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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1978-10-25, Page 2IRUSSE LS ONTARIO WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1978 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat ,Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association eNA Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9,00 a Year. Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each. esTadatesmeo 11172 4Brussels Post What we don't see A big red juicy apple, jumping off the newspaper page and looking rood enough to eat. .A whole page of simple, inventive recipes for Thanksgiving special Ales, featuring readily available, reasonably priced fresh Ontario produce. That's what some of the citizens of Ontario have been lucky enough to see in a series of imaginatively produced and very practical ads promoting Foodland Ontario, ads sponsored by the province's Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The ministry deserves a heck of a lot of credit, both pushing the sale of our own farm produce and .for the attractiveness of the ads making the push. 'In fact, the Foodland Ontario series is such a good one that we hate to quibble about it at all. But quibble we must, on behalf of the large number of people in this Province who are exciusive weekly newspaper readers. Those people, and .their numbers are increasing, didn't get to see the Foodland Ontario ads, because they weren't carried in Ontario's community press. We 'know the big dailies have more readers than the Huron Expositor, the Listowel Banner or the Tilbury Times combined. And that the myth persists in some big city and agencies and board rooms that ads in the dailies reach all newspaper readers. That's just not true and as the community press gets better at telling advertisers its own story, those with a message to get to all of Ontario are turning to the province's smaller papers. Foodland Ontario, your ads are too good to confine them to those poor deprived people who don't read the weeklies. Behind the . scenes. It is ironic that C.B.C. television has picked this particular tir,e in history to produce a television history of one of Canada's most famous families, the Masseys. Whether you grew up in the country or in a big city like Toronto, it is almost impossible not to have had the Massey name imprinted in your memory. In the country it was famous for farm machinery. In Toronto the Massey names were carved in the corner stones of buildings like Massey Hall, Hart House and Massey College. A Massey, Vincent, became the first Canadian Govern- or General. Another, Raymond, became one of the foremost actors in Hollywood. They were everywhere. Yet they were not always rich and powerful, as the two-part television series showed. They came to Canada nearly 200 years ago from the United States in much the same state as other early settlers. They were poor. They worked hard to scratch a living from the eastern Ontario soil near Coburg. There was little convenience in their lives with no churches, no schools. They depended on the itinerant circuit riders of the Methodist church to provide their religion, their education and their news of She outside world. But in a little over half a century the Masseys went from being typical home- steaders to being among the wealthiest families in Canada. The change in condition was based on Daniel Massey's realization that the tools people were using on the farms just weren't cut out for the North American conditions. These simple, labour-intesive tools might have worked for nearly 2000 years in the small plots of Europe but they were too small for the :vast areas of Canada. He began making tools, first on his own farm and later in a shop in Newcastle. He made some toolsand imported others for sale. His son Hart became involved in the business too and applied the Methodist teachings about hard work and frugality even more than his father. He wanted to make everything and stop importing machinery. He drove himself and his family hard and soon the Masseys were not only supplying the Canadian market with machinery but exporting it around the world. There were riot one but two great Canadian names in farm Machinery manu- facturing in those days. The great rivalry was built up with the Harris family which battled for its share of the Canadian Market. Eventually the two companies merged to make up what was the most familiar name on Canadian farms when was growing tip: Massey,Harris. As I saidi the tilting of this special series IS ironic Coining as it does at a time when Canada is in bleak economic situation. We By Keith Roulston • face two major problems: unemployment and the falling Canadian dollar on the international money markets. We're stuck in a vicious circle: the more we import, the lower the dollar goes; the lower the dollar goes the more it costs to live. Canadian history and the Massey history. have much in common. The Massey family built huge wealth through providing for the needs of the Canadian farmer. They became a huge international success sending their combines in particular to all corners of the earth. Today, however, if you drive a Massey-Ferguson tractor you're not driving a Canadian product even if the company is one of the venerable parts of Canadian business history. The tractor will be imported as will much of the other equipment the company makes. Massey- Fergusson is spread out around the world and Canada is just a small part of the business any more. It's virtually impossible to find a tractor made in Canada today just as it's hard to find a truly Canadian car. There's nothing even Massey about Massey-Fergusson these days. The compnay is owned by one of those huge conglom- erates who control most large industries. It's business without a soul. Business without a nationality. All the counts is that the investors get a regular dividend cheque and the top management boys get their usual annual increases to their hefty salaries. Somehow along the road we've lost our way in Canada. There is proportionally less manufacturing in Canada today than there was 75 years ago. We've discouraged imaginative people who might, like the Masseys, have filled a need in our society through invention and industry. Instead we import our products and export work. We send our raw materials, the greatest advantage we have over other countries, to those countries and we let them make things from our materials which we then buy back at a higher cost. We've become a nation of suckers. This isn't saying the Masseys were perfect. Indeed the television series was perhaps a little too kind. Working conditions in factories like those of the Masseys weren't pleasant in the early days, It seems immoral that such huge welath could be collected to quickly on the backs of men who earned so little as the men who manned the foundaries of the Massey factories. Yet the slate for the family must also shoe the philanthropy that provided many institu- tions that have been a good part of life in Toronto for most of this century: And it must also show the jobs created by the Massey ideas and industry and the part the fat/illy played in mSking Canada a prosperous country. The real question is, is there room for any new families like the Masseys today.