HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1978-12-27, Page 2.11/J1I4E LS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1978
0011A11 10
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.
Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year.
Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each.
*CNA
•E',
111,2.
Brussels Post
Sugar and spice
By Bill Smiley
Behind the scenes
by Keith Roulston
Starting afresh
Brussels' New Year
'There are four days left of tired,old 1978 as this last issue of the
Brussels Post for the year goes to press.
She's been an interesting year, 1978, and as you'll see reading the
Brussels year in review which begins on page 4, brought both good
things and bad to our village.
But, on balance, Brussels comes out, of 1978 decidedly on the plus
side. We have new stores opened on our Main St., new people moving
here, building houses here. The people and their businesses are
welcome additions to Brussels.
We've got a new council, with some new members, eager to join the
incumbents in making a contribution to the village. We wish there well '
and hope that 1979 will mean co-operation and harmony in Brussels'
local government.
We're not sure what 1979 holds for Brussels,...nobody is, But we at
the Brussels Post will do our best to see that Post readers hear about
what's important to our village, quickly and, accurately.
We're looking forward to the new year and we're sure our readers
are too.
Happy New Year to you and yours and remember the Post is your
newspaper. Call us soon and after with local news.
Well, it's been quite a week. I've been on
TV, twice; I've slipped on the ice, fallen and
sprained my wrist; and I've had an operation
on my nose.
I was terrific on TV,, or so they tell me. I
missed it. The chap who did the interview
told me when it would appear, and I
promptly forgot. I called him to ask whether
tt would be shown again, and he told me
when. I made a special trip home at I p.m. to
see it. It had-been shown at twelve noon. My
wife was furious. I was just as glad. If I'd
seen it, I might have quit my job and run off
to Hollywood, there to become just another
ambitious starlet, subject to the whims of
casting directors and other such vermin'.
As for spraining my wrist, I wonder if it
weren't a psychological ploy. I was halfway
through marking ti ti pre-Christmas exams,
and my mind was beginning to crack. I'd
begun wondering whether the students and I
had been reading the same plays and
stories.
s e student, dealing with a story set in
South Africa, had a moose involved. A
moose. In South Africa. Another informed
me that Lady Macbeth, the great dark
murderess of Shakespeare's play, was sweet
and kind at first, and we sort of liked her, but
she got mean later.
Frankly, when I slipped on the ice and fell,
I wouldn't be surprised if I deliberately let
my wrist fold under me hoping it would
break, At any rate, I whimpered around for
several days, claiming I could mark no more
papers with a broken wrist, until an
unsympathetic doctor informed me it was a
nild sprain.
I didn't whimper on the operating table. I
just groaned and grunted with agony. First,
the doctor covered my eyes with various
towels and things, so I couldn't see the
needle and the scalpel approaching. I gritted
my teeth so hard a filling fell out.
Ever had a needle in the nose? Don't, if
you can help it. Tell them to knock you out
with a total. I've had them in every portion of
my anatomy, and the nose in Number One,
'except perhaps for the shot from the dentist
in the front upper gum.
There is, though, something mildly
intriguing when the doctor says, "You have
very tough skin on your nose, for some
reason." This-, while he's sewing you up,
and snip, snipping the loose ends of plastic
thread. The whole thing didn't hurt anymore
than a smash in the face with a knuckle
duster.
At any rate, Ill never again be able to say,
scornfully, "It's no skin off my nose."
I am a former managing editor of The '
United Church Observer and columnist on
The Globe and . Mail of Toronto, I ant doing
research dealing with the arrival in Canada
of thousands of orphan children from Britain
in the early years of the 1000s. I would be
pleased to hear; by letter, from people
throughout Canada who Caine to this country
through the varioUs organizations such as
Barnardo HorneS, Macpherson Homes, the
However, had lots of fun with thenose.
went straight from the operating tab lk hack
to school, and the students, understandably
were fascinated.
"Hoo hitcha, sir?" Told them they should
sec the .other guy.
".ter wife get violent at THIS hour in the
morning?" No, I told them quietly, it
happened the night before.
"What happened, sir?"
"Iliad my nose bobbed, Debbie. My wife
has been complaining for years that she
can't kiss me properly, because of that oig
nose, so I had a chunk removed.
Told another group that my nose had been
smashed into ground earthworm texture by
the Gestapo in World War II, and the steel
braces inserted by an eminent British
surgeon to give it a semblance of' shape had
finally rusted, and been remok ed
• To another class I stated solemnly that my
big, hooked nose had always bothered me,
as•being short or fat or riddled with acne
bothers other people, that I'd finally decided
to do something about it, and that if they
could wait until next Monday, when the
stitches came out, they'd find I had a
charming, turned-up nose with round
nostrils through which they could peer and
see my brain lurching around.
To still another class I suggested that a
hyena had escaped from the nearest zoo,
pushed in our unleeked cellar window, crept
up the stairs in the middle of the night, and
bitten off my nose at the roots.
