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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-03-11, Page 2519-887-6641 Established 1872 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher 4Pt, eut 111^Plj" c "1;1;111P''' Nr lk S Evelyn Kennedy, Editor 4fEWS'' FR APE $ C0,04°' Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation. 4Brussels PO"st BRUSSELS ONT. ei. Subscription rates: , Canada $12 a year (in advance) outside Canada $25 a year (in advance) Single copies - 30 cents each WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 1981 Lees make them welcome It's time for the seventh annual Optimist hockey tournament, time once again to bring out the welcome mat for visitors to Brussels. This annual tournament provides an opportunity of bringing more business into Brussels which should help the area merchants, food establishments, and the arena itself. The whole village is on show. This is the time to show visitors just how friendly Brussels can be and indicate that we would like their patronage more often. How people are received in this village can make or break that patronage. The tournament also provides hockey lovers of all ages with a lot of entertainment as the tournament extends over Saturday and Sunday of two weekends. The welcome mat of every business in. Brussels should be out this weekend to remind people and ourselves that this can be, as is so often advertised, the friendliest town in Huron County. The Optimists should also be credited for once again sponsoring a tournament that will be of benefit to everyone in the village. Box 50, Brussels, Ontario NOG 1H0 Thanks to Reagan, we're united Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Relax! Canada is saved. National unity is onthe way, thanks to Ronald Reagan. There is only one thing that binds Canadians from coast to coast together more than their hatred of Pierre Trudeau: their thankfulness that they weren't born in the United States. During the Jimmy Carter years in the White House Canadians lost a !Tittle of that feeling of relief which perhaps accounts for the current disunity. Ronald Reagan is about to fix that. Canadians have always had a strange relationship with the U.S. We've watched their television and movies, read their magazines and books to the point where Canadian magazine and book publishers 4ouldn't find anybody here to read our own, and followed American fashions. (Want to see what Canadians will be doing in five years? Visit California and see what the Californians are doing today). We have sat back and yearned for the higher standard of living the Americans had and often complained because our government protected native industry with tariffs that made things cost more than in the U.S. And yet the continued reason for existence of the country seemed to be that we didn't want to be Americans. Canada was, after all, formed because the leaders of the British North American colonies didn't want to be swallowed by the Americans. The Americans had been fended off twice, once when Benedict Arnold led a force north at the time of the American Revolution and was amazed to find out the colonials in Quebec didn't want to be liberated, and again in 1812 when the Americans attacked, found the colonials fought for the British, re- treated, and still claimed victory in the war. (Later the Americans got smart. They found out that they could come up to Canada with dollars instead of guns and buy the whole place and the Canadians would welcome them with open arms.) Anyway, back to where we .' were. Canadians have always taken a perverse pride in not being American, even if we dressed like them, talked like them and worked for them. We wanted to have a different kind of country that had the best of their lifestyle with a few variations of our own. Relief that we weren't Americans reached a peak in the 1960s and 1970s. We were so glad that we weren't mixed up in Vietham. We were so glad we didn't haw, people being killed at universities like Kent State (even if our students as usual tried to make American campus riots a Canadian fashion, it never really caught on). We were so glad not to have our cities in flames from race riots. We were so glad 700 people a year weren't being murdered in our cities as they were in Detroit. In fact Detroit seemed to symbolize the difference between Canada and the U.S. On one side of the mile-wide Detroit river peace and calm in Windsor. A mile away race riots, murders, chaos. We even had somethings the Americans didn't have for a change. We had the joy of Centennial year, the pride of Expo '67, the love affair with an exciting new leader, Pierre Trudeau, who looked pretty good beside what the Americans had to offer. In the early 1970s if Pierre Trudeau didn't look so good anymore, at least we were relieved he wasn't Richard Nixon, mixed up in the Watergate affair. But in the Carter years things changed a little. The Americans had troubles, sure, but basically the same kind of troubles we had. They also had a leader who was trying to change the image of America as a nation that thought it had the right to tell the world what to do. He was a president who led a government more in the direction Canada had taken: more social legislation, to even out the plight of the rich 'And poor. But Ronald Reagan is in and things are back to normal. America is once more God's chosen land. Communism must again be beaten even if thousands of people die in El Salvador so Ronald Reagan can show how tough .American are. Taxes for the middle class will be cut so they can buy more colour televisions and new cars by cutting aid to the poor. The generals are back in command. the generals of the Pentagon and the generals of Wall Street: General Motors, General Electric, General Foods, etc. The Ugly American rides again. I admit to never being a Ronald Reagan fan. I did feel, however, that the predictions of gloom and doom from liberal journalists should be halted at least until the man took' office and had a chance to show what he could do. Well, he's been in office for less than two months and it looks like the next four years will