HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-07-25, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1990. PAGE 5.
The animals
strike back
Heaven goes by favour. If It went by
merit, you would stay out and your dog
would go In.
Mark Twain
Old Sam Clemens was right, you know.
It’s a lucky thing we humans wrote the
Bible. It gave us a chance to make
ourselves look good and to grab the
captain’s cabin on Spaceship Earth. Ever
since we put ourselves in charge of the
planet the way we’ve treated our fellow
tenants has been something less than
charitable.
When white men first came to this
continent, the skies were blackened by
migrating passenger pigeons each year.
You can’t find a single one now. We
slaughtered the beaver and decimated the
buffalo herds. We obliterated the Plains
Grizzly and reduced the once common
eastern mountain lion to little more than a
ghostly rumour.
Mind you, we haven’t always killed our
colleagues outright. Sometimes we settled
for simple animal humiliation. Tigers
pacing in cages, elephants balancing on
Random
thoughts
BY RAYMOND CANON
I have been back to Europe for the first
of my two business trips this year and I was
mercifully out of the country when most of
the debate on the Meech Lake Accord was
going on. I say mercifully since there were
so many comments being made by so many
people who knew so little about it that I just
couldn’t stand listening to it any longer.
However, if events are moving rather fast
in this country, it became very obvious to
me in Europe that life is very much in the
fast lane over there as well.
Last year when I was in Germany, the
Berlin Wall had yet to be torn down now
there is the question of how long it will be
before the two Germanies are united.
There is confusion there just as there is in
Canada over what the future has to bring;
at times it seemed to me that each German
has his or her own version as to how this
re-unification should be brought about.
Frankly, I don’t think many of them know
what the situation will be at this time next
year. Canada is certainly not alone in its
confusion.
One Saturday morning in St. Gallen,
Switzerland, I was standing across the road
from Globus, one of the main department
stores in that city. All of a sudden a young
girl ran out of the store followed seconds
later by another girl in full pursuit. Only
then did I notice that the first girl had a red
jacket in her hand and, as the second girl
was about to overtake her, dropped it. The
jacket was picked up and the sales clerk,
for it was obvious that’s who the second
girl was, walked back with it to the store.
What I had witnessed was a blatent
example of shop-lifting.
Later that day I met a business
acquaintance and, after a short meeting we
headed in the direction of the train station
so that he could catch a train back to
Zurich. Seeing that we had about a half
hour before the train was to leave, we
found ourselves in the Second Class Dining
Room. This was something of an error
balls. Bears in clown hats waltzing to
Strauss.
And all the while, the animals endured,
with scarcely a cheep or a hiss or a bellow
of protest. Oh, once in a while a Great
White picks off a surfer, a tiger snags a
Bengali villager or a Spanish toro outfoxes
a matador and pins him to the plaza sand -
but tally those paltry victories against, say,
the number of Big Macs sold each day.
No contest.
Ever since man began using his over
sized brain to compensate for his under
sized musculature, it’s been a lopsided
battle, but folks ... I think the tide may be
shifting. Something tells me the Big
Referee in the Sky is about to start marking
his scorecard in favour of the, um,
underdogs.
Evidence? Purely circumstantial, so far.
But read these three stories that appeared
in the papers recently.
The first table tells the plight of Troy
Brewer, delivery boy for Domino’s Pizza in
Balch Springs, Texas. Troy’s np greenhorn
in the pizza delivery game. He’s handled
drunks, deadbeats and no-shows.
But he draws the line at hold-up
amphibians.
Late on Tuesday night, two rough-look
ing customers cornered Troy on a dark
street. “Don’t move’’ growled one as he
drew his weapon from under his coat, “or
yer gonna git bit.” And there Troy was,
nose to beak with a snapping turtle. “A
big, huge, ugly one!” recalls Troy. “That
sucker was gonna bite me!” The turtle
armed men escaped with about $50.
Scary, but not as scary as the story out of
Fort Richey, Florida, where an outlaw gang
since we had intended to go into the First
Class Dining Room for a coffee but, since
we were there, we decided to stay. Hardly
had we started enjoying our coffee when a
hulk of a man nearby took exception to
something said to him and challenged
another man to step outside and settle it
once and for all. It appeared for a minute
that it might be settled there and not
outside but a smaller man intercepted the
big man and told him to cool it. It looked
very much like a case of David and Goliath;
the big man was about to take a swing at
the smaller one when all of a sudden the
latter swung into action. It seemed that he
had mastered the art of kung-fu or
something of that nature for, with a few
well placed blows of both his hands and
feet he soon drove the far bigger man right
out the door, to the obvious relief and
amusement of all the patrons including
ourselves. When we paid our bill, we
thanked the waitress for the floor show.
I guess it just goes to show you that,
even in a peaceful and law-abiding country
such as Switzerland there are a few
undesirable elements. No nationality is
perfect.
Canada is trying to come to grips with an
unacceptable level of inflation, much to the
Letter
Canadians fight to save Post Offices
THE EDITOR,
Ever heard of a place called Westwold,
British Columbia? That’s where residents
held a Canada Post car ‘hostage’ in early
July. The reason: to save their 112-year-old
federal postal service.
How about Heron Bay North, Ontario?
On July 10, members of the Pic River First
Nation Band there set up a roadblock into
Pukaskwan National Park in an effort to
save their post office, also over 100 years
old.
Mings Bight, Nfld., Aroostook, N.B.,
and Falmouth, N.S., are also fighting hard
at present to save their post offices. And
there are many more.
What does all this have to do with you?
Well, since rural communities right across
the country are subject to the same Canada
Post policy, your town could be nexV
is terrorizing a quiet law-abiding commun
ity of peaceful retirees.
A gang of Muscovy ducks.
