The Brussels Post, 1973-11-14, Page 2For years Canadians in small towns have
watched the drying up of passenger train
services. Community after community has
had its rail services cut.
Passenger service in this country is now
about on a par with that in OUter Mongolia.
Many communities fought hard to retain
the train service, but ,the locals were no
match for the railways, with their p6blic
relations men, lawyers, experts and the
inevitable figures.
There is none of the romance and
excitement of Canada's early railways in
these figures. There is no sentiment. They,
show that the line is losing money, and
that's all the railways care about:
They don't mention that there seemed to
be a deliberate plan to let the track's and
the coaches fall into such disrepair and
shabbiness that even an Outer Mongolian
would prefer to travel by yak.
There was almost no attempt, except on
the big transcontinental trains, to provide
faster, more comfortable, reliable service.
The railways are perfectly happy to provide
good service for cattle and hogs, but they
just don't want people riding on 'their
trains.
Is our postal service going the way of our
pastenger train service? Is there a secret
conspiracy, high in the ranks of our postal
department, to discourage Canadians from
communicating by Mail?' Certified mail must be signed for. The
- Y agile---V'atOr in the office building in the city ' Are postal authorities being bribed.'b '3111
was not working. The recipients of the
column were on the third floor. No postie
was going to walk up three flights of st airs.
So the "certified" letter was not
delivered. Worse still was the fact that it
was dutiiped somewhere in the post office
and ignored,
- tight days after it was Mailed; it turned
up, Eight days, eighty miles, gut by gosh t
the price is right Only forty cents
I've no grudge with the local People.
They are helpful and obliging. But
sortievvhere out there .
Striding a letter these days is about as
effective as writing a note, putting it in a
bottle, and dropping it in the Pacific
OCean, Except that the latter it a lot
cheaper,,
ePet,
if
you
happen td have an empty
bottle.
• - Next yeati I'm going to hire a Mule train
for my Mail
That letter travelled more than 200 miles,
and took two days to get there, and cost
four cents post age.
This week, we had a letter from our
daughter. She lives the vast dist ante of 80
miles away. You could walk it in fourdays,
hitchhike it in two. Yet the post office, with
its computors, its fancy codes and its fast,
modern trucks, took the grand total of four
days to get the letter from there to here.
That's really whippy service. Twenty
miles a day. And.it cost eight cents. Twice
the 'cost: for less than half the efficiency.
This column is mailed from here .to the
city on Tuesday, for processing. It should
be delivered next morning, the people here
tell me. It isn't. Sometimes it gets .there
Friday. Sometimes it doesn't.
After some complaints from the city end,
„ I took what I thought was drastic action. I
sent the column by certified mail. That
sounds impressive.
It consists of patting your envelope
inside a special envelope, and paying forty
cents for the privilege. "Th'at'll do it", I
thonght comfortably.
It didn't. Three days lat er, the city was
on the blower. No column. I explained what
I'd done . They said they'd go to the post
Office,
They did. Nobody knew anything about
it. After eight days, the whole sordid little,
unimportant story came out.
the Bell Telephone, the railways' telecom-
munications system, and other competitors
to put the braket on pott al delivery to the
point where it will diminish to a trickle then
halt completely? One would think so, on
the evidence. •
People in business who depend on the
to-Called postal service in this country,
must be losing their hair, their minds, and
even their basinetses these days.
Last stmuner l,when were in England,
I mailed `two col umns back to Canada. No
problem. They Were there right on tithe.
My wife Wrote softie postcards, "Not much
point" observed. "Well be borne before
the cards get there." We Weren't.
gut have yoit tried the Canadian Mails
lately/ Don't, UrileSs there is no other way.
Last bight,' my wife Caine across an old
love letter, froth me and -read it to the
accompatibrient of my blushes and snorts.-
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1-973
-Serving Brussels ' and the surrounding community
published, each Wednesday afternoon at Brusseli, Ontario
by McLean Bros. Publishers, Limited.
Evelyn Kennedy 11` Editor Tom Haley - Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and.
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association.
Subscriptions fin 'advance) canada $4.00 a year, Others
$5.00 a year, Single Copies 10 cents each.
Second class mail RegistratiOn No. 0562.
TelephOne 887-6641.
OdtiabirthailkA.,
Scrap heap
A new report has been released which, once. again,
docurnents the miserable and in some cases
desperate' conditions in which our elderly citizens,
who. have only the Old Age Pension and supplement
for income, have to live.
Issued on the weekend 'by 71-year-old Moses
McKay, for the Ontario Federation of Labour, the
report says many of the elderly interviewed this
summer at 18 regional meetings all over Ontario, feel
they have been "chucked on to society's scrapheap"
after a lifetinie of contributing to their communities.
Those who are now senior citizens worked hard at
a time when there were few private pension plans. If
they managed to save a little from paycheck to
paycheck, they saw these savings wiped out by
inflation. Many of 'the elderly whom we expect to
subsist on $105 a month, plus a small supplement,
are widows whose many years of wOrk,in the home
was not considered part of the GNP and whose
private pension money deareased when_ their
husbands died.
The old age pension is not adequate, and too often
even the supplement does not permit our elderly to
eat nutritiously, to live in decent accommodations
and to keep some personal dignity. Mr.McKay's
report tells of a pensioner who had only $20 a Month
to spend on food because he spent the rest of his
pension on rent for a decent city apartment, rather
than live in a flea-bag rooming house. Other old
peo pie suffer from toothaches and . eye strain
because they can't spare $10 for a filling or $100 for
eyeglasses -- health expenses which are not covered
by OHIP.
The OFL report recommends, and we agree, that
. the Old Age.Pension provide a minimum monthly
income of $200 for each person. Ontario's minimum
wage will soon be $2.00 an hour - approximately $320
a month. What Makes us think that a pensioner who
has 'perhaps more need for special items or a little
pampering can get along on a third this amount? We
assume that people lose their appetite as soon as
they get old and stop working?
In Seaforth„ an excellent first, step towards
recognizing the needs of our senior citizens and their
right to live in dignity has been made, with the
opening of the new rent-geared-to-income apart-
ments for those over 65 On Jarvis and Market
Streets. Seaforth should plan to take advantage of all
other provincial and federal programs that offer this
sort of relief to the elderly. •
But governments at all levels in Canada Will' pass
legislation, to improve the economic status of our old
people' only when we taxpayers pressure them to do
so.
In Spite of many shocking statistics arid our own
eyes which tell us that old people ustially live in the
crummiest apartments,. can't afford to'eat properly
and can rarely buy new clothes (after lifetimes of had
work) not much presCUre haS been applied. We are
toe wrapped up in our own mercenary little live s.
Mr McKay asks whether our society is not
practiting .a sort Of euthanasia by condemning old
people to "rotten houiing, inadequate health care
and sioW starvation".
Euthanasia is not our intent but the lives of sore
Of OUt'elderly are WithoUt a doUbt being shOrtenend
by a rotten standard of living. In our society, the
money We pay people reflects blow we value them.
We 'in Canada need a furidirnental change in OUr
attitude towards the old respect for What they have
done and what they'can teach us and a pentiOn which'
backs up That respect: With hard oath.
Empty house in fall.
Sugar and Spice..
by Bill Smiley