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Home My WebLink AboutThe Brussels Post, 1973-01-31, Page 2ESTABLISHED 1072. ?REV° -77 c/G 1E 0. p P. TR 4 rp ic, 8 SAWS' •D•41•Rie eZej7W0.5'' 4:f AilOt " .esie SOa ki ssels Post BRUSSELS ONTAR 10 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1973 -Serving Brussels and the surrounding community published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario ' by McLean Bros. Publishers, Limited. • Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Torn Haley - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association. Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $4.00 a year, Others $5.00 a year, Single Copies 10 cents each. Second class mail Registration No. 0562. Telephone 887-6691. The weekly means people DRIB C The mass media are, and pride themselves on being the voice of The People. But I 'am not a people. You are not a people. We are persons, you and I, and we need to know what is happening that affects us as per- sons, and what the persons we live among are doing that will touch our daily, private lives. We want to know, also, how larger events touch us. The local newspaper, 'also can act as a lever to raise standards_ in local government, to improve local facilities, to acquaint the representative with the principal subjects of concern to the local community. The local weekly can help pre- serve the importance of each man in his own right. The engagement of your daughter is as important to you and to God as the engagement of the president's daughter - and, though the metropolitan daily may find little or no room for this supreme event the local paper can and will tell 'your world of her happiness. There are other functions for the slim sometimes unpolished,little sheet to perform - it can trumpet the merits of your home town, tell you where you can buy that dress without going miles away, warn against community blight and tell , you that Aunt Millie is back from Florida and your fourth grade teacher is in the hospital - maybe you should-send her a card? (The Tilbury News) Recent newsstories about fuel shortages in New York city and a number of north- eastern states must have been a real Shock, not only to many Americans, but to every thinking Canadian. I know it shook me, when I considered the implications. It was the first strong warning of what's to come - a world-wide shortage of fuel and energy. And that's a frightening pros- pect. Experts have been issuing warnings for years, but these usually consist of an article in the Saturday supplement, easily forgotten or ignored. I'm no expert, but any school child knows thatathere is only so much oil and gas in the earth, that there is only so much waterpower to be harnessed, and when that's gone, it's gone. For good. Already parts of -the U.S., especially the heavily industrialized and populated east, are on the verge of a crisis in the fields of energy and water. What happens in the States will in- evitably happen in Canada,, though it may take a little longer, because of our much smaller population and much greater re- serves. But unless science can come up with some new, cheap means of producing energy and fresh water, things are going to be pretty shaky by the turn of the century. Perhaps, as always, it's " the only way man can learn anything - by having it shoved down his throat. Perhaps we won't stop wasting energy resources until we're reduced to the point where we're cooking dinner over a fire of buffalo chips, as the pioneers did. Except that there won't be any buffalo to provide the chips. Wouldn't you .think that Canada, having Witnessed at first hand the raVages the Americans haVe made on their own resources, would have learned a leSSOn? Wouldn't you thinkthat we'd be liciard•- ing carefully, with an eye to five hun- dred years from now, our dWindling re sources? Wouldn't you think that •OUr sO ,called leaders could see mote .that. twenty-five years ahead? Many of:them seem to be thinking no farther ahead than the next election: One of theSe fine years, imiesa We begin to conserve and preserve, there'll be ari Old Mother Htibbard story that will Wreak untold Misery On millions' of But htirrianSi that's an old tale, of course, in this COuntry, ThrOUgh c ombination humangreed, short-sighted leader- ship and plain stupidity, Canadians have beeti content to'continue' their century- old role as hewerS of wood arid drawers .of water, and to sell anything they could to foreign investors: British, American and EurOpean. There'S a great lot'Of red-hot nation- alism in our country these days. But ninety-five per cent of it is words, words, words. The people who make the real decis- ions are not the writers, pairiters, stu- dentS, but the cold-eyed, grey-haired men who sit in the board-rooms, and would sell their grandmothers into slavery if the interest rates were right. They're the 'babies whO have looted our forests and miners and are currently pawning our energy resources. And they're the birds, with some notable ex- ceptions, who take off for the Bahatnas or Switzerland when the taxes get rough and they've made their pile. • To most of them, the uneinplOyed are an unfortunate statistic, the poor a necessary nuisance. They know where every nickel of government handout8 is., They knoW every tax dodge. They are the real and only second-class citizens of this country. Holy striokeS! I'm beginning to sound like a communist agitator. I'm not. I just get sick at heart when I see what's happening to the country I love. Talk about being sold down. the river( we're being sold down all our rivers and all our pipelineS as well. Canada might be compared to youth. Youth can, and does, burn up energy without a thought for the morrow. He Can dance and drink all night, stand all day in the rain, hitch-hiking, sleep on the ski all day on weekends and sleep all day in kh061. But imperceptibly, and. then Suddenly, the youth is Iniddleaged. luxuriant hair falls out, the belly thiCkenS, the pace slows, and the joints beginito ache, The energy has been *Willed, up, ninth of it uselessly, and the cupboard .grows pro, gresSiVely bare. Is that what we're doing today' in our comparatively youthful country? Are we going to 'Wake. up with no hair, arthritiS, and a pdt belly with nothing to, put in it? Arid while this is taking place before our eyes, the politicians chatters like parrots, jockeying for position; their eyes fiked irrenipyablyOn the pa§t, Ii. no §olutiOno The only thing I might suggest, in Vie* of the energy criS1§, i,§ that all the politicians in North Airierida be• laid end to end. They'd make an adthitable pipe line, of jttSt the tight girth.. Arid they'd prOdiide enough natural gas one session to StaVe'bil the crisis for years. Sugar and Spice by Bill Smiley