It’s a big gang - at least a hundred
members. In the past month alone, six
residents have been assaulted. One woman
had her dress chewed. Another man fell
over a fence and cut his hand trying to
escape. “They are mean” says one Fort
Richey victim. “They keep after you. They
get ugly and want to bite people.”
My final animal horror story occurred
right here in Canada - in Fairview, Alberta
as a matter of fact, where Donald Zenert
decided to climb a fence into a deer
enclosure to snap close-ups of some
white-tailed does.
He apparently didn’t notice the white
tailed buck.
Next thing Zenert knew, he was parrying
antler thrusts from the infuriated male.
And it was no bluff. “He was getting in
some pretty good shots with his horns”
says Zenert. “I figured the only way to
keep him from putting an antler through
my heart was to grab them and hang on.”
So he did. For nearly two hours. He
might still be there if the owner of the farm
hadn’t rescued him by shooting the buck.
Big deal, you say. Three unconnected
stories, you say. Well, maybe. But I’ve
been having nightmares about that Hitch
cock movie, “The Birds” recently.
And there was that owl hooting in the
shopping mall.
All I can say is, if animals do take over
the world, I trust the ants will put in a good
word for me.
They better, after all the picnics I took
them on.
annoyance of those who are having to pay
the penalty for such actions. I discovered
that inflation is also a concern in both
Germany and Switzerland. The latter
country, in fact, is experiencing about the
same level as we are for the Swiss this is
even more disturbing than for Canadians.
The prescription is the same there as here;
you raise interest rates in order to try to cut
back on aggregate demand and, as I have
tried to explain in the past few months, if
interest rates are higher elsewhere, they
are likely to be higher here whether we like
it or not.
Finally, one last little observation. If you
are flying to Europe, be prepared to arrive
or depart later than scheduled. Not only
are the major airports there starting to
exceed to their capacity if they have not
done so already but the air traffic control
system is unable to handle efficiently the
traffic that already exists. I say that even
though Lufthansa managed to get me into
Frankfurt 10 minutes early^ That, I can
assure you, was something of an exception.
However, we do not have to go to Europe to
find congestion; it exists already at Malton
airport. When we taxied out to take off, we
were 12th in line. If I didn’t have to travel, I
might be inclined to stay home.
Canada Post calls its privatization scheme
‘equal or better service’; we say it’s a sham
which always leaves somebody the big
loser. Usually it is the private contractor
who unknowingly takes on a poor postal
contract, but it is often customers and rural
route drivers too. It all adds up to yet
another way rural Canadians are devalued
by the powers-that-be, who usually live in
cities, far from the consequences of their
ill-conceived schemes!
Here’s how Wes Keller, Editor of the
Shelburne Free Press/Economist, sees it:
“Canada Post has a curious way of
satisfying the concerns of its customers.
But, on reflection, maybe the corporation is
simply acting in a manner consistent with
the attitudes of all levels of government in
the final decade of the 20th century. Those
Continued on page 23
Letter
from the
editor
Gap growing
in county pay scales
BY KEITH ROULSTON
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in
Huron county that wants to see restructur
ing of the county, eliminating all munici
palities under 4,000 population, but for
people who apparently don’t want it, we
sure seem to be pushing ourselves toward
it in a hurry.
It’s not just that the county, prodded by
the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, is
currently studying restructuring that’s of
concern. The problem is that our municipal
leaders are creating the kind of financial
conditions that fall right into the hands of
those in the Ministry who want to prove the
need for amalgamating municipalities.
One of the points brought up by
provincial officials when county councillors
were studying “Patterns for the Future”,
the 1987 provincial study that urged
restructuring, was that with too many
small municipalities providing municipal
staff would become too expensive. In
recent years we seem to be heading in that
direction.
It’s easy to justify why municipal and
county staffers should make as much as
they do. There are lots of people who make
more for doing the same job across the
province. The $30,000 a year that seems to
be the minimum for municipal clerks (one
in a nearby municipality makes more than
$50,000) isn’t a lot compared to people in
some other public offices who have less
responsibility. It’s equally easy to justify
county highway employees starting at
more than $10 an hour and municipal roads
crews close behind. You can always find
figures to compare these people to, that
will make them look underpaid.
But you can find other figures as well.
Last year’s economic development study
for Brussels, for instance, showed that in
1987, the last year for which figures were
available, the median male income in
Brussels was only $15,900 and female
income was $8,200.
Figures from the 1988 census show
household incomes (counting both part
ners) ranged from $25,798 in East Wawa-
nosh to $38,554 in Blyth among the area
municipalities. While in the urban areas
income may have increased since then,
statistics say farm incomes fell drastically
last year and are expected to fall again this
year.
The fact is there seems to be a class
system growing in Huron, with those who
work for government organizations or a few
large unionized industries in the upper
class and people who work for small
businesses or for themselves in another.
The latter group, farmers, shop keepers,
tradesmen, service industry people who
make up the largest part of the population,
are dependent on the market place. If the
income of farmers goes down, for instance,
people in businesses that depend on selling
to farmers can give up any hope of just
keeping up with inflation, let alone keeping
ahead of it. They may be happy just to keep
a job. If free trade cuts into business
people may have to take wage freezes or
rollbacks and be darned glad the job is still
there, not moved to Georgia.
Not so the public sector. From education
to hospitals to county and municipal
employees, cost of living increases are
taken as given (as is job security). The rest
of the economy may be in the dumper but
the public service is isolated from the
problems. It means that those in the public
service get farther and farther ahead of
those who pay the taxes that support them.
It would be interesting, for instance, to
know in all the municipal councils in the
county how many councillors make more
than they pay the municipal clerk (let alone
how many board of education trustees
make as much as they pay their teachers).
The problem is, how can people making
less continue to pay more to support public
service employees? Someday the well has
Continued on page 19