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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-07-11, Page 5Arthur Black Memories of a jerk I guess all of us carry around our own personal file of excrutiating memories -- you know, those zircon-encrusted remini­ scences of moments in our past when we made absolutely the wrong move, zigged when we should have zagged, did some­ thing dopey or disreputable or just downright dumb. Blew it. I’ve certainly made my stabs at a Merit Badge for Jerkdom. There was the time I heaped ridicule on a kid in my class just because he was different from the rest of us. He went on to become a missionary. I still wince remembering the time I smart-mouthed the ticket-taker at a hotel dance. Challenged him to meet me in the parking lot and settle it man-to-man. Sneered at him when he declined. The next day I found out he was an off-duty cop with a black belt in Karate. Some nights when I can’t sleep a whole pantheon of folks I’ve snubbed or jilted or short-changed march across the bedroom The International Scene I On the way to 50 years as a foreign correspondent BY RAYMOND CANON In thinking about an article for this week it has just occurred to me that this marks the fortieth year of my efforts as a journalist on foreign affairs or as a “foreign correspondent’’ as we so proudly called ourselves at one time. When I started, I must admit, I was just that; my first article was sent off from Paris and I recall vividly the feelings I had as I sat down at my portable typewriter and expressed my findings on how France in general and Paris in particular was coping with the post-war period. I still have a copy of that article. In retrospect it looks rather stilted and juvenile and it undoubtedly was both of those. I was admittedly very young and my writing to that date had been spasmodic and not deserving of any prizes. 1 admire the patience of my first editors who never seem to have lost faith in me. At least I was right on the scene; I had a decided advantage with my fluency in eight languages and, like many another jour­ nalist, I went where angels feared to tread. So it was that I trotted off, typewriter and all, to cover Yugoslavia after Tito had kicked out the Russians. I was on the scene when the Hungarians came across the Austrian border in great numbers as a result of the Russian invasion of their homeland. I was also one of the first journalists to drive through Poland and Czechoslovakia on my way to Moscow, a trip which among other things, saw me interviewed in sight of the Kremlin by a Russian newspaper. I filed stories from Baghdad, Beirut, and Kuwait in an effort to describe what the wealth of OPEC had done to the Middle East. I wrote on the life of Spaniards under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, an effort which got me declared “persona non grata” by the Spanish government. Among all that I found time to write human interest stories on my beloved Switzerland. Who can ever say that my life has been dull! ceiling, looking down at me with reproach­ ful eyes. And usually about fourth in the parade I see my little eight-year-old niece looking back at me tearfully, pumping away on her accordion. Must have happened 15 years ago. I was having a dinner with her folks. Over coffee and dessert, her Mom said, as parents are wont to do, “Pattie, why don’t you get out the accordion and play a tune for Uncle Art?’’ Patti, I recall was less than enthusiastic about the idea. She’d just started lessons and had some distance to go to catch Doug Kershaw. She hauled out this great, ungainly multi-buttoned chrome and bel­ lows monstrosity and began to pump and wheeze (Oh Lord, I can hear it as I type) an emphysematic rendition of “Lady of Spain’’. It was awful. So awful that the corners of my mouth began to twitch, and my chest began to heave and tears came to my eyes and suddenly, against my will I was guffawing and gasping and guffawing some more. It was that horrible forbidden kind of laughing fit that attacks in school auditor­ iums and funeral halls when you know the least appropriate thing you could possibly do is laugh. So of course you laugh all the harder. I couldn’t stop. Patti’s mom was getting mad and Patti was getting embarrassed, which made her play even worse. Which made me laugh even harder. I eventually got control of myself and My 40 years of writing about other countries have led me to one very important conclusion; there is no such thing as ultimate truth. You are only as objective as your likes and dislikes and we all have them. I like to think that I am as objective as any; I have been a minority of one so many times in my life that I have come to accept that my minority viewpoint does not always coincide with that of the majority. I once found myself in an Arab market and realized that I was the only male there who was not wearing the traditional Arab dress. It made me realize what many people in Canada feel when they arrive here hoping to make a new life for themselves. It is, I discovered, one of the best ways I could have ever found to learn a high level of tolerance. Even with my languages there have been a number of occasions when I found myself in countries where I understood not a word. What a horrible feeling it is not to be able to converse but that, too, teaches you Don’t feel guilty about eating beef FROM THE KINCARDINE INDEPENDENT The common cow is much under attack these days. A Canadian press story last week once again listed the litany of sin of cows. They contribute to the greenhouse effect by doing what comes naturally - producing methane. Eating cows also, goes the story, contributes to the destruction of the Brazilian rain forest. Perhaps their worst sin is that they are inefficient - they eat too much grain to produce a pound of protein. Should the people living in Bruce County, the top beef producing area in the province, feel guilty? No, say the people from the Beef Information Centre. Cattle do not need grain to survive. In North America, they’re usually fed grain for a short period to improve flavour and tenderness. Canada has three times more surplus grain each year than is fed to cattle. Eating less beef would not free up grain for the world’s hungry. The World Bank says the world has enough food - hunger is an economical and political problem. When you’re buying a hamburger at a told monstrous lies about how good it was, but I'didn’t fool anybody, and I’m pretty sure that neither Patti nor her parents have entirely forgiven me to this day. I know I certainly haven’t forgiven me. Maybe that’s what this column is all about - an apology 15 years overdue. All I can say in my defence is that it wasn’t Patti’s playing. It was the accordion. It has always been inherently silly to me. The accordion is to musical instrumentation