HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-03-21, Page 37THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 1990. PAGE 5.
Family split hard
on poor T.C.
Every day when I walk to work I have to
go past the mansion, and everytime I do. it
makes me think about the split-up and I
feel bad.
Not so much for the man and the woman.
They’re adults and there’s plenty of loot to
go around, so no matter what kind of a
financial arrangement the legal weasels
hammer out, neither of them will go
without breakfast.
I don’t feel bad for the kids from the
former marriages either. They’re all grown
up and on their own - and from what 1 can
see, none too fond of the bickering couple
anyway.
No, I don't feel sorry for any of the adults
involved. It’s the kid, T.C. Every once in a
while when I’m going by the mansion, I’ll
see one of the household retainers taking
T.C. for a walk. Sometimes they’ll pass
right by me, and little T.C. will look up at
me with those big gray sad eyes as if to
say, “Hey, mister ... what’s going on? Can
you tell me what’s going on?’’
Did I say Tittle’ T.C.? Well, that’s not
quite accurate. T.C. may be just a
pre-schooler, but he’d go about 150 pounds
buck naked. Whis is what he is when I see
The International
Scene
“ - ------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------——
Canadians find
no shortage
of scapegoats
BY RAYMOND CANON
Canadians are in a complaining mood
these days. If it’s not one thing that annoys
them, it is another. There are people who
seem to blame any number of ills, real or
imaginary, on free trade, the government,
the French Canadians, the weather, the
Americans or any number of a number of
culprits. The interest rates are too high ...
or is it inflation? Perhaps both? Certainly
few people would hesitate from complain
ing about taxes but then they have always
been fair game for someone looking
for something on which to lay all sorts of
blame. Let’s see if we can get a bit of
perspective on all this wailing and gnash
ing of teeth.
If you care to look, you will notice that
the main thing taking place in the world is
4 restructuring of businesses by those com
panies which can be labelled “multi
national”. They own or control plants in
any number of countries, including Cana
day, and they find that, if they are to
remain competitive, they have to either
shut down some of these plants or else
curtail their operations. Thus over the past
little while we have seen, for example,
Gerbers Baby Foods announce that they
are shutting down their operations in
Niagara Falls and move back to the United
States. A little bit earlier, General Motors
Diesel made a similar announcement but in
the opposite direction. They stated that
they were closing down their locomotive
plant in the U.S. and moving all their
operations to London. The Japanese,
Germans, French, Dutch, Swiss and all the
others are engaged in the same game; it is
not something pertinent to Canada only.
There is nothing we can do to stop it. To
attempt to do so would be akin to King
Canute ordering the tide to turn around
and go back out before it was ready to do
so. The business world in the last decade of
this century has become highly mobile and
will go where it has the chance of making
the highest profit. Thus, to blame what ails
us on free trade is to me highly erroneous. I
him out for a walk - barefoot and buck
naked, if you don’t count the leash.
Yes, leash. T.C. is a dog. He’s as doggy
a dog as the most carnivorous, card-carry
ing canine ever to case a mailman’s ankle.
It’s T.C. Puck I’m talking about. He’s a
six-year-old fluffy white Bouvier des
Flandres. He is also the adopted ward of
Harold and Yolanda, Canada’s answer to
Caesar and Cleopatra, Donald and Ivana ...
Or maybe just Punch and Judy.
In any case, I do get to walk past Maple
Leaf Gardens several times a week which is
where, off and on, I get to see T.C. Puck
padding along from fire hydrant to fire
hydrant, towing one of Harold Ballard’s
two-legged minions behind him. I don’t
know if it’s inherent in the breed or a result
of his current family situation but T.C. is
the saddest looking mutt I’ve ever seen.
And that shouldn’t be. After all, in
addition to being a Bouvier, T.C. belongs
to that other elite species of dogdom -
Canus Hirsutus. Also known as Shaggy
Dog.
