HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-09-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1990. PAGE 5.
The car
now there’s
a killer
On September 13, 1899, real estate
agent Henry H. Bliss stepped off a street
car at Central Park West and 74th street,
inhaled a deep double lungful of crisp New
York air, and started to cross the street.
He was immediately run over and killed
by a horseless carriage.
It’s very small consolation for Mister
Bliss, but his final involuntary act at least
got him into the history books. He is North
America’s number one traffic fatality.
Officially, the first person to expire at the
hands (make that bumpers) of an automo
bile.
He’s had lots of imitators since.
Nothing kills like the car. Automobile
accidents are the leading cause of death of
young people. More than two million - two
million! - North Americans have died in or
under cars since Henry Bliss met his fate.
And more than six million have been
severely injured for life.
That’s not a ‘family convenience’ -
that’s an unnatural disaster. Indeed, if
some demented Middle East tin pot maniac
ever did to us what the automobile has
Those hard
to find
quiet spots
BY RAYMOND CANON
There are any number of places through
out the world that are frequented by the
so-called beautiful people. There are
probably an equal number of localities that
have had at one time the reputation of
being in an out-of-the-way place where you
can count on not being overrun by tourists.
Unfortunately by the time you have heard
of them, they have ceased to be unknown
and are most assuredly overrun by tourists.
All of this doesn’t bother me too much
since I have no desire to see or be seen with
beautiful people. The rich and famous hold
no attraction for me; I already know a
number of people who are neither but,
from the point of view of just being
themselves, are extremely beautiful. As for
the out-of-the-way places, I don’t go on
what other people tell me for the reason
which I have given above. I simply go one
step further; I find them myself in my
travels and note them down for further
reference.
However, there is one which I want to
share with you if you are the type looking
for a place to go which is clean,
comfortable, quiet and centrally located.
These are the things that 1 look for and I
have never felt it necessary to change my
approach. I give it to you without hesitation
in the hope that some of my readers who
may feel the same about far-away places
will be able to enjoy it as I have just done.
It should come as no surprise to you to
learn that this place is in Switzerland; you
should have known that was coming when I
mentioned the words clean and quiet.
However, let met start at the beginning.
Now that I no longer have a place to stay
in St. Gallen, I have had to look around for
a suitable hotel. I looked a few over and
quite by chance happened to be driving
around the canton of Appenzell one sunny
day when I came across one in the small
town of Teufen. You may have difficulty
finding in on the map but it is only 10
minutes drive from the centre of St. Gallen
so is really not hard to find. I decided to
stay there the next day so stopped to see
(1) what the hotel looked like from inside
done to us, we’d be well into World War III
by now.
If there was any justice, the U.S. Sixth
Fleet would now be anchored off Detroit,
not Saudi Arabia.
Speaking of which, it’s hard to find much
good to say about the Kuwait kafluffle, but
I did spy one cheering note on my TV
screen last week. It showed a bunch of
folks in Minneapolis demonstrating against
U.S. involvement. One of them carried a
placard that read “OIL, SCHMOIL - RIDE
YOUR BIKE’’.
Well, yes. If more of us took to our
two-wheelers it would be worse for Saddam
and better for us. Bikes don’t guzzle gas,
pollute the air or suckle on government-
subsidized oil prices. It’s also hard to
imagine a five o’clock bicycle traffic jam or
a two-Schwinn head-on, multiple-fatality
bike crash.
Bikes don’t kill people the way cars do.
Sure, you say, but this is Canada,
dummy. You can’t ride bikes in this
country in the winter. Well, I’ve spent time
in downtown Toronto for the past five
winters and every day I’ve seen bike
couriers flashing back and forth, on fair
days and foul. Last January during one of
Toronto’s ‘blizzards’ (three inches of
snow), the whole municipality of Mammon
slithered to a halt, cars up on the
sidewalks, trucks spinning their tires.
Nothing moved - except the bike couriers.
They were wearing motorcycle gloves and
earmuffs and a Plimsoll Line of dirty grey
and (2) if I could make a reservation. The
answer to (1) was that it was just as
impressive inside as outside and (2) I was
able to make a reservation.
