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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1978-01-04, Page 2Brussels iell°1111.11111111INNITANPIPHIID 0 St • • tiounELS ONTARIO WEDNESDAY; JANUARY 4, 1978 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean 13ros.Publishers Limited, Evelyn Kennedy Editor Dave Robb - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association A national disgrace Winter sky Behind the scenes eNA, Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year. Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each. The Canadian Postal Service staggers between a national disgrace and a national joke. The postal situation is a national scandal, which our government resolutely refuses to do anything about and, indeed, which it aggravates. Ineffective and antagonistic negotiation procedures must end. In Toronto and Montreal, and one or two other centres, small groups of people who laughingly call themselves socialists, regularly disrupt service. No self-respecting champion of the working class 'would do what these people do - prevent working people from earning a just living. They have cost the Canadian economy incredible amounts of money through disruption to direct-Mail, magazines, greeting cards, mail -order and small businesses which result in the layoff of thousands of workers. In 1975 atone, business lost more than $350 million and some 3,420 employees were laid off. The frustration, and inconvenience caused to many Canadians by these wildcat walkouti, to say nothing of the legal strikes, cannot be measured. The Christmas season caper in Toronto this year over the hiring of part-time workers -- in a time of record unemployment -- is simply another in the endless list of irresponsible acts: Those` of us who cherish and support the collective bargaining rights of Canadian labour can no longer justify the senseless acts of these dissident elements in the post office work force. A,mere handful are spoiling the reputation of thousands of dedicated postal workers. The union seems to encourage these illegal acts. The government and its rule-bound supervisory personnel seem incapable of doing anything but promoting confrontation. A Crown corporation may not be the answer. The post office may have to be sold and a proper contract worked out With a private mailing firm which would guarantee full service in unprofitable and outlying areas. It is the obligation of, the Federal Government to put the people of Canada first and to call immediately for a' radically new way of moving the • mail. (Contributed) • WITHOUT TREES WOULD BE Ii By Keith Rouiston We can change our world Part of life in the 1970's seems to be a feeling of hopelessness. "You can't fight city hall" has become a phrase that is parat of our everyday language. Such an attitude, that the individual has little power to change things, seems strange in our democratic society. One could understand it in the totalitarian society of many countries where the importance of the individual is minor compared to the importance of the state. But our whole society in the West is built on the rights of the individual, ..his important part in society as a whole. But the rights of the individual in ' Canada these days seems to be limited to filling his pocket's while doing as little work as possible. The individual should, in theory anyway, be working, with other individuals to make the' country a better place. Instead it seems it's every man for himself. We have all kinds of excuses of course. There are many restrictions these days on what an individual person can do to better things. Governments, business, labour unions, institutions of every descriptions are also so huge these days that the influence of a single human being seems about the same as throwing a pebble in the 'ocean. Yet most of us give up without even making an effort. We'd rather sit aroundandfeel sorry for ourselves than get out and try to change the- world. • We living in small towns have a very special opportunity to change our "world". We may not be able to solve the problems of , the Middle East, or bring about government reform in Rhodesia, but we can make our own town a better place to live. The individual in the city may have a reason to feel that he is powerless to get things done, but the person who feels that way in small towns is simply loOking for an excuse to sit on his butt and do nothing. In a small town any individual who really wants to make the effort, can do a good deal to change things for the better. The task may look impossible at first, the odds may seem too high, but if the person jumps in and gets involved instead of sitting back and thinking of all the ob stacles, he'll be surprised at how a good idea, fueled by enthusiasm, can catch on. Hogwash, you say. I couldn't do something like that. I'm just an ordinary little guy. I'm not rich. I don't have a lot of influence: I don't have the ear of the powerful in my town. But around you. In every town you'll see exampleS of people who have accomplished things who weren't rich or powerful or didn't have friends who. were. Those things matter a good deal in the city but in small towns they are not so important. Oh I'm not, saying that a guy without a penny to his name can succeed in putting over some grandoise scheme to, say, build an indoor swimming pool for the community, although even that is not impossible: I'm saying that there are thousands of little things that can improve a community that the individual can be responsible for getting started. The problem is that in recent years we've fallen into the trap of expecting the government to do everything. If 'Somebody gets•an idea for something,-perhaps a day care centre for children, their first idea is to go to the government to get the money. If the local council turns them down because they don't want to raise taxes, the idea often dies and a bitter group of people go home feeling they can't fight city hall. Yet that's not the way the people who built this part of the country did things. Their first reaction to any problems wasn't to go to the government, but to get together and work toward a solution. If a person had an idea for som e project, he'd talk to his friends ab out it and find all the interested people he could, call a meeting and try to get a movement started to achieve the goal. That is what led t'- so many ,of, the things we now take for granted; our schools., our hospitals, our arenas, many of our industries, our town halls, etc. etc. These things were usually begun not by government action but by people action. It was usually the idea of one person who worked hard to have that idea accepted. The individual can still play such a role today in our small towns, but we have to stop sitting back looking for excuses why we can't get things done. We've got to stop looking to government, be it the municipal-, provincial or federal, to solve all our problems because we should have learned by now that they that .giveth can also taketh away as we've seen so graPhiCally in things such as the hospital disputes. We need to stand on our own two fee,t and ,work among ourselves .to solve our own problems. We've got the power to do that and we'd all be .much better off if we used it. 'OMPIXIE!