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Home My WebLink AboutThe Brussels Post, 1974-09-18, Page 2ti Brussels Post BRUSSELS .ilf.EPIAESPAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1974 opirrmlo 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 $6.00 a, year, Others cpiNgA • Vehiriasit anctim • 11%, $8,00 a year, Single Copies IS cents each. Second class mail Registration No. 0562. coic to. Telephone 887-6641, 1•••••••••••••1•31,... Only at the Fair Unfair competition IC I were a young fellow, starting all over again, I would try to finagle myself into a job where I could take my holidays in September, preferably stretching them to about the middle of October. These arc the golden months, in this country. I know. I've lived here longer than I care to remember. October is beautiful. , nut September is boutiful, beneficent and 'ilessed by a Higher Power. And I dont mean the Hydro. The other so-called summer months are a pain in the arm. June is hot and humid and mosquitoes. July and August are impossible: stifling when you're trying to sleep, or raining when you're trying to ca November is fit only for Remembrance Day, when even* the birds weep, because the overhead (clouds) is so low they cant even fly. December is a hectic, commercialized mess, when you don't know whether yotire going to have a "green' Christmas; meaning dirty and sloppy and slushy, or a "white" Christmas, meaning up to your navel in snow. January is a long, forbidding month, something like a long, forbidding school teacher, with a drip on his nose, frozen. It promises nothing, threatens much. February is shorter, but . sneakier. It snows and snows and it gets colder and colder. And'you get the 'flu and you get sickening cards from friends who have gone south for the winter. January and February; unmarried, spawn March. which is like something illegitimate borne by a drab in a ditch:Occasionally it turns out to be a beautiful child, but nine times out of ten, it is retarded, . April, Browning, writing from Italy, said:"Oh to be in England, now that April's there." Maybe England. But another poet, T.S,Eliot, must have been referring to Canada when he said: "April is the cruellest month." There's not much snow left, except in the woods and shadowed corners, but that's about all you can say about it. Then, as most of us know, conies May, Ah, May, the burgeoning of Spring, the little tender shoots coining out on the trees, the still -warming up, the trout running, stififitter just around the eornet. Girls who have been hatted May must be very capricious, May eatt be glorious, wart a thawing of the frozen Canadian soul,. a realization that you have once again got through a Canadian winter without committing suicide This year, May showed her other Side, I know a place not too far away where anglers, on opening day, were casting their lures onto a thin skin of ice, not water. And the trout were runriing, alright. Right underneath the -ice. There is no evidence that any of them smashed up through the ice to snatch at a lure. This year, even the crows had a phlegmy rasp in their throats when they cawed. Well; that about takes care of the Canadian calendar. I've already dealt with the so-called summer months. Tourist s and mosquitoes in about equal proportions. The tourists get their blood sucked, and the mosquitoes suck our blood. If I had to choose betv..een a tourist, who kicked sand in my face at the beach, tail-gated me on the highway, and crowded me off the golf course, and a mosquito, who merely want ed a quiet four ounces of my blood, I'd have a hard time choosing. That leaves only September and October. No tourists, no mosquitoes, no snow. Just yellow sunshine, a bountiful larder of the harvest, warm days, cool nights when sleep is deep and sweet, Everything is green, still in September , I can visualize a fishing camp, good food, a chilly swim, a fire and sweaters, good conversation with good friends, a game of chess, early to bed and up early for a try at the fish, some books, no telephone, no wife, no kids. If this sounds like male chauvinism, it is. This is perhaps one of the things the more strident feminists in our midst absorbed. Once in a while he must get away from his woman. He's not trying to prove manhood that. or anything phychological like He's merely trying to save his sanity. He's sick, right to the heart, of hearing what Mabel said to Marjorie and what Marjorie is going to do about Jack, who 'rinks too much, and what Mabel is going to do about her kid, who is smoking pot. Maybe I'm a male chauvenist, but I'm not a pig. I've changed, diapers, done dishes, scrubbed floors, fed babbles, long before Women's Lib became fashionable. But once in a while I have to get away from my woman, With the other braves, and exchange male fopperies, foolishness and far-oat stories. Today we take a sauna bath. I'll bet that a hundred years 'go, Ball-With-The Buffalo's-Bunn and Sneaky-With-The-Beaver took off for a mo nth's hunting and fishing when they And I'll bet they took it in Septe . could no longer st and White-Father and Mary Six-Babies gossiping about their babbles. mber A letter writer to the Toronto Star points out that for forty years two U.S. magazines, Time and Reader's Digest, have been bringing their U.S. produced publications into Canada, stripping their pages and columns of U.S. advertising and replacing them with Canadian advertisements. In the case of Time magazine, for instance, their editorial material has been produced in U.S.A. and except for their four extra Canadian - produced sages, is essentially cost free. Says the writer (who is the capable editor of a prominent Canadian magazine): "No other country in the world has allowed this kind of dumping operation to take place against a native periodical press". Canadian publishers are not interested in being subsidized, says this editor, but are definitely interested in having the Canadian government remove the unfair competitive advantage enjoyed by the U.S. magazines. In short, there are enough Canadian editors, writers, photographers and illustrators to provide "a vigorous, healthy, unsubsidized Canadian magazine" in a fair Canadian arena of publication. We might add our own challenge here. That is, why has not the Canadian government present (and past) had "guts" enough to meet and correct this continuing competitive advantage given to these U.S. magazines? This matter has been gone into on numerous occasions in the past mentioned by this small newspaper and in many other more influential places in Canada. How about it, you Federal Crusaders? (St. Mary's Journal Advocate) To the Editor Eggs again Dear Sir: Never at any time in the history of agriculture has the egg industry received such a barrage of unfavourable publicity from the Atlantic to the Pacific as it is now. Front pages of lar ge circulation newspapers have been devoted to "'rotten eggs" and the high prices to the consumer. Hot liners and TV comment ators have been working overtime on the subject, too. It has been a Field Day for Mrs. Plumptre in her efforts to justify a place for the Prices Review Board of which she is Chairman. And a Cabinet Minister has been arguing with the Hon. Eugene Whelan, Minister of Agriculture for supporting the primary producer in their fight with increasing costs. Andre Ouellet f Minister of Consumer Affairs, has soddenly become an expert on poultry management and the cost of producing eggs, Nine million eggs were plowed under as unfit to eat. That, admittedly, should not have happened, but it amounts to less than one half an egg per person in Canada. One half an egg could ; we are told, have been sold to the public at -a cheaper price, That, surely, would have reduced the present (Continued on Page 6) Sugar and Spice By Bill Smiley I P,