HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-05-20, Page 4Box 50,
Brussels, Ontario
NOG 1H0
0.A Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher
Evelyn Kennedy, Editor
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ETZN
1872
Brussels Post
BRUSSELS
Established 1872 519-887-6641
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community
Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO
every Wednesday morning
by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario
Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of
Circulation.
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Don't hold your breath
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 1981
Let's keep it clean
Brussels council has declared May as the month for cleaning up and
painting in honor of the Morris 125th anniversary celebrations.
It's a good idea and while local residents are busy fixing up their own
homes and yards, they should also take a moment to consider the main
street and other properties in town.
Nothing reflects on a place more than the amount of litter that has been
sitrewn along the streets, sidewalks, and lawns. Besides people cleaning
up their own mess, perhaps some local club could sponsor a clean-up
project.
Many visitors will take part in the Morris Township celebrations this
year and clean streets and houses are bound to make a good impression,
something Brussels needs, for people to be encouraged to come back
more often. Show a little pride in your community and put trash were it
belongs--in the garbage can, not on the streets.
A stranger passing through Brussels last year said the village had the
cleanest streets he had seen in his trips through Ontario. Let's keep it
that way.
If you lived in Toronto 10 years ago and
came back to it' now you would be amazed at
the changes. If you lived there 30 years ago
and come back to it now your heart may not
stand the shock.
It isn't the physical changes that have
made Toronto so different from the city I left
to return to Huron County 12 years ago. The
odd trip back to Toronto keeps you in touch
with the new buildings, the push of the
suburbs ever farther out, the rediscovery of
the lake front in the old harbour area, the
bank buildings reaching higher than the
latest interest rates, the luxury condomin-
iums selling for as much a square foot as
Huron farmland sells for an acre.
The most startling change in Toronto is
the people. Living in small town Ontario you
have this image of Toronto as a huge-scale
version of your own town or the town nearby;
more stores, more offices, more homes,
higher buildings and more and more.
People? Well they dress more expensively
but they're just like us.
Well they aren't. The change in Toronto's
people mixture just since I left the city
astonished me when I returned. In the
building I stayed in, a trip down in the
elevator to buy a newspaper took on the
feeling of visiting the United Nations. People
from the Caribbean. People from India or
Pakistan. Chinese. Canadian Indian. Span-
ish-American.
A trip downtown to visit a bank takes you
further. One teller has a little sign in front of
here. I speak Portugese. Another has a
heavy Spanish accent. Walk down the street
and you see Portugese garages, Portugese
retaurants, in the midst of what has been
traditionally the China Town of Toronto.
China Town is still there, but it's also
Moving to the west, to the north. You walk
through blocks of Chinese stores then on the
corner is a Hungarian church. Turn the
corner and you come to a Greek restaurant.
East Indian and West Indian immigration
has received most of the attention in
Toronto. What racial problems there have
been have usually been upon those immi-
grant groups. The group that seemed most
prevalent all over the city in general however
seemed to be Chinese; young, attractive,
very western in dress and make-up; a much
different group th an\ the traditional idea of
old China Town. Beautiful Chinese women
Behind the
scenes
by Keith Roulston
in the restaurants, at the sales counters of
the most expensive clothing stores, serving
drinks in the lounge of the most expensive
hotel in the city.
Toronto in the last couple of decades has
become the unofficial capital of Canada. The
economic clout has been there. The trend-
setting media has been there. The popula-
tion has been there. Yet more and more the
Toronto that is leading our country is a lot
different from the country it is leading. It
isn't so different, I suppose, from the other
large cities which are also taking on the
same kind of eccentric ethnic mix, )ut very
different from the smaller centres which
remain populated by the more traditional
European ethnic stocks. The great wave of
immigration in the past decade has almost
totally by-passed the smaller centres.
It's going to be fascinating to see what is
going to happen in a city like Toronto in the
coming years. E ach new nationality brings a
bit of itself to a community. The temper-
merits of our own Huron county towns vary
according to the mix of the cultures that
Continued from page 1
had better take heed.
******
The Brussels Home and School Associa-
tion are to be congratulated for time and
effort expended to supply some welcome
additional playground equipment at the
school. It is the type to encourage creative
physical activities. It is sure to be enjoyed by
the students.
*****
It's parents' responsibility to keep chil-
dren safe; says the I.A.P.A. For example,
the careless use and storage of poisons leads
to thousands of deaths of children each year.
A reader, W•Ross Carrothers of Waterloo,
Ontario, takes me to task for a recent column
in which I expressed my unhappiness, and
that of thousands of others. Pm sure, with
The Bell's ubiquitous requests for rate
increases.
He says, in part: "Your article certainly
showed you didn't do your homework on that
one. Perhaps you'll be good enough to write
an article on the Hydro rates next. They
seem to slip by you with nary a sigh."
That's what you may think, sir. I don't
sigh; I groan. But it's the only game in town,
and it's controlled by the politicians. My
only available response is to cut back on my
use of electricity.
Mr. Carrothers, P. Eng., goes on. His
figures are based on Stats-Can.:
Price Increases In per cent increases
1971.1980
Electricity 124; Fruit and vegetables 178;
Gasoline 140; Rail 138; etc., etc., etc.,
Telephone services (Canada) 34.6
O.K. Let's take them one at a time,
though it seems my correspondent is ,using
the argument that two wrongs make a right,
or two blacks a white.
