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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-03-04, Page 2Es 87,2 Bruss els Post BRUSSELS Box 50, Brussels, Ontario NOG 1H0 Established 1872 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO "every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited A Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor 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 by Keith Rouiston Let's have real information Behind the scenes WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 1981 Team photos and more teitmphotos Newspapers have to establish certain guidelines and policies, which don't always make them popular with the people of the community they serve. Some of these policies have to do with the taking of pliptographs. In-- previous years, the Post has had some problems in regard to how many pictures we can run in a year of one hockey team. Brussels hockey teams are good and there are many championships each hockey team can win, therefore making it possible that one team could have its picture in the paper quite often. It an effort to make more room for all our news, including sports, we' ask the support and co-operation of those involved with hockey. We're glad to photograph each hockey team once a season. At what point that picture gets taken is up to the hockey coaches. They can decide what the most important championship game is that their team will be playing in. Even if the team happens to lose that particular championship we will be glad to run a team picture, citing the awards the team won throCigh,out the season. We will of course continue to take pictures of the players in action at hockey tournaments when schedules permit. We can understand the disappointment of a team's fans and the team itself when the team wins and a team photo doesn't always appear. All the many Brussels hockey championships are news however, and we intend to -treat them as such. We'll be playing up the fact of a major team championship on the front page or with lots of emphasis on the sports page. Thanks for your understanding. The failure of the media to adequately explain Canadians in one part of Canada to Canadians in another has greatly con- tributed to the current mess we face in this country as was examined here last week. The media isn't doing a much better job in giving us the real information we need in the day-to-day battle of the consetitutional debate. The good and bad of the media is probably most handily wrapped up in one newspaper, the. Globe and Mail, the newspaper that calls itself "Canada's National Newspaper". The Globe is today more national than ever before because using space-age technology. the paper is instantly transmitted by satellite to the east and the west where it is produced on printing presses at nearly the same time it is being printed in Toronto. Where once the Globe was delivered by jet plane hours after it hit the streets in Torontol the paper is now available across the country at nearly the same time. There have been some who have cynically said that the new emphasis on winning readership in the booming oil capitals of Alberta is responsible for the current editorial hysteria against Pierre Trudeau, his constitutional policies, his oil policies and virtually everything about him including the rose in his lapel. There is probably real sincerity about the Globe's belief that Trudeau is wrecking the country but it is still hard to believe what is happening to the paper once know for its calm, reasoned approach to editorial writing. Virtually every day for montM the Globe has used its lead editorial to tear a strip off Trudeau and any one who dared to support him. There has been little cool reasoning to the attacks. They have often been little short of hate literature. Not content with that, the Globe bought space in the Times of London to tell the British what a scoundrel Trudeau was. Publisher Roy Megarry tripped over to England himself to get the British to save Canada from the Canadian Prime Minister. HYSTERIA But at the same time as this hysteria on the editorial page there has been a good deal of perspective shown in the news and opinion columns of the Globe. The Globe has been running an informative series of articles on the alienation of the West. This series has gone beyond just picking up the slogans of Peter Lougheed or the separatist leaders. It hasn't been afraid to say when the east has mistreated the west, but it has also been ready to say when the westerners were over-reacting or twisting the figures to make things look the way they want to. It was the Globe, for instance, that shot a few holes in Peter Lougheed's arguments that the federal oil policy is driving oil and gas exploration companies out of Canada, The Globe's reporter did what a good journalist should do, some homework. The result was an article that showed, often using quotes of a year ago from the very people who today blame Mark Lalonde's policy for all that's wrong in the country, industry experts who were predicting a year ago that rigs would have to move out of Canada, that there was already a surplus not only of natural gas, but of the equipment to find it. The same kind of departure now being blamed on the oil policy had been pre- dicted by industry sources to take place anyway. The same calm, well-researched approach has been used to examine Petro-Canada, that villain of the free-enterprise breed in the Calgary oil patch, on western transportation problems and other areas of western discontent. Meanwhile the Globe's. Quebec correspondent William Johnson has been delving beyond the generally accepted rhetoric of the Quebec nationalists TO show such things as the fact that French-speaking Quebeckers are no longer the hewers of wood and drawers of water that the government and its supporters would like to make out. They have caught up very quickly in income and other areas, of lifestyle since the quiet Revolution began. PERSPECTIVE We need this kind of service from the media. We need people who don't