A very large bandage on very large nose
made any of these stories acceptable, and
the more far-fetched the story, the better it
went over. I do believe I received the most
compassionate looks from the kids to whom I
suggested that I'd had to have the nose
amputated because I'd bent so close to a
pound of hamburger, looking for some meat
in it, that a rat had leaped out of it, nailed me
on the nose, and I'd had to have it cut off
because of possible cyrrhosis of th,.. liver
from a rat bite. I told them no nose is a good
nose, and they agreed.
Golly blue, this isn't much of a Christmas
cdumn, is it? Oh, well, Christmas is a big
pain in the arm, anyway. Beginning as a
pagan celebration, it has passed through a
spiritual celebration, based on a doubtful
bitthday of our Lord Jesus, right back to a
pagan rite based on advertising, materialism.
and turkeys,_ of all things.
Anyway, try to have a happy one,
everybody and we'll try to do the same. It's
the best we all can do in these perilous
times.
Fairbridge Society and so on.
I would also appreciate letters from
persons who worked for any of these
organizations (or others like them) or in
whose homes any of the children were
brought up. My mailing address is 303 St.
Lawrence St., Whitby, Ontario, IAN 1H2.
All letters Will be gratefully received and
acknowledged.
Kenneth Bagriell
By Keith Royalton
One of the nice things about the way our
system of time and date keeping is set up is
that we have plenty of opportunities to feel
that we are starting fresh. The coming of the
new year is one of our best chances to 'feel
we are making a new start, able to bid
goodbye to our old problems or faults and
start from scratch.
I suppose that's why the idea of New
Year's resolutions came about in the first
place. We have the chance to try to improve
on our faults. Of course we soon find out that
the new year isn't really a fresh start. We
still carry with us the weaknesses we had the
year before meaning that no matter how well
intentioned we are, we:re likely to find that
by the end of the first week in the new year
we've already broken most of our new
resolutions.
I'm either realistic or chicken, I haven't
quite figured out which yet, but over the
years I've tended to make my resolutions
along pretty general or non-:binding lines.
Once or twice at this time of the year I've
made some high-minded and sweeping reso-
lutions to cure some major fault and found
them pretty hard to keep. So I've begun to
react more like a politician, putting down
general principles by shying away from any
direct promises ray conscience can bug me
about when I break,
One of my aims this year is to make the
Most of every minute. I recently was helping
out a local writer who has been retired for
several years. He was writing a piece on
being a senior citizen and he was remarking
on all the things he suddenly realized he had
not been able to do in his lifetime. He would
walk into a library and see all the books he
had never read and know that he could never
hope to read them all. He would look at a
map and see all the places he had never
visited and realize he would never be able to
visit them all. He would think of all the
interesting things he would like to have done
in his life and realize how little time ire had
left to do them
This man was enjoying retirement years
the way few people do. It's a time of
excitement and joy for him because now he
can experiment ori so Many things.
I'M a long Way from retirement of course,.
but I've been struck. by the same thought at
titnes. Time is running out on all of u.S. If I
started right how to de all the things I would
like to do in this life, I'd run' out of time long
before I ran out of 'interesting things to do,
even if I lived to a ripe old age. Many of us
worry about money but our most precious
commodity is not money, but time. 'We can
always hope to earn more money. We can
even hope to win the lottery and suddenly
have more than we know what to do with.But
we can never win a time lottery and
suddenly be given more time than we know
what to do with.
Yet we waste time at a sinful pace. We
would never think of treating money the way
we do time, throwing it away on all the most
trivial things. I think for instance of the time
we waste in front of a television set from
which we get absolutely nothing except
another lost evening. Oh I'm not anti-tele.
vision on the whole, but there are a lot of
things on the tube these days which serve as
nothing more than tranquilizers to help us
pass the time in a state of stupor. I've been
guilty myself of watching too many such
shows lately. It's so easy to switch on the
set' when you're tired at the end of a day
and once it's on, it's so hard to switch off. It
hypnotizes you.
So my pledge this year is to watch the
television guide closely and only turn the set
oti when there is a program I will both enjoy
and get something from. The rest of the time
I'd like to spend delving into the shelves of
my library of books that I've collected
without reading over the years. There are so
many great authors whose works I haven't
even touched yet. That way I can get just as
latch enjoyment as I would have gotten froni
watching some silly, often uncomic comedy'
and be gaining a knowledge of what great
thinkers have had to say about the world.
I want to spend more time with my family
because I can't think of a better way to invest
time. The time put into helping children
grow will pay healthy dividends for the World
tomorrow. If we each can do a better job of
raising our children to be adults then the
world will improve significantly.
That idea of investing my time Most wisely
is the one resolution I have for the new year.
If we all thought of this year as our last (and
let's face it, it could be) and we all wanted to
accomplish as much as we could before we
left the earth, fast think how Much better
place the world could be when 19'9 becomes
1980.
To the editor: •
Writer wants to hear
from "Home" children