If you have ever been in a hotel that was
everything you expected it to be, you will
understand exactly how I felt. The rooms
all face the back so they are quiet; they are
certainly clean and comfortable. On a scale
from 1 to 10, I would rate them a full 10.
When I got tired of working on some
reports, I sat outside on my little patio and
looked at the beautiful Appenzeller
countryside. There was even a bonus.
Highlighting the view was Saentis, an
8,000 ft. peak that I have always consider
ed as my mountain as I had it when I was
young and didn’t know any better. The
word that came to my mind as I sat there
was idyllic.
The owner of the hotel was just as
delightful. He greeted me in a friendly and
hospitable fashion, showed me to my room
and inquired when I would like breakfast
the next morning. It was he who actually
prepared the breakfasts in a lovely little
nook. Although we spoke in German, I
discovered that he also speaks French and
English so, if you do go there, language
will not be a problem.
Teufen may be a quiet little town but
the hotel, appropriately called Hotel Saen
tis, is only 10 minutes drive from the 4 lane
highway through St. Gallen. Far from
Letter
Postmasters urge protest
THE EDITOR,
Canada Post is about to strike again.
Remember all those newspaper ads
promising “better service for rural Cana
dians?’’ Well, ‘better service’ Canada-Post
style, apparently, means something far
different than we as postmasters are
accustomed to providing.
Starting in September, hours at many
post offices in small Ontario communities
will be cut back for the sake of ‘standardiz
ation . In truth, this means some offices
will be ordered to open at 8:00 a.m., and
will lock their doors at 5 o’clock. All offices
won t be permitted to start business on
Saturday until 9 o’clock and close at 12:00
noon. In a few cases, standardization
means adding 15 or 30 minutes to a post
office’s hours of operation, but for the most
slush up past their waists, but they were
moving.
And needless to say, no matter how
frosty the winter morning, there’s no
problem getting a bike to ‘turn over’.
As a matter of fact, bicycles are getting
more and more sensible. We’ve been
through the silly phase of 10-speeds.
That’s where we all bought machines with
tires the width of spaghetti noodles, racing
handlebars and ultra light, ultra-expensive
space-age alloy construction — terrific for
athletes like Steve Bauer, trying to shave
milliseconds off his time on the Tour de
France. Pretty silly for a stenographer
trying to negotiate potholes and sewer
grilles on her way to work. After that came
the mountain bikes — with 86 forward
gears, nubbly tires that belonged on army
assault vehicles and an even more expen
sive space-age alloy construction so dur
able you could throw the bike off the top of
the mountain once you’d ridden up the side
of it.
Today, it’s possible to buy a normal,
modestly-geared, modestly-priced bicycle
that won’t win marathons or scale the
Himalayas, but will get you from A to B
quickly and comfortably.
Me? I’m beyond that. On the cutting
edge of new bike technology, actually. I
ride a one-speed, CCM, balloon-tired
machine of ancient vintage. It’s a classic.
The kind of bike our grandparents threw
their legs over.
The kind Henry Bliss should have been
riding on September 13, 1989.
being stuck in an isolated place, there is
enough to see and do within a two hour
drive of the hotel to keep you there for a
week. Close by at Stein is one of the most
automated cheese factories you will ever
see anywhere. You can shop at St. Gallen
and see the world-famous library, you can
slip over the border at Konstanz into
Germany and see the subtropical island of
Mainau or go down to Liechtenstein, one of
the smallest countries in the world. Both
Bern, the capital of Switzerland, and
Luzern, perhaps the prettiest of Swiss
cities, are within two hours’ drive. You can
take a boat trip from Luzern and see the
statue of William Tell, you can slip over
into Austria, only a half-hour drive from
Teufen or drive up to Appenzell town itself
and enjoy the beautiful scenery on the way.
All this will take up a week at least and
you haven’t had to change hotels. While
the Hotel Saentis is what is called a hotel
garni, which means that they only serve
breakfast, you can arrange with your host
to have dinner there your last evening and
close out your stay with a leisurely walk
around Teufen.