just wait to record the latest controversial statement from Ottawa or Edmonton or London England. We need people who don't accept something as a given truth just because some political side has said it often enough. We need searchers for the truth. We need people to give us perspective. We need to stop this ridiculous hate campaign that is building on all sides. The majority of people involved in the con- stitutional debate care a good deal for their country. You may choose sides on the issue. believing either more power should go to the provinces or more to the federal government, but you have no right to promote hate about people on the other side. Pierre Trudeau loves his country. So does Peter Lougheed. Both believe in democracy. in freedom of speech, religion and the other basic tenets of our country. Our media could serve us better not by echoing the voices of hate who would make this or that leader look like a devil, but by giving us real information. Canadian winter nothing to write home about Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Winter in this country is nothing to write home about. Especially if your home is California, or Texas, or Florida. We had a visitor this week from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He had never seen snow before. He couldn't believe how we survived. Had a ride with a cab driver about a week ago. He ..was from the West Indies, It was one of those comparatively mild days, about sixteen Fahrenheit. It had been away below zero for about a week. As a good Canadian, I commented on the weather. "Nice to see the cold spell over." His response, "Mon . I am freezing to death. I've been freezing to death since I come to this Mil country two years ago. The vast majority' of Canadians hate winter, with a deep, unrestrained violence. They hate struggling into boots and overcoats, and cars that won't start and the town snowplow, which fills their driveway just after it has been shovelled, and getting up in the dark to go to work, and having something like a sauna bath in overheated stores, and shivering and shuddering wait- ing for a bus or street car. Some people like it, the imbeciles: skiers, curlers, ice fishermen and small children, and rnisarithropeS of all varieties. I don't like to make a special ease, but I think winter affects that fairly large segment of our population involved in the educational process even more deeply than all the other whiter-haters, It is a grinding, Wearing, tearing process for teachers, stUdents, custodians, bus drivers, and even the ladies who dish Up the grub in the cafeteria, If the human body reaches its 'lowest point at around four a,m., education reaches its lowest point in the long Jan.-Feb. haul. There's nary a holiday in those two months. Christmas vacation is but a memory, and the March break is so far off you wonder if you're going to make it without going goofy or slitting your wrists, From January to March, teachers are ei th:er catching or getting over the 'flu. One ffead-cold is followed by another. It seems that a third of the staff- the smart ones who don't stagger in to work half alive-- are home sick. • That means more work for the dumb ones, like, me. who stagger into work half-dead. We have to cover for them, which means your couple of spare periods, normally used to mark papers, plan lessons, and try to get over the chaos of the last class, go out the window. We hate the one at home in bed, or sittingup, drinking lemonade and rum and watching TV. It's even harder on the students. Malty of them stay up until midnight watching the box, get up in the dark at some ungodly hour, stand in a blizzard for ten minutes waiting for a' bus, and drive twenty miles toward something that bores them out of their skulls, Others, living in town, walk anywhere front half a mile to a mile and a half. half-frOien, heads bared to elements and theoatS unsearved, as is the' way of youth. It's no wonder they are tired out, surly, insolent, and groan loudly when they are asked to do some work. They are bound to be resentful when' some stupid teacher says they're going to have a test tomorrow and they missed the entire week when that work was taught, because they were in bed with the 'flu. And the kids are sick. The sniffling, nose-blowing and coughing drown out the teacher's voice, already enfeebled by ano- ther sore throat. Custodians, or janitors, as they used to be called, have all the problems of teachers, but must mop up every day the ocean of snow and salt and sand tracked onto their pristine linoleum by teachers and students. School bus drivers also have all the aches of rising at an unearthly hour, getting the old bus started and warmed up, coping with group of unruly kids just coming alive, and fighting their way through drifts and blizzards and freezing rain and stupid drivers who stall in the middle of the • highway, or go into a skid right in front of the bus. Even the cafeteria ladies have to punch their way through drifts, batteries that won't kiek over, icy roads, frozen french fries, and come up smiling. Some of my students, in a recent essay, stated that one man cannot change the system, and that we,must compromise our principles and go along with it, or try to change it by degrees and legislation. Jesus changed the world, So did Coperni- cus. So did Mahatma Ghandi. Einstein? The guy who invented TV. The guy who invented the wheel. Stephenson. who invented 'the internal combustion engine. Alexander Gra-, ham Bell, whose relicts are practically supported by my wife, The entire school system is still in the nineteenth century, when the long summer holiday was established because boys and girls had to help with the farm-work in the summer months, Ridiculous. The work is now done by machines, I here and now advocate, implore and insist that school continue through the summer months, and that January and February be declared the long vacation: And if there is no response, don't expect me to be teaching next year at this time. Got an opinion? Writes letter to the editor. today!