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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-10-07, Page 2 EZN, 1812 4Brussels Post f3ox 50, Brussels, Ontario Established 187a NOG 1 HO Serving Brussels and the surrounding community 51-$87-6641 ei. Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspapei' Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7. 1981 Authorized as second class mail by Canada Post Office. Registration Number 0562, Published, at BRU$SELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros, Publishers Limited AndrevY. McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston from their ample supply of aging autocratic employees and pay them dividends to insult as many people as possible. They often seemed to work overtime, probably with the use of computers, to design the most inconvenient schedule possible such as the one from Stratford to Goderich which went to Goderich about 11:30 in the morning and returned about 1:30 thereby being throughly useless to anybody but someone who wanted to go to Goderich for lunch. OF COURSE THEY LOST It's no wonder then that the railways were able to say they lost money and beg the government to let them withdraw service. They combined the growing love affair people had with their automobile with a desire not to be degraded and humiliated, with a desire to get somewhere at a time that was convenient to do the business they had to do. But just how real are the losses and just how important. are they. The government looks at these losses and says it is cheaper to move people by busses than by rail but does it really look at the real costs of busses? Sure on the outside it may look better but what about the hidden costs. Railways must keep up their own roadways from their own revenue. Busses are public roadways, roadways that cost a fortune to keep up although the buses pay only a small proportion of their real costs. What about the airlines, something the government has' had a fixation about since the days of Jack Pickersgill in the Louis St. Laurent govern- ment? Who pays for the huge expense of the airports? Not the airlines. We're subsidizing all kinds of transportation it's just that rail passenger subsidies seem so much more visible. At a convention in Toronto on the weekend (I drove since the only alternative was to drive for an hour to Stratford to catch a 6:45 a.m. train) a delegate from Kingston showed just how convenient trains could be. He was lucky enough to live in the one part of the country where rail service is improving. He caught a train in Kingston and two hours later was in his hotel room in Toronto, relaxed, rested and had been able to do work on the way down. It would have taken him at least that long to drive and he would have been exhausted. But his story had another side. In part of its rethinking Via Rail decided that in order to speed the trip from. Toronto to Montreal it Was going to cut out the Kingston stop, saving about five minutes on the run. The only other stop in the entire run was one in a Toronto suburb which no one ever used. They were going to leave that in. Is this any way to run a railway? Almost exactly 10 years since the last passenger train ran through Huron County a lot of other communities who once th ought they were safe from the loss of their own passenger train service are reliving our loss. The irony is that so much has happened in that decade to argue that the trains should be coming back, not going. It was sad, back in 1971, to see the last passenger train roll through the fields and towns of western Ontario but you couldn't really argue against the decision. There weren't many people on that last train, just as there hadn't been many for weeks and months and years before. The tale is told that a group of irate municipal politicians once went to a hearing to protest the loss of their rail passenger service. The chairman of the hearing asked the politicians how they got to the hearing and they said they came by car of course. End of argument. Yet it's a different world than 1971. Today with the prospect of S4 a gallon gas, with concern about conservation one would think the movement would be back to forms of public transportation, And yet for all. it's concern about conservation of precious fuel supplies, the federal government has shown it has more concern about it's precious spending money. It doesn't want to pay out any more subsidies to Via Rail Canada to keep up lines that are losing money. It wants to use the money saved from marginal lines to upgrade still further the rail service between Toronto and Montreal, the only two tides in Canada you'll soon be able to use the train if the current thinking continues. A NEW COMPANY Via Rail was supposed to stop some of this deterioration of rail service. It was a new company formed to take over passenger service from the major railways who had shown amply that they did not want to be bothered with people. People were a pain. Nice freight was so much better. You could take freight when you wanted, not when the people wanted as in passenger service. If you were a few minutes or hours late, so who cared. You could go slow. You could have a bumpy ride, you could leave it shunted on the siding for days and it never made a fuss. And there was good money in