HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1987-12-16, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1987.
Keep main street healthy
It’s the time of year when local merchants look to the weather
with about the same intensity they look at the till tape at the end
of the day to see how business is doing.
When the weather is too good, like it has been often this fall,
people tend not to get in the Christmas shopping mood too
early. That might seem to cause a short term problem in that
everybody leaves their shopping until the last possible minute
but it can cause bigger problems. If the weather is too good it
also makes a shopping trip to the city more inviting.
The problem with Christmas shopping sprees in the cities is
that the negative results show up on our main streets. Retail
sales statistics show the importance of Christmas shopping to
the yearly revenues of stores. November and December make
up one fifth of the year’s revenues for florists, automotive parts
and accessories shops, furniture and appliance stores,
hardware stores and pharmacies; nearly one quarter of the
year’s business for book stores, family clothing stores and shoe
stores and more than one third of the year’s business for
jewellery stores. In other words, if local merchants don’t take
money in now, they can look toward a lean year.
We all benefit from a healthy main street.Ifwe take our
money off to the city shopping malls, we're taking a chunk out of
main street with us.
Brotherly love?
Ever since the Peterson government carried out the policy
that all three provincial parties originally agreed tofund
Catholic high schools above the grade 10 level, some people
have been predicting trouble. Thanks to the empire building of
some school boards and the foolhardiness of an arbitrator, that
destructive split of Catholic against public schools seems now
to be surfacing.
Bitterness boiled over last week when public school
supporters from Hamilton stormed Queen’s Park to protest an
arbitrators decision which will force the public school system to
turn over three public schools to the separate school system.
Public school supporters, particuarly those who go to those
schools or who have children who go to those schools, were
outraged that they can be sent away from the schools in their
neighbourhoods, forced to go miles away from home, at the
whim of an arbitrator.
While there are bound to be some problems in implementing
the new programs, there needn’t be a lot of trouble if some
common sense is used. There are schools that are closing in the
public system because of declining enrollment, or at least
wings of schools that are being closed down. But some public
boards don’t want to give up schools and bus students.
The ideal solution seems tobe sharing the schools: one part of
the school for Catholic students, the other part for public school
students. That would allow the Catholic system to pursue a
religious schooling while not forcing public school students out
of their school. It can also have the side effect of building
understanding between the students of the two systems, not
separating them into different camps.
The Hamilton separate board wasn’t willing to accept
sharing. It felt Bill 30 was designed to protect the distinct nature
of Roman Catholic schools and so they must have distinct
schools. The arbitrator agreed and awarded them three public
schools.
Now there are hard feelings between the separate and public
board in Toronto because leaked documents from the separate
board indicate that board won’t agree to sharing either and the
board appears to be trying to get to arbitration so it can get the
same kind of award as the Hamilton separate board got.
One had hoped the days of bitter dispute between Catholic
and protestant in Ontario was over, that the days of bitterness,
of Orange parades and other squabbles was dead. But harmony
can only be brought about through give and take. If school
boards get so busy building empires that they don’t look after
the best interests of their students, teaching them compassion
and understanding, then they are negligent in their jobs.
Surely in this Christmas season, school board leaders can put
peace on earth a little higher on their agenda than self
aggrandizement.
Read fast please
It may be too late to do them any good but the perfect gift for
our Members of Parliament for this Christmas would seem tobe
an intense session of speed-reading lessons.
Last week the long-awaited final text of the Canada-U.S.
Free Trade Agreement was finally tabled in the House of
Commons: all 2,500 pages of it.
The debate on the Free Trade Agreement, one of the most
important debates in Canadian history, began Tuesday and is
to wrap-up on Friday when the House adjourns for the
Christmas recess. Prime Minister Mulroney is to sign the treaty
on January 2.
It means that M.P.s will have to debate about 600 pages of
detailed legal text per day over the three-days of debate. Let’s
hope they’re fast readers, and even faster talkers.
OH, OH, SOMEBOCV SCREWED UR.. \
GORBACHEV JUST SIGNED A MISSILE TREATY
WITH CANADA AND REAGAN 5I6NED
A FREE TRADE AGREEMENT WITH THE SOVIETS I
WNAT)
TORONTO SUN
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] gat her for morningcoffee
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: Hank Stokes said this
morning that he knows he must be
getting old because he just can’t
join in all the excitement about the
big summit conference between
Reagan and Gorbachev. Seems
like they have these big break
throughs about every 10 years just
togetourhopes up, then goback to
being angry with each other and
buildingalot more bombs, he said.
Yeh, said Julia Flint, it’s kind of
like Christmas: first you have all
the good feeling about peace on
earth and good will toward men,
then the kids start arguing about
who gets to play with which toy.
TUESDAY: Western hospitality
has lost out to another chance to get
a transfer of funds from eastern
Canada to the west, Tim O’Grady
was sayingthis morning. Out in
Calgary the school boards seem to
figure the Ontario school boards
have so much money they should
be giving it to the west because
they want $291 a night to let a
school band from Toronto sleep in a
school gym while they’re in
Calgary to play for the Olympics.
They’re just teaching the On
tario kids a little bit about good old
free enterprise, something they
could stand a few lessons in.
Yeh, Tim said, teach them to
drive a good bargain when you’ve
got them over a barrel. In Calgary
in February you can really tell the
easterners to take it or freeze in the
dark.
WEDNESDAY: Billie Bean says he
guesses the American teams in the
NHL are taking free trade to heart.
They’ve said they want more of the
money Canadian teams take in in
television revenue.
Hank said it didn’t seem so long
ago that the NHL was wanting to
have only American teams in
look big time in the U.S.
Good job they didn’t get their
way completely, or there wouldn’t
be any Canadian teams to get TV
revenue from.
THURSDAY: Julia was saying she
was really impressed with the
awards show on television last
night. Billie said it wasn’t time for
theEmmysorthe Oscars yet, so
what show could it be? Julia said it
was the Canadian television a-
wards. Ward said he was kind of
happy to see Night Heat and
Adderly win prizes because at least
they weren’t made by that damned
CBC.
“Night Heat? Adderly?’’ asked
Billie. “Aren’t those American
expansion because they wanted to
go after big television money in the
States. They kept Saskatoon out of
the league because they wanted to
shows? They sure look like Ameri
can shows.”
No, Julia assured him, they were
Continued on page 28
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