Electricity increases are the result of the
usual bungling when a utility is controlled by
government. During the ten years men-
tioned, Hydro spent millions of dollars in
advertising, trying to persuade us to use
"cheap" electricity for everything from
heating homes to buying new appliances to
using an electric toothbrush. They were
practically flogging this cheap energy.
Bum guesses and faulty prognostications
tell us one minute that electricity is
practically free, it's so plentiful, and the next
that we might start having "brownouts"
because of shortages. And all the while
jacking up the rates to cover the boo boos of
previous prophets on everything from
came together. We are basically, I suppose,
English, Irish and Scots with the later
influence of Dutch. The basic ingredients are
the same but the quantities, like the
quantities in a recipe, make a different end
product in each town.
A lot of new ingredients have been added
to the Toronto cultural recipe lately and the
face of the city is bound to change. Some
predict dire things: race troubles, a decline
into the kind of problems in Britain or the
U.S. It's possible, I suppose. Certainly there
have already been some problems and
charges of discrimination by police. Looking
at the immensity of the change in the past
decade, however, I find it surprising
everything has gone so smoothly. Certainly
there is some resentment on the part of the
native Torontonians, some undercurrent of
fear and uncertainty on both sides but that
there has been so little trouble says
something good.
Canadian immigration policy has tended
to skim off the best educated, most skilled of
the potential immigrants. In a way it's
putting greater hardships on the poorer
countries who need these people but it's
doing a lot to ward off problems in Canada.
These Chinese and Pakistanis and Greeks
are mostly just middle class upwardly-
mobile people, just like old-stock Toronto-
nians.
Short Shots
by Evelyn Kennedy
To avoid such a tragedy in your family they
have these suggestion.
: Keep poisons well marked and out of the
reach of childreti.
: Never store poisons near medicine or
food.
Keep cosmetics away from children;'
some are poisonous:
i Keep all 'cleating fluids and agents
Stored out of the reach of children.
Keep paints, detergents, polishes,
medicines and especially aspirins out of
reach.
nuclear power plants to projected usage of
power, often away out of whack.
But man, it's a comfortable way to
operate, with no competition, and always the
government shoulder to cry on, taxpayers'
money to subsidize, if necessary, and
politicians to cover up and explain away,
We could go back to the oil lamp, the wood
stove, and a chunk of ice in the ice-box. But
with the price of oil and wood, and the
inavailability of coal and ice (because hydro
practically forced their purveyors out of
business) there doesn't seem much point.
We are hooked into an electrical circuit
that heats us, lights us, cooks for us, and
entertains us, audially and visually. It's our
own fault. But, even accounting for inflation,
hydro prices have risen ridiculously, and
really hurt people on fixed incomes and
those in rural areas. I'd guess that half of
that 10-year increase is due to bungling and
botching.
Once again, I must be fair, as I was with
Bell. Our' hydro is remarkably efficient, still
cheap according to world standards, but
expensive considering our resources.
Next, fruit and vegetables. That's easy.
We had them at bargain rates for years
because their producers used the nearest
thing to slave labour: foreign workers,
migrants, the very poor. Now these people,
with some organization and help from
genuine liberals, are making something
approaching a decent wage. We pay the
difference. But I can still buy a quart of
strawberries for 50 cents, if I pick them
myself.
Gasoline? We are hogs, burning it as
though it were going out of style. Which it is.
We've been warned by experts that it is a
non-renewable form of energy, then told by
politicians that there was no foreseeable
shortage, then panicked by other politicians.
But don't try to tie me and the Arabs and Ma
Bell into one neat package.
Rail? Sure. More government bungling
and botching and patching over the years,
and now a desperate attempt to recoup some
of the billions of our money used as
subsidies for the CN. CP was smart enough
to get into other things and make money.
But don't forget where they got all that free
land in the first place.
As for the etc.s, they could be anything. I
know for dam-sure that my salary hasn't
gone up 120 or 140 per cent in 10 years. Nor
has the income of the farmer, merchant,
pensioner.
It's easy to use a few statistics out of
context, to prove a point. Beef prices have
more than doubled in those 10 years. And
beef farmers are going broke. Car prices
have doubled, and automobile firms are
going broke. Postal rates have more than
doubled, and the post ofice requires huge
subsidies. Income taxes have doubled, and
the country is going broke.
Not a pretty picture, but I didn't start out,
in that other column, to analyze the
economy. I merely pointed out that as a good
corporate citizen which has a near-monopoly
Bell could show a little restraint, and not be
running to the Transport Commission every
couple of years for an increase, which it was
doing long before inflation became a
household word.
Mr. Carrothers is waiting to read my
apology to the telephone companies of
Canada. Don't hold your breath, sir.
In spite of all the warnings in various
publications, and heard via the airwaves,
lives are still being lost and homes destroyed
in fires caused by wood-burning stoves and
furnaces because of improper installation
and careless maintenance. When will people
take heed of the warnings? When will they
realize that they must see such heating
equipment is properly installed and given
the care required' for safety to persons and
property? Proper care may take some time
and effott, even some money, but is that not
better than watching flames destroy your
home and members of your family.
* sit * * *
Sugar and spice
By Bill Smiley
You may not stand the shock