it. People were a problem. They demanded too much. • I used to travel by train a fair bit back in the last days of passenger travel in these parts. I often felt Iike a piece of freight the way CN passenger officials treated the people who used their service. I began to Wonder if the railway was trying to drive people away from their Service. They seemed to find the meanest of conductors Mr. and Mrs. Jan van Vliet, R.R. 2, Brusselt at= tended the graduation of their daughter, Janis Mae van Vliet from the Radio- graphy Program at Mohawk College, Hartilton, on Sept. 26. She attended Walton Public School ; SeafOrth Puri- lic School di Seaforth District High School. Janis has ad, cepted a position in the X-Ray department at the Douglas Memorial Hospital, Fort Erie, Ontario. She re- ceived the College's Bronze Medal for being the most outstanding student in the Health Science Department. Russian trip is topic at Bluevale WMS Correspondent MRS. JOE WALKER 357-3558 A Thanksgiving poem, read by the president, Mrs. Glenn Golley, opened the Fall Thankoffering meeting of the Bluevale Women's Missionary Society of Knox Presbyterian Church, Sunday, Sept. 27. Mrs. Golley welcomed guests from Belmore and Bluevale United Churches. Dean Golley played two selections, accompanied by his aunt, Mrs. Harold Johnston. Mrs. Wm. Robertson intro- duced Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Thornton who showed slides of their trip to Russia and other countries this summer. When the Thorntons arrived in England, they saw the many decorations fOr the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and the procession of carriages, They boarded an ocean liner to cross the North Sea and saw many beautiful cathedrals with shimmering domes, huge hotels and beautiful flower gardens, Entering Russia could be an ordeal for some, especially if they wore jeans and a beard, but the Thorntons were fortunate and had very little trouble. They said the Russian people are very stern never smiling arid Tike to say they have the , biggest, the best, and the first of many things. In Poland, they farm with horses as we did 75 years ago. There were stooks in the fields and the whole family works together. Seeing the wall between East and Klett Germany Makes us realize how very fortunate We are in this country, they said, Keith Moffatt thanked WS: Thornton on behalf of the group and presented her with a small gift of appreciation. When Jane Draper of Brus- sels and some family mem- bers came into contact with dogs who had rabies, they thought they would have to undergo the painful shots in their stomachs, but they didn't have to worry. A new serum can be taken in the arm with fewer shots required. It all started when Mrs. Draper took her sister Barb Wissler of Culross to pick up a puppy at a farm near, White- church. Barb chose the pup from a litter of 10 which was living under a woodpile and which could easily have come in contact with a wild animal carrying rabies. Joan Wissler was out West when her daughter was given permiss- ion to get the pup and it was there when she got home. The Wisslers had only had their puppy a week when they received a call from the Bruce County Board of Health and Animals Branch notifying them that a puppy from the same litter had died and had been diagnosed as rabid. Later their puppy alto devel- oped rabies and died. Since Jane and her son Paul had been playing with the puppy that had died first and they weren't too surd whether it had licked any open wounds or not, they had to undergo treatment for rabies. Everybody who had been playing with the pupa, pies had to notify their own family doctor who then made the decision whether shots Were needed or net. On August 7, Jane and Paul started getting their shots in the arm. Only five are required instead of the usual 14 in the stomach. Shots were given on the first day, the third day, the seventh day, the 14th day and the 28th day. Two or three weeks after their last shot they have to go back for a bloodtest and if there's not enough antibodies in their system against the disease, they have to have two booster shots. Jane picked up the serum in Clinton at the health office as it has to be packed in ice. The new serum is called Inactivated Human Rabies Vaccine and was jointly deve- loped by the Institute Mer-: lent, France and Wistar Institute, Philadelphia. Mrs. Campbell honoured Fifty-five Campbell relatives gathered at Bluevale Presbyterian Church, Bluevale where a family dinner was held in honor of Mrs. 011ie Campbell, who celebrated her 85th birthday on Sept. 24. This meal was provided by ladies' of the church. Open house was held at the home of her son and daughter in-law Mr, and Mrs. Peter Canipbell of R.R. #4, Wingham oh Sunday, afternoon, Sept. 27, when ciuite a number of friends and relatives Called to extend their best Wishes: THE FAMILY POSES—Members of the McNair family posed for this picture sometime around 1895. This log house was on Lot 20, Con 14 Grey. From left are Martin McNair, John McNair, Archie McNair, Mrs. James McNair, James McNair, and Miss R. McNair. Standing in the door are: Mrs, James Perrie and Mrs. Alex Edgar, sisters of Martin, John and Archie, - uncles of William Perrie. (Photo courtesy William Perrie) Rabies shots for local family Outstanding student