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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-04-22, Page 2EST, 1872 4Brussels Post BRUSSELS ONT Old pictures are something people look back 'on, recalling fond ' memories of a certain event. Recently, Maurice Cameron brought this picture of the east side of Turnberry St. in to the, Brussels Post. Can • anybody recall.what the event might have been that brought so many cars to town, and the year? Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston We'll get bigger and bigger. Box 50, Brussels, Ontario NOG 1H0 A Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Dateline: Moosonee. How did a nice boy like you wind up in a place like this? Isn't that the classic question prostitutes are asked? Yes. Well, I realize the entire world is waiting for my answer, so I must confess. I didn't wind up here. I came here. And if I don't get out pretty soon. I just might wind up here. Buried in mud, with taxis driven by gently laughing Indian ladies rolling right over my Irish tweed hat, the only thing sticking out of the mud. Moosonee is not Far North. In fact, move it far enough west, and it could be a suburb of Edmonton. But it's far enough north to be one of those towns that are neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, in this democratic, liberal-think- ing, decent, next-door-neighbour country of ours. As a result, it is a combination of a nightmare by Dostoievsky and a plan for a Utopian village by Tolstoy. Two-room shacks with the inevitable snowmobile parked outside, and a minute's walk away, super-modern school buildings, tidy liquor store, neat brick post office. Truly beautiful Indian toddlers, super- vised by smart, smiling young Indian women. Happy-go-lucky teenageian kids who should be in school but, with apparently no financial problems, smoke, drink coffee or Cokes, and feed the juke box, which whines the same old songs they're hearing in Halifax and Vancouver. And three tables away, in the same Chinese (that's right, Chinese) restaurant, a grizzled old guy, so drunk he doesn't know whether he's sipping his toast or eating his coffee. Mean, obscene, obstreper ous, But they look after him Anywhere else, they'd call the fuzz, and he'd wind up in the sla When he'd driven everyone else out,• he 519-887-6641 turned on me, the cool-looking guy with the shirt and tic, the fresh shave, the snappy trenchcoat, and the skiing earlugs my wife insisted I wear, even in a Moosonee heat-wave. (Glad I did. If I'd taken them off, I'd have had sun-burned ears, which would have made my old lady think I'd gone to Texas on March break, instead of Mooson- ee). Anyway. this almost-incoherent old drunk zoned in on me, despite my pretending to be a horn-again Christian or a deaf-mute or a retarded senior citizen just out of the funny farm, and went into a lurching dialogue about Kon and how we'd captured 750,000 Germans in the Falaise Gap. Suddenly we were buddies. Kon was Caen, Normandy, 1944. That was my baptism of fire. He was in the infantry, trying to capture the mess of shattered bricks and unshattered Germans. After I'd convinced him that I was a fighter pilot and not one of those jerks of bomber people who bombed their own troops, we were soul- brothers. In fact, if I'd thrown away my fancy topcoat, let me whiskers grow for five days, taken out my partial plate, and gotten incredibly plastered, you wouldn't have known us apart. We separated with one of those 10-minute handshakes that drunks insist on. Arid I felt very sad. Outside, on the street, macho young Indians, sometimes three abreast, sunglass- es, thumbs in denim trousers, some pock- marked, some handsome, some menacing faintly. Playing a role. I am proud to say that not one of them pushed me off the sidewalk into the mud. I stepped off, a purely individual choice, into the Mud. Middle of main street. Water two feet deep, Kids of all colours wading around in it with their 14 inch rubber boots, wildly happy, soaked as seals, oblivious to all else except Mtn, v. Ater, mud. All veteran:, of World War 1 should be buried in Moosonee, in the spring Or fall. It would be just like Flanders fields. Mud. Golly, it sounds as though I &ti l t like Moosonee. That's wrong. I love it. And I'll tell why next week. We are, according to experts, like Alvin Toffler in his book The. Third Wave, on ihe, edge of a technical 'revolution that will change our whole way of life. For those who think the world is already changing too fast he says just wait for what's coming. The big changes due in the world are due to the electronics revolution, the natural evolution from the microcircuit computer chip that has been making its impression on the way we live. Toffler foresees the "electronic cottage" where each of us will have sophisticated computer equipment in our own homes tied through two-way television connections to the outside world. We will be able to work, play, shop, bank and learn without leaving our homes. People like Toffler, eternal optimists, foresee great things for this electronic revolution. Such future-tellers have, for instance, seen the electronic revolution as ending many trends to having to centralize business and commerce. Many people, for instance, should be able to work in their own homes doing tasks they would normally do in offices, taking their instruct- ions from bosses over the computer terminal, doing the work and piping it back through the marvel of electronics to the central computer at work. FREEING PEOPLE The futurists see this as a way of freeing people from having to go downtown to an office building, thereby reducing traffic congestion, competition for space in the downtown city centres and even reducing pollution because there won't be so many cars on the roads. It's a nice thought, There are so many exciting possibilities that the electronic revolution could bring. It could put the small town back on a more even footing with the cities again in attracting business and industry. If information is going to travel at the speed of light through a glass wire so that people can stay home in the suburbs and do their work, then why not take it just a little farther and let them stay home in small towns? The advent of cheaper electronics should also help the Smaller businessman to compete. Those are the possibilities. The realities, I suspect, will be different, Looking at the history of great advances in our society the common trend beconies evident. Nearly all "advances" tend to concentrate power in the hands of fewer people, population in fewer, ,larger centres. ' The Royal Commission into chain owner- ship of the newspaper industry heard last week that the technological revolution has made chain ownership more attractive and will make it more so yet. The day is coming, we are told continually, when newspapers will be sent to our home by television, not by paper boy. The problem is the cost of buying the equipment to do that is so huge that only the very big companies will be able to afford it. Thus the rich will get richer. The same trend has been seen before. Demands for better packaging of food, for instance, have tended to drive the little food processor out of busines while the big guy able to meet the cost of new equipment, tighter restrictions and so on, has been able to take a bigger and bigger share of the market. We have in recent months seen several small town banks closed, most recently in Shakespeare and Sebringville. The word computer has not been mentioned but I would be willing to bet one of the-reasons for the closings was that the business the banks were doing wasn't enough to justify the installation of an expensive computer system which is almost essential in banks today. SHOP FROM HOME Likewise when we are able to shop from home via our computer terminal, 'we are not likely to be able to shop with our small town neighbour who runs the grocery or hardware because he won't be able to afford the expensive equipment needed. We'll be tying into the central computer of Loblaws or Sears to shop and in doing so, we'll kill off the reason for existence for small town, its main street. There's also a good possibility the wedge between urban and rural community will be driven in even further. The two-way computer-television revolution is based on using the cable television system, a system that doesn't exist on nearly all farms and most smaller villages in our country, Will the electronic revolution pass rural people by completely? The future will unfold in the coming years no matter what we may feel about it. My bet ; however, is that the "revolution" will mean more of the same: more people working for fewer companies and living in fewer larger eities to do it. Established 1872 Serving Brussels.and the surrounding community Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 1981 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 Authorized as second class mail by Canada Post Office. Registration Number 0562. Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited