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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Wingham Advance-Times, 1964-12-03, Page 9Dark Days of Democracy We who are truly Canadian -.-those of us who can still see the vision of a great and promising nation — should be putting on our black arm -bands; we should be lowering our flag (whether it be maple leaves or the multi -crosses of our forebears) to half-mast or less. Some months ago this column cau- tioned that Parliament, as an instrument of free government, should not be per- mitted to fall into contempt because its present operators are Tess than perfect in their behaviour. That admonition remains—just as im- portant as ever, but we fear that fewer and ever fewer Canadians will heed it— and we can't blame them. The year of grace, 1964, will, in all probability, be looked back upon by future generations as the silliest — the most futile in the history of Canada. That is unless 1965 turns cut to be even sillier . . , if that is possible. Our $18,000 -a -year members of Par- liament here spent more days in session that never before in the history of the nation—and that includes the years of war, a national crisis. And what pre- cisely what have they accomplished? The truthful answer is ... very little. The flag issue isn't settled, Quebec is unhappier then ever; Hal Banks is cosily esconsed somewhere in the dear old U.S.A., enjoying his well -grafted freedom and Parliament hasn't even got a full o.k. for its required expenditures. Who's to blame? Heaven knows. At this stage your guess is just as good as ours. Radio Auction This Week Tonight (Thursday) will be an en- . joyable one for hundreds of people in this area. It will be the occasion of the annual Kinsmen Radio Auction. This event is one which has been thoroughly proven by time and repetition. Each year more participants are added and more enjoyment is derived. The Radio Auction is put on by the Kinsmen • primarily, of course, to raise money, but it does much more than that. It has de- veloped into a sort of community enter- tainment night when folks can sit at t home and merely by lifting their tele- phone, carry on a fun -filled fued with friends and neighbors as they bid on the articles the Kinsmen offer for sale. The Radio Auction is especially im- portant to the Kinsmen this year in view of their decision to drop the Trade Fair. There is no need to remind you of the excellent purposes to which the Kin put the money they raise. The eviden- ces are all around us. Let's say thanks by giving our full support to the Radio Auction tonight. Later Than You Think Less than three weeks remain for your * Christmas shopping. Perhaps, if shop- ping happened to be all you had on your mind between now and Christmas Day there would be no reason for concern. But we all know there will be a thousand and one other details in that interval. Right now we want to put iri a force- ✓ ful "plug" for the merchants on our own main streets—the main streets of Wing - ham, Belgrave, Whitechurch, Bluevale, Wroxeter, Gorrie, Fordwich and all the other shopping places in this area. You may say Christmas is over-com- mercialized—and we say that's a lot of • nonsense. Of course the local merchants are advertising early and pointedly. Why shouldn't they do their best to persuade you, the buyer, that there are many valid reasons for spending your money at home? These retailers aren't trying to talk . you into spending more than you can afford. They are not so greedy that they want you to forget the religious signi- ficance of Christmas in order to go on a shopping spree. They are reasonably in- telligent people who know that almost every family in this district will spend • money for gifts at the Yule season—and they are trying to tell you that you don't need to add the cost of a trip to the city to an already over -burdened budget. Let's face it: In this day and age you aren't going to get any "bargains," no matter how far you travel. In addition your hometown stores are no longer the hick -town emporiums of 50 years ago. They have good and varied stocks—and their owners are people you know and can trust. We'll give you another pretty valid reason for doing your buying at home . . . in fact a whole series of reasons. Look at your town council, your school hoards, your hospital boards, your service clubs, church managers, collection com- mittees for the multitude of money - raising campaigns, parks committees, sporting organizations. In almost every case you will find either leadership or practical support coming from members of the business world — the men who operate stores and other retail outlets. Christmas entails the spending of money. This is not abhorent. On the contrary it is a completely healthy and commendable situation. It is "commer- cialized" only because we live in an age where we must of necessity buy more gifts than did our parents and grand- parents. Let's do our buying at home where it does the most good for all of us. Useful Advertising You have, no doubt, noticed the ad- vertising which has been appearing in this paper for the past few weeks, placed by the Lord Simcoe Hotel in Toronto. We point to this series of advertise- ments as an outstanding example of one • of the better ways of handling a public relations message. The advertisements list the program • of more interesting events taking place in Toronto week by week ... and there are some very worthwhile ones every week. The Lord Simcoe, by merely listing these events and.placing its signature at the foot of the list, suggests to the read- er that Toronto is an interesting place to go and the Lord Simcoe is a fine place to seek shelter from the elements. We have stopped over at the L/S on numerous occasions and can personally verify their under -stated claims. It is one of Toronto's newest hotels and its accommodations and services are excel- lent. THE WINGHAM ADVANCE - TIMES Published at Wingham, Ontario, by Wenger Bros, Limited W. Barry Wenger, President - Robert O. Wenger, Secretary -Treasurer Member Audit Bureau of Circulation; Member Canadian Weekly Newspapers Associ- ation; Member Canadian Community Newspapers Representatives Authorized by the Post Office Department as Second Class Mail and for payment of postage in cash y. Subscription Rate: One Year ---$4.00; Six Months --$2.25, in advance U.S.A.—$5.00 per year; Foreign rate—$5.00 per year Advertising Rates on application ZERO TEMPERATURES early Tuesday which followed,. several inches of snow on Sunday and Monday had everything snap- ping underfoot and a rime on the trees. Bright sun on Tuesday morning created lovely winter scapes in almost every dir- ection one cared to look. —Advance -Times Photo. barn AttauctEZi 111 Wingham, Ontario, Thursday, Dec. 3 1964 SECOND SECTION Kudos For The Conformist There's a great hoo-haw these days about conformity, which has become a dirty word. Edu- cationists and editors, social workers and sob sisters warn us that one of the great threats to freedom in the modern world is conformity. These Cassandras claim that we're turning into a nation, a world, of conformists. They threaten that the golden age of the real individual, the rebel, the non -conformist, is nearing an end, and that very soon we shall all be slaves, eating what everybody else is eating, wear- ing what everybody else is wearing, doing what everybody else is doing, and thinking what everybody else is thinking. I find myself remarkably calm in the face of these pro- phecies. In fact, I think they are pure poppycock. In the first place, I see noth- ing wrong with conformity. It mer e 1 y means, "compliance with established forms." In short the individual accepts the responsibilities and the res- traints which society imposes on him. The vast majority of people have always been conformists. If you happened to be a canni- bal, and the piece de resistance was roast missionary, you sat down with the rest of the boys and enjoyed the preacher. You didn't say, "Gee, I don't know, fellas. Maybe we're making a mistake. Maybe we shoulda boiled him." No, sir. You con- formed. You went along with the crowd. If you happened to be a Ro- man legionary, happily hacking up Gauls and ancient Britons, you didn't stop in the middle of the orgy and ask youself, "Is this the real me, or am I just doing this because everybody else is?" If you did, you were a dead non -conformist. Equally, if you happen to be a modern man, and your kids and wife are putting you over the jumps, you conform. You don't take a two-by-four and pound your kids into submission. You threaten to cut off their allow- ance. In the second place, the deli- berate, or conscious, non -confor- mist is a simple pain in the arm. He is the type who thinks he can't be a paintee unless he has a beard, who thinks he can't be a poet unless he needs a hair- cut badly. Perhaps the greatest confor- mists in the world today are teenagers. In their desperate at- tempt to avoid conformity, they become the most rigid confor- mists in our society. They dress alike, do their hair alike, eat the same food, listen to the same music. All this, in an effort to revolt against society, to be non- conformists! Not that there haven't been great non -conformists. Beethov- en, Tolstoy, Gauguin come to mind. But they were great, not because they were non -confor- mists, but in spite of it. They had talent, Mac. On the other hand Bach was a church organ- ist, music teacher and had chil- dren. Shakespeare worked atro- cious hours, lived an exemplary life, and never missed getting his hair .cut regularly. Alexander the Great, Napo- leon, the Marquis de Sade, Hi- tler and Lee Oswald were non- conformists. You know what they contributed to the world. Does this mean every non- conformist is a nut? Not neces- sarily, though probably. He is usually an unhappy chap who, for some deep -buried reason, must attract attention. Trouble is, the people who constantly warn us of the dan- gers of conformity have con- fused the non -conformist and the individual. The former is to be pitied. He is seeking firm ground in a quagmire. The lat- ter is to be envied. He has found a prune (himself), in the por- ridge of society, and he chews little Change Some things are still the same after 50 years of prog- ress and every once in a where we are forcibly reminded of this fact. The following poem was published in the Montreal Star on May 14, 1914. Amazingly this poem could have been written yesterday. It is AS pertinent now as it was at that time, and it illustrates how people still laugh, and lament at the same things. ODE TO A ROAD They took a yew old bricks and they took a little tar, With various ingredients imported frotn afar. They hammered it and rolled it and then they went away: They said they had a pavement that would last for many a day. But they came with picks and smote it to lay a water main: And then they called the work- men to put it back again. To run a railway cable they took it up some more. And then they put it back again just where it was before. They took it up for conduits to run the telephone. And then they put it back again as hard as any stone. They took it up for wires to feed the 'lectric light. And then they put it back again, which was no more then right. Oh, the pavement's full of furrows there are patches every- where: You'd like to ride upon it but it's seldom that you dare; It's a very handsome pavement, A credit to the Town: But they're always digging of it up or putting of it down. happily ever after. Perhaps old Polonius put it best in Hamlet. His son is going away to college. The dad gives him a lot of advice about con- forming. Then, in an unexpected and untypical flash, he adds, "This above all. To thine own self be true; thou can'st not then be false to any man." One Moment, Please REV. A. JACKSON, Belgrave, Ontario Letters to the editors of daily and weekly newspapers about the United Church's New Curri- culum were, for the most part, from people "who read their newspaper religiously and their Bible intermittently", the Gen- eral Council of the Church was told recently. "From within (the Church) the New Curriculum has been a quiet, complex and long-range project," Dr. Peter White, editor-in-chief of Sunday School Publications, told Com- missioners from across Canada. "It arose in the post-war years. Those years saw the church membership explosion on this continent, a theological renais- sance among Christian scholars, a new understanding of church in the younger churches of Afri- ca and Asia, and the formation of The World Council of Churches. The biblical mes- sage was rediscovered by a world shaken by its own capac- ity for demonic destruction." Concern for a more adequate program of Christian teaching was expressed by church mem- bers and finally given form by the fifteenth General Council in 1952. "At each significant point," Dr. White said, "Gen- eral Council directed basic po- licy and the Council of 1962 launched the New Curriculum with this declaration: "The proclamation of the Gospel is the primary work of the Church, and the New Curriculum is a plan for increasing the effec- tiveness of the Church's funda- mental task." In answer to those critics (not United Church members) who claimed the New Curricu- lum had suddenly been foisted upon them, Dr. White called the roll of an army of contribu- tors who have been working for the past twelve years. "Teach- ers, pastors, biblical scholars, theologians and artists were en- listed. Four hundred lay peo- ple and 4,000 young people who voluutet red to pre-test the materials in mimeographed form... reported their findings in detail each week; 130, 000 people engaged in Bible study, using the first hook of the New Curriculum, "Tire Word and the W. , Dr. ',v bite said. "Tile New Curricul+m reflects faithfully the subst.incL of tht Christian faith, as commonly field among us, :and set down in cur• Bass e,t i_ Mon (the doc- ument signed by Methodist, Preshy terian and Congregational Churches when they formed The United Church of Canada in 191'5). Nu t -cited Church member need h: t;ncertain, nor enthariassed, nor apologet- ic for the teaching program of the cl.uich," he declared. For the Birds Farmers can rid their fields of pest birds with a chemical which triggers the "flockalarrn' distress cry from birds that take the bait, reports The Financial Post. Two new chemicals arc available. Both arc members of the pyridine family. A small quantity of grain is im- pregnated and scattered in the affected fields. lairds which eat the haitcd grain lose depth of vision. 'their central ner- vous systems area ffccted and ataxia sets in. Unable to fly, hut conscious something is wrong, the birds cry piteously. These cries scare the rest of the flock. Tests indicate they ne- ver rcturu. in one Iowa test grain fields were infested by 45,000 starlings. Atter the "flock alarm" was triggered with baited grain, only 2,000 birds remained in the area. The two chemicals used to bait the grain are selective and nontoxic to humans and pets. Their effect on the birds which have eaten them wears oil. The one big unanswered question, says The Financial Post, is this: if every farmer used the chemicals, where would all those birds go?