You know about Shaggy Dog stories
don’t you? My dictionary defines them as
stories in which the punchline is totally
irrelevant - or, any joke involving talking
animals. This may well be the classic
Shaddy Dog story:
A man walks into a cosmetic surgeon’s
office and takes off his high top hat to
reveal a full-grown chihauhau sitting on
top of his bald head. Startled, the surgeon
says “W--what’s your problem?’’
have always claimed, and continue to do
so, that free trade with the U.S. is the best
thing we have going for us in facing this
dilemma and, if we play our cards right, we
will make it work for us and not become
slaves to it.
For those who complain about higher
taxes or reduced government services, not
to mention unemployment and inflation,
those two perennial threats to our sanity,
let me point out that the problem can be
traced back to our penchant for living
beyond our means as a country and
expecting the world to bail us out. Both
Canada and the United States are runnjng
a very bad deficit in both their federal
budgets and in their current account.
These are two deficits to contend with, by
the way, not just one. Our deficits are so
big that we have to sell bonds to investors
in other countries in order to pay for it; we
cannot finance it ourselves. When we pay
interest on these bonds, it flows out of the
country and is lost to us. To understand the
feeling, let’s assume that you have to pay
10 per cent of your income each month to
somebody from which you have little if any
chance of getting it back. It goes without
saying that you will have to lower your
standard of living personally but that is
precisely what is happening to our country.
Yet, when the government attempts to
cut expenditures, i.e. Via Rail, closing of
military bases etc. many people who have
no direct connection with either of them
start to scream like stuck pigs. Right now
The view from Mabel's
Continued from page 4
you imagine what people who have to line
up for bread must think when they hear
that ball players earning an average of
$500,000 a year and some as much as $3
million complain they aren’t being treated
fairly?”
THURSDAY: Ward was upset with his
government about the fact Mounties are
going to be allowed to wear turbans.
“Have they no regard for tradition?”
Yeh, said Tim, they should think more
about tradition and go back to the days
when the Mounties had to be over six feet •
and couldn’t be married. “And as for
The man stares steadily at the surgeon.
The surgeon looks nervously at the man ...
The chihuahua says “Doc, I want you to
get this man off my rear end.’’
What? You’re still reading? Okay here’s
another:
Hobo walks up to a bartender and says
“My good man, I have no money but I do
have a talking dog. If I prove it will you
treat me to a beer?’’
The bartender, bored, agrees. The man
turns to his mutt perched on a bar stool
beside him and says “Okay Rex, what’s
the thing on top of a house that keeps the
rain out?”
“Wrrruffff!”
“And what kind of shape does your
master wake up in after a night on the
town?”
“Wrrruffff!”
“And who was the all-time greatest
hockey player who ever lived?
“Wrrruffff!”
Bartender yells “That’s it! Yer a pair o’
fakes! Outta my bar, both of ya!”
The pair scurry out the door and down
the street, the man shuffling disconsolate
ly, the dog sniffing garbage cans. Sudden
ly, the dog looks up at the man and says:
“Do you think I should have said ‘Wayne
Gretzky’?”
Okay, okay ... it’s not the greatest
Shaggy Dog joke ever told, but I’m going to
whisper it to T.C. Puck the next time I see
him in front of the Maple Leaf Gardens.
He looks like one Shaggy Dog that can
use ail the laughs he can get.
30 per cent of the taxes we pay to the
federal government go to pay the interest
on this debt. Regardless of what political
party you belong to, it should be obvious
that it puts any government in Ottawa in a
horrible bind, not just the current one.
To make matters even worse, Canadians
feel that it is their right to go off to foreign
countries for holidays. It is, that is if you
can afford it, but the sad fact is that we
continue to spend much more in these
foreign countries than foreigners to do in
Canada. This causes a further drain and
further debt which has to be financed.
What we have to do is to take any steps we
can think of to attract more tourists to
Canada and, what is more important, treat
them so well that they will want to come
back and bring others with them. Don’t
forget that tourism is one of the most
labour-intensive of industries and would do
wonders for our rate of unemployment if
we were to take it seriously. It would not
only create jobs, it would also help to pay
for all those foreign trips we take so freely.
Perhaps you have got the point by now.