There have been few times indeed when
I have been taken with a hotel as much as
this one. 1 can assure you that, as soon as I
know when I will be off to Switzerland
again, I will be making my reservation
there.
part, we’re being cut back at crucial times
when many customers now do their postal
business.
As postmasters and assistants, we are
strongly opposed -to these cutbacks in
hours, just as we opposed the noon-hour
closures which Canada Post imposed on
many mid-sized and smaller rural post
offices in Southwestern Ontario the past
year, and in Northern and Eastern Ontario
now. We have served rural Canada to the
best of our ability for the past 90 years as
members of the Canadian Postmasters afid
Assistants Association. We certainly don’t
like being undermined by a postal corpora
tion bent on privatization at any cost,
particularly when it inconveniences our
Continued on page 26
Letter
from the
editor
The day hell
froze over
BY KEITH ROULSTON
I expected to wake up Friday morning to
see snow on the ground or at least ice on
the puddles. After all, if hell had frozen
over, as I had said it would have to for the
New Democrats to win in Huron, you’d
think the rest of us would be shivering too.
Nowhere was the NDP victory more
stunning that in Huron. I mean, I can
remember when it seemed impossible to
get a Liberal elected let alone a New
Democrat. You could almost call it a
revolution here for the New Democrats to
go from a poor third to first. It truly showed
how frustrated people were with govern
ment as represented by the Liberals and
Conservatives that 10,000 voted for Paul
Klopp when only 3841 supported him in
1987.
The immensity of the switch is illustrat
ed by the beginning of the various
campaigns. The NDP started off with a
nomination meeting in the cafeteria of
Central Huron Secondary School in Clin
ton. It was a cosy group of maybe 40 or 50
that gathered together at one end of the
room. That was a big turnout by compari
son to years past for the NDP.
A week later the Progressive Conserva
tives and Liberals held their meetings back
to back in the auditorium of the school. The
Conservatives had from 300 to 500. The
Liberals had 800 people vote at their
nomination and estimates of the crowd that
overflowed out into the hallway were of up
to 1,000 people.
The NDP had one candidate and you
couldn't help but wonder if he was the
token candidate for Huron. The Conserva
tives had two. The Liberals had four, one of
them a Conservative who had switched
parties. In a spirited contest he lost by 18
votes on the second ballot to Jim Fitzgerald
the eventual Liberal candidate.
For Mr. Fitzgerald that was probably the
last good news of the campaign. He spent
most of the campaign defending the
Liberal record, a defence few people
wanted to hear.
What happened? All three parties had
solid candidates: the Liberals and NDP
with young family men and the Conserva
tives with Ken Campbell, a proven veteran
as a campaign organizer and well liked for
his community work. It would be hard to
pick on that basis alone which deserved to
win most.
Party organization? The NDP had a
tight, hard-working group that made the
most of limited resources but weren’t there
just as many hard-working people for the
Conservatives and the Liberals? Budget?
The NDP planned to spend $10,000
originally and budgeted another couple of
thousand when their canvassing showed
them an upset was possible. The other
parties spent two or three times that.
Looking at the poll-by-poll results the
surprise shows that it wasn’t in urban
areas where there might be a unionized
workforce that the NDP picked up its
support most but in the rural townships.
Part of this may be due to the fact that Mr.
Klopp, as former president of the Federa
tion of Agriculture, had a relatively high
profile among farmers. His pledge of
reduced interest rates for farmers must
also have had appeal.
The NDP started out as a farmers’ party
back in the old CCF days out west and so
there should be no surprise that farmers
support it ... except that in Ontario they
never have in the last many decades.
There’s something conservative about
Huron County farmers that sees many
reject even such things as marketing
boards let alone “socialist” parties.
It probably says something about the
desperate shape of agriculture then that
farmers were able to overcome their
traditional distrust of NDP policies to vote
for Mr. Klopp so strongly rather than
protest Liberal policies by turning to the
Conservatives and Mr. Campbell. Hope
fully, Mr. Klopp, as one of the few
Continued on page 13