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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1976-10-06, Page 2.1 • g. Amen by Karl Schuessler Burial at CN tower It's National Newspaper Week in have a good rea WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1976 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros. Publishers, Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Dave Robb.- Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association ABC ' Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $6.00 a year. Others $8.00 a year, Single Copies 15 cents each. Brussels Pos MITA11.1111410 11171 BRUSSELS ONTARIO In yoke To the living This is a message for young men who were friends. of Skippy Skinner, and for the hundreds of other Skippies in our country who like to drive cars fast. If Skippy had known, as he stepped on the gas last Monday on the New Highway, that in a few seconds he would die under water, he would never have done it. But he didn't know. He didn't think ahead, or consider possibiities. He must have been living intensely in that immediate mom, ent,, intoxicated by the thrill of speed. The delight in speed is one of the great, intrinsic pleasures, like dancing for the person who loves it, singing for the good singer, surf riding for the expert surfer. "Intrinsic" means good for itself alone, without any before or after. Everybody has at least an occasional craving for speed, although most of us get it vicariously, by watching auto or horse races. So it's nonsense to say that speed is bad. It's terrific. But in an automobile, it's terrifically dangerous. Maybe you think : So what- I like danger, it's part of the fun. And perhaps you're right there too. Rut here are a couple of thoughts about that. One is that life after 21 holds so many chances for fun that the thrill of danger for the moment isn't worth maybe throwing away the future for. Another is that the men, the real men, who enjoy dangerous sports like mountain-climbing, or white- water canoeing, of free-gliding, train themselves rigorously, and use every device and precaution to keep themselves alive in the most dangerous situations. And still another thought. Maybe you've got the right to risk y our own life. But how about others? The life you destroy may not be your own. It may be that of someone in another car, or someone walking along the road, who isn't getting your kicks out of the screaming tires and roaring motor and rushing air. It may be someone else's mother or father, or kid sister or brother, or girl friend. Would you accept the need for speed in some other guy who mashed your mother to a pulp? There's an old cliche which says a picture is worth a thousand words.. Well, We've got a. picture in the file which may say something to you which all these words fail to say.lt's a photograph of Chief Hughie Corkum and others, carrying, Skippy Skinner's body out of the Back Harbour. We didn't publish it last week, because the. publisher didn't think it would be right. But if you want to get the message about what can lie beyond that speed thrill, come and have a look. (In the Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Bulletin) Seems as if I've been in the burying business lately. One week it's about burying me: Next week it's burying time capsules. Well, I want you to know I saw a proper burial last'Friday in Toronto. a wasn't for me, but it was for a time capsule in the C.N.Tower -- 1,800 ft. up in the air in an interior wall' of that famous cement giant, the tallest free standing structure in the world. The fog all day pressed in on the tower and hid it--keeping it in wraps. But by :the time it came for the burial ceremony, the tower had pushed off the wraps. The cement needle soared against a blue sky. - The tower was magnificent -- rising from a green launching pad of inlaid grass and transplanted trees and bubbling fountains. The sight made you forget the desert that surrounds it: twisting railroad tracks, round houses, repair 'sheds and the St. John yard station. What a way to go! For that time capsule. I've alwayS thought some people go out of this world in grander style than they ever lived. That time capsule sure did. It was a little midget of a container—somethitig like a farmer's fat cream can. All of three feet tall. Gray and dull but sturdy. For it was well wrapped in outer steel and inner plastic. Double vaulted good and tight as every decent burial should be. The Rev. Donald Anderson said a prayer of praise and blessing. And no, he assured me later, the C.N. tower wasn't a modern-day tower of Babel. This tower wasn't confusing language. One of its main jobs was to enhance language by its transmission signals. Sure it cost $57 million dollars, but the parson said it was a grand folly -- a fun folly-- and he was there to enjoy it. Then canoe all the eulogies -- recitals of the dreams and hopes and wishes of the people who were burying them in the time capsule.The words of praise came not only from the big important people, but from the little people--children Who wrote and won prize essays and poems. Like any modern burial, the embalning was alaborate. Silica gel coated the inside of the capsule. All metals were sealed in Incite and papers, film and videotape •in chemicals • everything put into preservation to wait for the final resurrection on :hundred years from now. Then came the burial. The Prime Minister helped lift the capsule into the hole in the wall. 'He was in good spirits as well as all the other pall bearers. "Do I .need a union card?" he kidded, "Anyone 'got any gum?" He got instead 'a trowel full of plaster. And he patticaked it on'. "Mr kids would love this," he said. And like any other burial, those gestures were symbolic: a spade of earth, a cast of flowerpetals. The real job of burial is left to the workmen who arrive a few minutes later to finish up the plastering and seal the capsule tight. Then the marker. The setting of the grave, marker.To record the name and date of Time hundred Capsule.ye To let tit rest in peace for the next one Every funeral needs eats, doesn't it? This one did too. This time ' it was ice cream and especially ca for ke--laye the occasion. layers and layers — worth made And like some funerals I go to, this one wasn't sad at all. We ate and joshed and talked. None of us were in the mood to stretch our minds to the year 2076 and wonder what the world would be like then. How would the up d itreawmsh hatnde ewrisahleitsieins?that time capsule match Would there be, in fact, a world around then? Would thie C.N. tower survive wind and storm and airplanes and stolen helicopters? But this was too much idle speculation on such a happy day as this. This is now. We were here to enjoy the day. This marvel of technology to take its place next to other r Canadian firsts: the longest inland seaway, the longest gas and oil pipelines in the world., This was a day of celebration. We were in no mood to contemplate. Just like the pyramids of ancient Egypt, we would let future earthlings rummage through the preemrsapiencst•i-voer oruins?- and let them try to figure us all out. Let then try to put some B w IV SE w • Cel tiniv nm .ant ten Cot ecalh onsis s, e f peira ostes arris Arc rem( eligh dud a