as Eddy the Eagle is to ski-jumping and Eddy Shack was to hockey. I just can’t take accordions seriously. When somebody starts to play one it has the same effect as a sketch by Stephen Leacock. The accordion even looks dumb - like a nightmare mating between a pterodactyl and a dwarf s piano. Incredibly, it has not survived for more than a century and a half - it looks like it’s even making a faddish comeback. Accordions are popping on on compact discs and album jackets all over. The hottest musical group currently sweep­ ing San Francisco is a gaggle of raving accordomaniacs that calls itself “Those Darn Accordions’’. I would have chosen a feistier adjective. Accordions in vogue. It’s too depressing. What’s that? You kind of like accor­ dions? My condolences. Please don’t ever invite me to a patio party. And to Patti, who is no longer an eight-year-old budding musician, but a grown-up, brand-new mother with a brand new baby girl - sorry, kiddo - I was a jerk. I’ll make it up to you with a nice gift for the baby. I haven’t decided what to get but you can bet it won’t be accordion lessons. tolerance. Some wise man once said that learning another language opens up a thousand fascinating doors in your life. Can you just imagine how many of these doors have been opened for me and you can, I think, understand my efforts to get all young Can adians to learn the other national language plus one other. I hope that, when you read my articles, you can realize, then, that they have been written by someone who has had countless doors opened into other countries. I try to share my fascination with you; it has taught me that there are delightful and caring people everywhere which more than make up for those who see little good in anybody else. Over the years I have written about the plumber in Russia, the hotel clerk in Iraq, the Swissair pilot, the Dutch family who couldn’t do enough for Cana­ dians, the Italian priest and his two sisters who made me feel completely at home even though I was Protestant etc. etc. The list is endless and this is by and large the world that 1 hope you find. fast food chain, you're not eating Brazilian beef. Brazilian beef can only enter the country in a cooked and processed form and it only accounts for .3 per cent of our beef consumption. Health regulations do not permit the importation of fresh and frozen beef from Brazil because Hoof and Mouth disease is still a problem in that country. What about methane? Environmen­ talists feel that methane from all sources accounts for 12 to 18 per cent of greenhouse gases. According to Environ­ ment Canada, carbon dioxide is the major component (50 per cent) of greenhouse gases. All ruminants worldwide (cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo, elk, deer) contribute about 15 per cent of the total amount of methane produced and Canadian and U.S.A, beef production together accounts for less than 0.6 per cent of the total methane produced in the world. Cows might be gaseous and short on social skills, but they don’t appear to be a threat to the survival of mankind. Unless you’re an animal lover, you shouldn’t feel too guilty the next time you enjoy a Bruce County steak. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 1990. PAGE 5. Letter from the editor What kind of country will it be? BY KEITH ROULSTON I always suffer a little from culture shock when I go off to a city, particularly Toronto, and discover the different face Canada puts on with its many ethnic groups from around the world. Stand at the corner of Yonge and Bloor in Toronto and you’ll see a Canada so different than you get used to here in Huron County. Nearly half the people you see will be some other colour than white. In pockets of the city the culture shock is even stronger. I once stayed with a relative in an apartment building where a trip down on the elevator seemed like an excursion to the United Nations. Another time I stopped off in a little grill for a hamburger and thought I’d dropped into a little bit of Greece. I was amazed to find during World Cup Soccer celebrations there is even an Argentine enclove in Toronto. Compared to this Huron county seems pretty WASPish. We don’t have a large visual minority. There’s the temptation to think of everybody as being English, Scottish or Irish with a fair amount of late-arriving Dutch thrown in. Appearan­ ces can be deceiving however. We’ve been up to our necks recently covering graduation ceremonies around the area and 1 sat down to write out the names of students under a graduation picture, I became aware of just how varied the background of the students was. Yes, there were names handed down from Irish and English and Scottish ancestors but there were also German names and French names and other names that sounded vaguely eastern European. There was even a Phillipino name. I looked around at other schools to see if this was unusual and found a fair smattering of different national backgrounds represented. What is different about our area is that the more recent floods of immigration haven’t touched our area so strongly. Most immigrants today are city people without rural backgrounds themselves and ready to seek their futures in the big cities where there are others from their own country. Since life in our area was revolutionized with the wave of hard-working Nether- landers in the late 1940’s, 1950’s and early 1960’s, our area has had a chance to settle into its own pattern. In the cities there is always a new wave of immigrants adding more variety to the mixture of peoples, and sometimes adding tension with it. Racial tension is nothing new. There were once signs that said no dogs or Irish were allowed in Toronto establishments. Tension between English and Irish, betwen Catholic and Protestant turned July 12 into a dangerous day a century and less ago as Orangemen celebrated the ancient victory of William of Orange. Even in the early years of the Dutch migration into our area there were those who bore ill will to the newcomers. Things are remarkably quiet now be­ cause we’re into later generations who grew up knowing only Canada as their home, people who wonder why so much energy was used up in hate or mistrust. When I walk down the streets of Toronto today and see the whole crazy quilt of races and nationalities I wish I could come back a hundred years from now when second and third and fourth generations of these newcomers are walking the streets. When these people cease being hyphenated Canadians what kind of country will they build? When all these races intermingle, what a different look the country will have. We have an opportunity to show the world the way to peace between the various races and nationalities if we can just put aside our petty differences long enough to give this country time to mature.