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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1988-06-15, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15. 198«. Opinion Waste not, want not A new controversy is brewing surrounding the Canada-U.S. Free Trade agreement with the critics claiming Canada’s water resources will be opened to the U.S. while the government says water is not included. Let’s hope the government is right. Proposals to divert water from Canada to the parched areas of the U.S. have been talked about for more than 20 vears. Every time a new drought strikes, every time people have to go withoutwateringtheirlawnsinsomepartof the U.S., Canada’s vast fresh water supply looks more inviting. Now, however, it is Canadian provincial governments who are promoting the idea. British Columbia has licensed private companies to ship water by supertankers and a consultant to the government proposed B.C. Hydro get into the business of selling water. Premier Bourassa in Quebec came back to power talking about even more dramatic water exports. A proposal for the Grand Canal would dam off part of James Bay so that it could fill up with fresh water from rivers heading north. Huge canals would divert this water into the Great Lakes and it would be diverted from there into the U.S. and Western Canada. While a few super tankers of water might not make much difference, the potential of the Grand Canal scheme is more than anyone can predict. Such a mass diversion of water might be able to alter the climate of parts of Canada. If the use of spray cans and refrigeration systems can do enough cumulative damage to the ozone layer that scientists fear our entire climate could change, what might result from this scheme? And what for? To support a water wasting U.S. society so it can goon with its spendthrift water ways? National Geographic magazine last year dealt with California desert development. The desert community of Palm Springs with a population of 80,000 has 15,000 pools and 42 golf courses, all of which are no doubt irrigated. Should we tamper with nature so more pools can be filled? Imagine if welfare families in Canada decided they suddenly had to have Cadillacs and summer cottages and that the rest of us should pay for it. The outcry would be stupendous. Yet the U.S. southwest insists it must be able to live beyond its means when it comes to water and others should find a way to supply them with the water they need. When it comes to water, the old axiom “waste not, want not,’’ certainly applies. Tourists are people too While we here in Huron county often take the beauty of our countryside for granted, the lush beauty of the county along with the manmade attractions we’ve been adding over the years attract hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. It’s big business and we can all help keep it growing. With the opening of the Blyth Festival this week the tourism season in North Huron really swings into high gear. During the next three months 40,000 people will see plays at the Festival and spread out through the area to eat, shop and look for interesting places to visit. For those in the general public helping promote tourism is easy: it’s just being the same friendly, helpful selves we are to our friends and neighbours. The example of how ordinary people can accomplish so much in helping create good feelings about the county is demonstrated by the country supper program at the Festival. Throughout more than a dozen years now people from out of the area have been travelling to church basements or Women’s Institute Halls across the northern part of the county to get a taste of Huron county hospitality. The church suppers aren’t something new to those who live in Huron. The food is the same good, home-cooked food served in a friendly manner we’re used to at banquets served throughout the year. But to visitors from outside rural Ontario it’s a new experience. They enjoy the cooking and the tasty pies and they especially like the warm way they are treated by the ladies of the groups serving the meals. The Festival’s supper program has grown and grown until it reached the limit that local groups could provide. The suppers have become the subject of almost as much publicity in national media as the festival itself. Tourists have the same feelings and interests as we do (we are all, after all, tourists when we go somewhere else for our vacations). Beingfriendly and helpful and not trying to “milk’ ’ tourists for all they’re worth will help keep tourism growing in Huron and benefiting us all. Across the pond Mabel’s Grill There are people who will tell you that the important decisions in town are made down at the town hall. People in the know, however know that the real debates, the real wisdom reside down at Mabel 's Grill where the greatest minds in the town [if not in the country] gather for morning coffee break, otherwise known as the Round Table Debating and Fili­ bustering Society. Since not just everyone can partake of these deliberations we will report the activities from time to time. MONDAY: Billie Bean said he sure was disappointed he hadn’t got on the ball and persuaded the govern­ ment to choose our town as the site for the economic summit meeting. “We could have made enough money we could have taken the rest of the year off,’’ he said. Julia Flint said it was a typical government way of doing things when they had a meeting to discuss economic problems, especially third world economic problems, and they served free food and drink and had free entertainment for thousands of people for the whole time. “Let them eat the kind of diet people in the poor countries eat then maybe they’ll decide to do something about it,’’ she said. Tim O’Grady said there’s an easier way to give the leaders a chance to learn about economic hardship. Just make them pay for their own parking in some of those lots in Toronto that doubled the cost of parking the day they started preparing for the summit. Better yet, said Hank Stokes, if they’d turn over the parking receipts from some of those lots for a week, they might turn around the entire economy of some of those third world countries. TUESDAY: Hank was laughing about the story in the paper about the monster hunt they’re planning in a lake near Ottawa this summer. Seems there is a giant underwater creature living in the lake that people claim is 15-20 feet long. The drawing in the paper made it look like a cross between an elephant and a submarine. Maybe, said Tim, if they could catch twoof these things and breed them they could turn loose a whole herd of them in the arctic and we could strap television cameras on them to keep track of the Russians subs and we could save the eight billion dollars the government claims it will cost. WEDNESDAY: Julia was wonder­ ing how come if Canada Post is supposed to be so worried about costs, it could afford to pay people to follow those postal protestors wherever they went from coast to coast. It must have cost them enough to keep two or three rural postmaters on the payroll for at least a year, she figured. Hank said +he Rural Dignity had shown they know one thing about the post office: if you want something delivered don’t mail it. He wondered how long those 200,000 post cards would have taken to get to Ottawa if they’d gone through the mail, or if they’d have got there at all. THURSDAY: Hank was saying that if people would just learn we could have disarmament without all these expensive disarmament conferences. He was chuckling over an article in the paper where a $16 million fighter plane in Florida was destroyed when it was taking off when a pair of wild pigs ran onto the runway, hit the landing gear and sent the plane crashing off the runway. Give us enough pigs on more airports and we can have peace, he said. FRIDAY: Julia loved the bad publicity one of the banks got this morning because it charged a lady in Ottawa $2 to make change for a $20bill, “For $2 they got $2 million Continued on page 7 P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. NOM 1H0 Phone 523-4792 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont NOG 1H0 Phone 887-9114 The Citizen is published weekly in Brussels, Ontario, by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. 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