be long ones. The cold war is back. Ronald Reagan wants to sabre rattle and expects his allies to jump on the band wagon because as U.S. president, he has the divine right to speak fOr the democracies. He is so ready to fight communism, even imagined communism, th'at he's willing to prop up re pressive goverminent like the one in El Salvador. The lesson of Vietman has not been learned: armed might won't keep in office a government that is so corrupt the people won't support it. The spread of communism will get a big boost from Reagan policies and hundreds of thousands of people will die in the world, as frustrated people who want reforms throw themselves in front of the guns of oppressive governments who know they only have to scream "Communists" to get aid from the U.S. Ah well, at least it will make people more united in Canada. It might even make Pierre Trudeau look good by comparison. I could write a book about decorating Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Isn't it amazing how little our world really is? How pretty and small and mean we are underneath our professed liberalism, gener- osity, compassion? The situation in Poland is very dicy. The Mexican stand-off in the Middle East is a torch, loaded with pitch, just waiting for a match. There are bush fires and brush fires of wars all over the world. Canada is in a mess, politically, econom- ically and spiritually. There are noses thumbed at the Queen by would-be head- liners. There is a big flap aboUt the con- stitution. The West is howling separatism. Quebec still wants it, psychologically. Even Newfie is threatening a referendum on separating. Shame, after all that federal money poured in to ensure the perpetuation of the Liberal government. • Outside, as I write, the great February storm is raging: snow, high winds, rain, freezing. Tomorrow will be one of those days when the school buses don't run, the smart kids in town will 'roll over and go to sleep after looking at the snowbanked windows. And a few dumb kids, and a lot of dumb teachers, will stagger through the storm, at risk of life and limb, to keep the stupid school open. And yet, all these storms, international ; national, and local, don't brother me half as much as the one in my own household: Here's where the suspense begins. Wife left him? Nabbled by the cops for mope and gawkery? Poles and Russians have been clobbering' each other with ten-foot poles and vodka 'for hundreds of years. The Jews and Arabs have been doing the same forthree thousand years. Likewise the North and South of whatever: Viet Nam, Korea. the U.S. Likewise all sorts of black people all over Africa. In Toronto, the cops punch up the gays, who respond with violence. In the West, a whole can of worm has been opened, and the worms all turn out to be front Ontario and Quebec. In parliament, lies are told, fingers pointed, desks thumped, .and the government goes right on dazzling us with one hand, and with the other, lifting money from our wallets to help out poor little old Massey-Ferguson, old Chrysler, poor little old Petro-Can. While that bulwark of idealism, the NDP, nods and smiles, and taps its fOot to the Liberal tune. Right outside my window, the snow is coming down so hard that the wind has no time for Sculpturing, One guy is trying to cli mb the hill sideways, in his car. Another has just tarnmed his into a snowbank and walked away. He is the bile who boasted that he never used Snow tires, because he had radials. Across the country, people are driving under insane ConclitiotiS, taking their own lives arid those of others in their hands, to get from nowhere to nowhere. And yet, as I said, all these storms seem trivial compared to the domestic storm. More suspense. To generously, not to say wildly, paraphrase King Lear; "Blow, storm; lie, politicians; smite, Middle-Easterners; plot Slays. Go to it, and the best of luck to yiz all." But your plight brings little sympathy, no tears, from one who is spider-webbed into a binge of decorating. As I am. Most women do their spring decorating in the spring. Mine, just as perverse as the day I asked her to marry me, and she retorted, "Why should I?" ,does hers in mid-winter. Don't ask me why. I'm likely to erupt in a fountain of bad language. I'll swear my eyes are permanently crossed from looking at wall-paper samples. After the first four books, they all begin to look alike. Same with paint. After inspecting peach, ivory, mushroom, off-white and six others, I wouldn't know a red cow from a purple pig, if I bumped into one or fell over the other. Not that there's a difference of opinion. We did agree on the Wall-paper. At least the design: She liked the stuff that WAS $14,95 a roll. I was swept away by the Stuff, identical design, that was $4.95 a roll. But the difference is chicken-feed, as you'll agree. Some chicken, But it's not that. It's not the money. After all, you can't take it with you. Though I doubt if be around long enough to take anything anywhere, even the garbage out of the roadside, after the last decorating orgy. It's the little details. She can't seem to sort out the order of things. She makes a deal with the painter-decorator to start on a certain day. The day before he is to arrive, she rushes out to pick the wall-paper. Wallpaper is like the Canadian mail. It gets there when it gets 'there. If ever. Next day, she arranges for a cleaning lady to wash the woodwork. The lady, much sought after, can come only between the painting and the papering. This means that the paint goes on over dirty wood-work, and there's nobody to clean up after the plasterer, who makes such a mess that the wall-paper looks like the dunes of the Sahara. And so on, I could write a book about decorating. All I'd have to do is listen to my wife before breakfast, before dinner, after dinner, and before bed. Which I have to do anyway. No wonder colleagues say when I arrive at work: "You look exhausted." Substitute Harassed", "frightened," "desperate" or "frantic'" and you have the average Canadian male When his wife decides that hte homestead is shabby, disgraceful; sluniniy, and so on and On and On.