HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-05-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1990. PAGE 5.
Confessions
of a pack rat
If an Individual collects anything long
enough, it will eventually have some
value.
Dr. Alfred Kinsey
Well, Doctor Kinsey would know, I
guess. He’s the guy who spent several
years buttonholing perfect strangers and
writing down details of their sex lives.
Eventually, his jottings became the famous
Kinsey Report, which loosened the bustles
and wiggled the Long Johns of North
America in the mid-Fifties.
I’m glad to hear that the mere act of
hoarding creates value in a collection. That
means the five cardboard boxes and two
duffle bags mouldering quietly in the back
of my closet may actually be worth
something some day.
What’s in them? Nothing that anybody
else cares about, near as I can tell. The
boxes contain several dozen copies of a
comic book series call Jonah Hex. (Long
out of print and deservedly so). I just
dumped one of the duffle bags out on the
floor and I’m up to my fibulas in the
treasures therein. To wit: two old baseball
mitts, various old high school yearbooks,
The International
Scene
Bilingualism
contentions
in other countries too
BY RAYMOND CANON
Canada is counted among the countries
that are officially bilingual although,
judging from the comments that I read in
the paper from time to time, there are a
number of people who strongly believe that
this should not be the case. I am sorry that
I cannot agree with them but, before I get
into any argument, I thought it would be
propitious at this point to take a look at
some other countries that find themselves
in somewhat the same situation and see
just how they are handling it.
The three that I want to look at are
Finland, Belgium and Switzerland. The
first has Finnish and Swedish as its official
languages, the second has Flemish (or
Dutch) and French and the Swiss have no
less than three official languages and four
national ones but more of that in a
moment.
Let’s take a look at Finland first. It is by
far the largest of the three countries under
the microscope and has a climate that is
somewhat similar to Canada. The Swedish
speaking minority is located for the most
part in the southwest part of the country
along the coast of the Baltic Sea opposite
Sweden. They make up about 15 per cent
of the population and there are very few of
them indeed that have not taken the
trouble to learn Finnish, in spite of the fact
that this language has absolutely nothing
in common with Swedish; it belongs to a
totally different grouping. The Finnish
majority does not take the trouble to learn
Swedish unless, Of course, they feel that it
might be good for their career in either
business or the civil service. They are
certainly encouraged to do so by the
government but it is more or less up to
them. They may lose out on some jobs but
they cannot say that they do not know the
ground rules. In short, the situation is
somewhat the same as in Canada although
the French minority here is twice the
percentage compared to the Finnish situa
tion
By and large bilingualism works in
Finland even though it is rather low key;
the same cannot be said for Belgium where
some yellowing newspapers, two harmoni
cas, a couple of jack knives, three yo-yos, a
bow tie that lights up, a chunk of cora.', a
pair of ear muffs, a Cisco Kid gun holster,
a...well, you get the idea.
I’m a hoarder - card-carrying. As a
matter of fact, business cards are one of
the things I hoard. I find many things
difficult in this world - metric conversion,
F-stops, women, conversational Urdu -
but the hardest thing of all is to throw
things away. I just can’t do it. I keep
everything.
It might not be so bad if I trimmed my
inventory. Harley Yates of Tahoe, Cali
fornia restricts himself to door keys. He’s
got a little over 50,000 in his collection.
New Yorker Walt Kaufman is only inter
ested in cigarettes. He’s got 8,017 different
brands. Jarrod Booth of Salt Spring Island,
B.C., sticks to Christmas Cards. He’s got
more than 200,000 in his collection. Or,
take Brother Giovanni Battista Orsenigo, of
Rome. Brother Giovanni was a nineteenth
century religious dentist who decided to
keep every tooth he pulled. At the end of
his career his closet contained precisely
2,000,744 yanked teeth.
You see what those folks have that I
don’t have? They specialize. One line only.
They’re collectors; I’m a packrat.
