HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1978-07-05, Page 2111111VSSE LS
ONTARIO,
WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1978
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published, each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario
by McLean Bros.Publishers Limited.
Evelyn Kennedy - Editor
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association
41pC A
Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year.
Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each.
On royalty
If you've ever been treated badly while visiting
another country, province or city you know the
experience is enough to make you firmly decide
never to set foot there again.
And you tell all your friends about the rudeness or
unpleasantness you ran into and in effect tell them
not to" bother visiting that spot themselves.
Anybody who travels anywhere knows that people
make the place. Lazy, inattentive people make the
place unpleasant, just like friendly, helpful people
make it somewhere you want to come back to.
That's why we think a "We treat you royally" blitz
that Ontario is sponsoring around the province is a
good idea. "We treat you royally" buttons are
sprouting on those who serve tourists and travellers.
Brussels isn't a great big tourist area, no. But we
get our share of visitors and we should be prepared
to treat them so well that they'll want to come back.
There are eight simple ways to treat visitors royall,
the province says:
1. SMILE. It's the quickest way in the world to
make a friend. If you look angry, your visitor will feel
uncomfortable—and that's the last way a visitor
wants to feel.
2. LISTEN. Some visitors have different
languages, different accents, different customs. If
you listen carefully to a tourist's needs,' you'll be
better able to help him.
3. BE POLITE. "Thank you" is probably the most
important thing you can say to make a visitor feel
that his visit has been appreciated. Simple courtesy
will work wonders.
4. BE PROMPT. Most tourists only have a short
time to visit with us, so naturally they don't want to
spend their time waiting to be served. Do you like
waiting on your vacation?
5. BE HELPFUL. Try to know your area well so
that you can help visitors find their way. Visitors
often ask direction to hotels, banks, hospitals,
restaurants, sightseeing attractions, liquor outlets
and a host of other places.
6. BE CLEAN. Nothing turns a tourist off like
grubby people and dirty places.
7. RESPECT THEIR MONEY. A visitor's money
represents his country, his work and his worth.
However much or little it's worth in terms of
Canadian dollars, never treat it as "funny money"
and always give the best possible rate of exchange.
8. WISH EVERY VISITOR A HAPPY DAY. It
makes a tourist feel good to think that somebody
cares. And if a visitor feels good, he'll come back
again and again.
Health Unit to do tests
(Continued from Page 1)
porting.
County Council accepted the
Board of Health's recom-
mendation that. the program be
initiated and that Mrs. Shirley
Steepe be retained on an annual
basis rather than on a ten-month
period.
Huron County warden Gerry
Ginn said it was a good chance for
:the Board of Health to expand its
services for working class people.
Also in the Board of Health
report it was stated that official
notification had been received
dated June 2 that Dr. Brian J.
Lynch has successfully completed
the course leading to a Diploma in
Public Health and that the Board
had appointed Dr. Lynch as
Medical Officer of Health for
Hawn County effective June 2 in
accordance with the Public Health •
Act at an annual salary of $36,000
per agreement dated August 26,
1977.
(Continued on Page 7)
Sugar and Spice
by Bill Smiley Brussels Post
Young people
I don't receive many letters from young
people, with comments on my ideas in this
column. That's to be expected. Young people,
quite naturally, are extremely self-centred. I
know I was.
They are becoming extremely aware.ot their
own "self", their individualism. They are
extremely interested in sex, love, some kind of
belief they can hang onto, some guru with all
the answers. And good luck to them, even
though there is no such thing.
They are' not interested in the maudlin
meanderings of a middle-aged (sic!) man who
doesn't seem to know from one week to the
next what he really believes in.
It's not that I don't get along with young
people. From the age of about one to
twenty-one, they and I are on the best of
terms. There's only one fly in the fun. I can't
help teasing them. It's a rotten quality and
I'm always sorry when I do, but some demon
urges me on.
For example, my older grandson hit back
when I'd needle him- by saying, "Jolly
good!", when he'd try to make a Tarzan leap
and land on his ear. He responded with,
"Jolly bum-bum", to let me know Jae didn't
like it. By saying a bad word, he put me in my
place.
He underlined his individuality by such
remarks as, "No way", when I'd try to tease
him into something he didn't want to, or
couldn't do, "Bugger off" when I'd pretend to
mock anger and threaten dire punishment. He
didn't learn these terms, you'll be happy to
know, from his gran, grandad, mother or
father. He learned them from the other little
punks at day-care.
Teenagers are just as easily teased, and
pretty vulnerable. After spending nine .
months goofing off, they come up to you as
exam-time looms, with a tortured
expression, as though they had to go to the
bathroom, and • could hardly wait, and
whimper, "Sir could you tell me if I have to
write the final .exam?"
