' the phonies. This 'view of life fills nearly all aspects of life for, the educated middle class sophistica- ted liberal. All intelligent people like themselves, for instance, are either atheist or agnostic. The square majority which may not go to church as much as it once did but still believes in God is somehow silly little people not worth considering. Yet, this view changes when it comes to other cultures. It is somehow noble for the Canadian Indian, for instance, to believe in his ancient gods and ritual dances, These are not to be ridiculed by right-thinking people. Nor are the ancient religions of the Chinese, the Japanese or the Africans. Even Roman Catholicism is somehow noble if it is among the people of Poland fighting against oppression, even though it's a joke here in North America. An Eskimo who wants to pursue his lifestyle of hunting to make a meager livin, g is to be defended by these right thinkers from the horrible, money-grubbing souther- ners: Even a Newfoundland outporter is respected for clubbing seals for their pelts because it is part of the ancient lifestyle of the outports (although here there may be a certain division among right-thinkers.) But Of course the southern Canadian who goes out to shoot a moose or a wolf or a rabbit, he's something else again. He's little better than a ,mtirderet There is something noble about the African Or Asian peasant who works his tiny plot of land. The same can't be said, of course, for the North American who works his plot of land (unless it's a roof garden in his downtown condominum). Ah there may be something quaint about farming for a living but it's something only the uneducated would do. Fads are one of the most insidious elements of our culture. We have fads for clothing, fads for games, fads for places to eat and places not to eat. The, educated commonly like to make fun of the fadists yet they too have their fads. We had it in the sixties when the educated young generation rebelled against all their parents were doing. They wanted to break away from the fashion fads, for instance, so they all started wearing blue jeans and sweatshirts and promptly started a fashion craze that is making people millionaires two decades later. Everybody rebelled fo the point they were all back in a mposition but they had the comfort- ablea they were in the minority. ° ri feeling.ty That's how it is today among the well-educated, middle-class liberal groups. They have created their own majority within their minority. None of them Would have the courage to say they went to church on Sunday or that they liked that "harmless little tune." They're rebelling against ecovmerfrtyoboabdyle majority. eise by creating their own So hang in there dull, middle-of-the-road, churchgoing Canadians. They may be looking down on'you but those guys are just as hypocritical as the test of Os.