Mind you, I’m not the most rabid of the
species. You’ll find those wretches down in
Garden Grove, California. Every Tuesday
night they get together around an indus
trial size urn of hot coffee and talk about
“saving”.
the two linguistic groups are continuously
at each other’s throats and watch each
other like hawks just in case one gets
something that the other doesn’t. The
Flamons or Flemish live in the more
prosperous north, understandably since
Flemish is nothing more than a Dutch
dialect.
The French, or Walloons, live in the
south of Belgium along the French border.
The capital, Brussels, is considered to be a
bilingual city while the other two parts are
unilingual. One thing that you do not have
is a large minority of one linguistic group
living in the other area such as is the case
in, say, Montreal. To say that bilingualism
is alive and well in Belgium would be as far
from the truth as it is possible to get: any
false move and you are likely to have an
explosion.
With countries having difficulty main
taining bilingualism, it is nothing short of
remarkable that the Swiss manage to
maintain their equilibrium with no less
than four, of which three are official
languages. The three are German (70 per
cent) French (20 per cent) and Italian (nine
per cent); this means that all laws,
proclamations, etc. must be published in
the three languages. The fourth,
Romansch, is spoken by only one per cent
and is considered to be a national
language. Education can be given in that
language, newspapers can be printed but
not laws; given that there is such a small
Mabel’s Grill
Continued from page 4
parade in Moscow. “He wanted democracy
and now he knows how it feels',” Tim said.
Julia said Gorbachev should have a
meeting with Maggie Thatcher and Brian
Mulroney if he really wants to hear about
what people do to unpopular leaders.
“Yeh” said Hank, “they re-elect them.”
THURSDAY: Billie says he wants to apply
for the job if the Prime Minister goes ahead
with his threat to increase the size of the
Senate so he can outwit Liberal senators
who might want to block the GST. Seems
the PM is thinking that if there are too
many Liberals there he could increase the
size of the new Senate and make sure all
the new senators are people that will
support him.
“But”, said Tim, “you’ve never even
joined the Conservative party let alone
raised money for the party or recruited new
members, the kind of thing that usually
gets rewarded in the Senate.”
It’s the regular weekly meeting of Pack
Rats Anonymous.
Sounds ludicrous, but the hoarding
instinct among these folks is anything but
funny. The members collect everything
from paper clips to fabric remnants. One of
the members filled her house so full of
newspapers and flyers that she’s now
putting them in kitchen cabinets - even in
the refrigerator.
The afflication can even be deadly. A few
years ago, two New York twin brothers hit
the news when authorities broke into their
home to investigate suspected foul play.
The authorities found two corpses and
newspapers. Tons of them. The brothers
had stuffed the house until only winding
narrow tunnels connected the rooms. One
of the tunnels had collapsed and killed
them both.
The most frustrating thing about ‘pack
rat-ism’ is how little is known about it. It
affects people of all ages, all backgrounds,
all races, religions. Pack rats can be rich or
poor, male or female, smart or dumb. They
may be utterly normal in every other aspect
of their life and saddest of all, they may not
give a damn about the stuff they collect.
They just can’t bear to throw it out.
So why do they do it? Somebody once
asked Mister R.L. Chapman to explain his
hobby. He replied “I collect barbed wire
because I collect barbed wire.”
And, unsatisfying as it is, that’s just
about all you can say about the pack rat
business.
percentage of Romansch speakers, they
really have to work hard to maintain their
language and culture.
The Swiss, as you know, have a long
reputation for democracy but this should
not be taken to mean that the three
linguistic groups live in total harmony.
There is a certain amount of friction, and
only a few years ago the northern
French-speaking part of the canton of
Berne was allowed to break off from the
German-speaking part and form its own
canton. Cantons, by the way, are the Swiss
version of a province, although they are
understandably much smaller than ours.
The German speaking majority makes a
real effort to learn French which is just as
well since the French do not bother very
much to learn German. Italian is studied by
only the more educated Swiss which means
that the Italian speaking Swiss have to
make a real effort to learn enough German
and French to handle the many tourists
who come to the south of Switzerland.
Many Swiss have English as a second
language since it has become the language
of business.