I reply to a freckled redhead, "Not unless
you have freckles and red hair.' There are all
kinds of variations on this. If it's a boy, I might
say, "Not if you can take me to a trout stream
and guarantee I catch my limit." You can see
the wheels spinning wildly in his motorcycle-
haunted mind, this boy who's never caught a
trout in his life. They HATE me.
From about twenty-one for the next ten
years, I can scarcely stand young people. They
• become pompous. They think their mildly
socialist ideas, so hackneyed you can't believe
it, are freshminted: They want to change the
world and you: your religion, your ideas, your
life-style.
After that they're not so bad, and they have
acquired that rueful resignation that most
civilized people get after pounding their heads
against life long enough to soften them
irredeemably.
From about forty on, readers and I are on
It's hard to remember in the heat of July,
why so many Canadians abandon this country
every winter to seek warmer climates,
As I drive down our dusty concession on the
way to town these days, I find it unbelievable
that only a few short months ago there were'
days when the car couldn't even make it along
the road. Where the roadside grass and weeds
now grow were once towering snowbanks. If
you told a stranger from another land all this,
he'd think you were out of your nut.
While many miss the heat of Canadian
summer and try to recapture it on the beaches
of Florida or Mexico what I'd really like to
remember next January as I push my car out
of a snowbank for the thirty-fifth time are
some of the other things of summer, things;
I'm afraid that aren't so easily recaptured.
For instance, they cut the hayfield beside
our house this past week and released one of
the most subtle and pleasant sensations in the
world: the scent of new mown hay drifting in
on the warm air. Keep your Chanel No. 5 or all
your other expensive, commercial smelly
things, nothing can match that smell. Arid
Miami Beach or, the Bahamas aren't going to
be able to bring that smell next winter either.
In fact about the closet you're likely to come
the same set of rails, and though they can and
do attack me furiously, at least they know,
most of them, that there is more gray in the
world than there is black and white. •
Their letters are much more interesting
than those of young people: witty, astringent,
, pejorative, sometimes brutal, often kindly,
perceptive, sympathetic, nagging. They have
lived, and they know that the world has them
by the tail, not vice versa.
In response to a recent column, half-joking,
asking if anyone had a job for my daughter, I
received a great letter from A.R. Kirk, of
Renfrew.
"Yes, I have a job...New job requirements
include a new baby in 1979, and another new
baby every two years until 1989, when she and
her husband will be the parents of eight
healthy children. That was an average family
in the early and best development years of
Canada."
He goes on to explain that my daughter
would never be out of work. "She will remodel
and make clothing for her children and herself
from the abundant supply of slightly used
clothing you can get at a rummage sale for a
song."
"She will with the help of her husband and
you her father, and your wife her mother,
have a large fruit and vegetable garden: the
children will help."
Mr. Kirk goes on, seriously, and I'm half
inclined to agree with him. But he doesn't
know a few things about our Kim and her kids.
In the first place, they already look, as though
they'd been dressed from a rummage sale,
without any re-modelling.
In the second, where do they get the land
for this big garden? Young people today have
very little chance of ever owning a home of
their own, let alone one with garden space.
-What really hurts, though, is when he
suggests that such a life would interfere with
my vacation trips to exotic places. "Think of
the pleasure you will have, using vacation
money saved, to help out the finances of your
grandchildren in small sums where most
needed."
Dear Mr. Kirk: Those small sums have
prevented me from having a decent vacation
for years. A penny saved is a penny earned,
but a dollar to my daughter is a, dollar I'll
never see again. Thanks anyway. '
Mr. Kirk and his wife are 78 and 74
respectively, with seven of a family and
twenty-one grandchildren. He would like to
live to be 100 years old, "life is so
interesting."
Bless you, sir. May you do so. May you be
pinching your wife lovingly at 98, and she
responding.
But don't ask me to take on six more
grandboys. I said to my wife the other night,
"I have a feeling in my bones, just a
premonition, that some disaster is about to
befall me."
She answered, "Oh, didn't I tell you? The
boys are coining for the weekend."
•
is to visit a neighbourhood barn at feeding
time when that same hay is loosed for the
cattle and some of the old perfume returns.
There's another precious smell of summer
I'd love to be able to bottle too, that's the
spring air laden with the sweet smell of lilac
blossoms, or for that matter, cherry blossoms.
The perfums fills the air for a few brief days -
then is gone for another year, leaving only the
memory. It's this fleeting quality of course
that makes it precious. The weather of
summer lasts for months but the really special
things come and go in hours.
There are tastes of summer that will be
Missed more next winter than the hot weather
too. How in January can one adequately
remember the exquisite pleasure of biting into
a strawberry fresh from a strawberry patch.
You can freeze them of course and they'll
seem a delight when the snow is deep around
the house, but they're riot a patch on the real
thing. You can buy imported strawberries in a
supermarket - but they've long lost their
freshness in the trip north and can't possibly
compare.
Or how about a tomato, picked from your
own garden, brought into the hosue, washed
(Continued on Page 8)
Behind the scenes
By Keith Roulston