We can go around blaming a host of other
people for what ails us when in truth we,
and we alone, can do something positive
about it in both the short and the long run.
Wasting precious time and energy on such
things as unilingual municipalities is
self-defeating. All municipalities should
concentrate on making themselves attrac
tive to new businesses and foreign tourists.
The outside world does not owe us a living;
we are the only ones that can provide that.
women in the Mounties, that certainly
wouldn’t be allowed if we worried about
tradition.”
“So?” said Ward, looking at Julia,
“what would be wrong with that?”
“Guys like you keep saying things like
that and you’ll be wearing something
wrapped around your heads too,” Julia
said, “and it won’t be a turban.”
FRIDAY: The economy should get a bit of a
boost today, Billie figures because the
balance of payment should improve. “With
Harold Ballard coming home it means they
can bring all those reporters and photo
graphers back from Florida. That’s got to
save the country a bundle.”
Letter
from the
editor
Are we rural people
a visible minority
BY KEITH ROULSTON
If people in rural areas were a visible
minority maybe people wouldn’t be able to
use the stereotypical cliches they keep
using to describe us.
The people of Kincardine are getting the
treatment this week. Following the acquit
tal of Julie Bowers in the death of her son
Dustin last week the media rushed to the
lakeside town and all of them seemed
equipped with word processors prepro
grammed with rural cliches. Take the
Toronto Star for example. Its writer relates
the change of venue of the trial because the
Bowers’ lawyer felt she couldn’t get a fair
trial in “the sleepy town of 6,500 on the
shores of Lake Huron”. Now tell me, has
there ever been any town under 500,000
that hasn’t been described by a Toronto
reporter as being sleepy?
At least another Star reportei used a
little imagination (or perhaps the thesaurus
in her word processor) when she called
Kincardine “a placid Lake Huron town”.
As someone once said, enough of these old
cliches, let’s have new cliches instead. Just
how placid Kincardine is after having one
confirmed murder and one mysterious
disappearance in the past two years might
still be questioned.
I like the other phrase the writer slipped
in to give some local colour. She talked
about the witnesses at the trial ranging
from “experts to the average Kincardine
folk who hang out at Donuts Galore and do
their grocery shopping at Zehrs.” Kind of
conjures up images of Andy and Obie and
Aunt Bea lounging on a front porch in
Mayberry doesn’t it? Can you imagine a
writer ever talking about witnesses from
Scarborough being “average Scarborough
folk who hang out at Tim Horton’s and do
their grocery shopping at Loblaws?”
The Toronto reader can practically
picture those simple Kincardine folk in
their placid flannel shirts and knee-high
boots. They’d never get the impression
that Kincardine probably has the highest
concentration of nuclear scientists, electri
cal engineers and other highly-educated,
highly-paid professionals in the country.
After a while you wonder if you should
just ignore it all and realize no matter what
you do they’ll still slip back to those
comfortable cliches in the Star and other
urban media. We’ve certainly had plenty of
practice in our corner of the world. There
may be few towns of its size around that
get as much national press coverage as
Blyth does with dozens of theatre review
ers and feature writers descending on the
village every summer for the Blyth
Festival. If there were as many cliches in
the plays on stage as there are in the
writings of these urban sophisticates, the
Festival would be closed down in no time.
For years there was the “discovery
review”. This consisted of the writer who
discovered the Festival for the first time
and was amazed that something so good,
and so important nationally, could take
place in this little farming village. The
article always started off something like:
“through the corn fields and across from
the hotel...”.
Then there’s the talk about the audience.
Writers like to talk about sun-reddened
necks and women in print dresses. You can
almost see a flood of Amish in the theatre
when you read it. Probably after the play
these people go straight to the hoedown.
Probably the only reason they’re in the
theatre is that the television’s broken down
and since they can’t read they have to find
entertainment somehow ... especially since
there isn’t a good greased pig contest on
this weekend.
Ah well, Blyth’s lucky. For all the cliches
at least the publicity is favourable. How’d
you like to be people in Kincardine where
the other kind of rural cliche is being
played out in the media: the small town
Continued on page 20