The Swiss have discovered what many
Canadians might do well to learn - the
benefits of bilingualism, if the whole
matter is handled objectively, can far
outweigh the disadvantages. The Swiss
have also learned, as I indicated above,
that there will never be perfect peace but
they work hard to keep the friction to a
minimum.
“Sure,” said Billie, “but I’ll vote any
way he wants me to for the kind of money
senators get paid. I think I’m well
qualified-. I can sleep through political
speeches with the best of them.”
FRIDAY: Hank says he’s worn out and he
doesn’t know if he can go on much longer
but the season’s only half over. Julia was
sympathizing, thinking Hank was talking
about the spring planting season out on the
farm but Hank said he meant Stanley Cup
playoffs. “It takes a lot out of a guy staying
up to watch hockey games every night of
the week,” Hank says. “Thank goodness
they got rid of Los Angeles early or it would
have been really bad, having to stay up for
the west coast games.”
Tim said the hockey-every-night menu
on television is doing wonders for his
garden. “If there’s nothing else to watch
there’s no excuse for me to get out and do
some work outside,” he said.
Letter
from the
editor
Culture
isn’t just for
the elite few
BY KEITH ROULSTON
It seems to me that there is nothing more
dangerous in a democracy than those who
say, in effect: “You don’t know anything so
your opinion doesn’t count.”
All kinds of elites get involved in this
kind of put down, the kind of last resort of
those who don’t know how else to dismiss
criticism. It’s the kind of argument that
reminds me of lengthy discussions I used
to have with a relative who is a few years
old than me. If he was backed into a corner
and his points seemed not to be scoring he
would always come back with the put-down
“well when you get older you’ll under
stand.”
At one time or another nearly all of us
fall prey to the temptation to write off the
opinions of others because we don’t think
they know as much as we do. Newspaper
editors are certainly not immune to the
temptation. I’ve heard education officials
dismiss the concerns of parents because,
after all, the schools are filled with
professionals and parents are only
amateurs when it comes to education.
Medical people certainly don’t put much
stock in the opinions of herbalists and other
“amateurs”.
The world that occupies my “other life”,
the arts, is certainly full of people who do
not suffer fools gladly. With cutbacks in
arts funding and the criticism over things
like the famous striped painting bought by
the National Gallery for nearly $1.8 million,
many people in the arts feel under attack
these days. It results in some pretty
snobby, elitist comments.
Target of many of those comments has
been the head of the House of Commons
standing committee on communications
and culture, Felix Holtmann. Mr. Holt-
mann readily admits he is no expert in the
arts. As a rank outsider he can question
things that aren’t supposed to be question
ed.
I don’t know if there has been a single
article written about Mr. Hohmann’s
criticisms that hasn’t mentioned that he
was a Manitoba pig farmer before he was
elected to Parliament. A column in the
Toronto Star’s television magazine on the
weekend showed Mr. Holtmann chewing
on a stalk of wheat while tractors worked in
the background. Little more had to be said,
it appeared, to show he was a total
ignoramous who shouldn’t be allowed to
interfere with the professionals in the arts.
While I can sympathize with people in
''the arts who see how far Canada has come
in the last two decades in finding its own
identity through government funding of
theatre and music and visual arts and who
worry that government cost-cutting could
destroy all the progress, I get upset with
people who dismiss criticism of people like
Mr. Holtmann because they are Phili
stines. Culture, if it is to have any effect on
the country, must involve pig farmers and
autoworkers and saltminers as well as
socialites and lawyers and university
professors. Quite frankly, why should our
tax dollars be spent on elitist forms of the
arts that will only be appreciated by a small
fraction of the taxpayers of the country. If
the very rich want to support quirky art
projects with their own dollars, fine, but
they shouldn’t expect the bluecollar worker
to chip in very much.
Somewhere between the two extremes
now in evidence in the public funding of
the arts is a proper saw off. On one hand
there are the proponents of the market
place who argue that unless people swarm
in to see something, it hasn’t got any
value. In such a value system “Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles” has a higher
cultural value than anything that takes
place in a concert hall or a theatre or a
church for that matter.
But on the other hand there’s a kind of
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