HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1993-08-18, Page 5International Scene
y naymono canon
THE cinchN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1993. PAGE 5.
Dogs barking,
a weird
thing
This is a column about my dog. Rufus is a
podgy, middle-aged mutt who came into my
life under false pretenses. The pet store
owner assured me, as he was pocketing my
cheque for 90 bucks, that the bundle of fur in
the cardboard box was pure Australian
Shepherd.
I didn't know what an Australian Shepherd
was, but it sounded kind of exotic, so I
bought him.
That was seven years ago. Now, I know
what an Australian Shepherd looks like.
And my dog isn't one.
Mind you, he'd be the Arnold
Schwartzenegger of Australian Shepherds if
he was one. Australian Shepherds are mid-
size dogs, built light and wiry for all that
shepherding they have to do. My dog tips the
scales at 85 pounds. He carries his bulk
under a coat of short black hair tastefully
touched up at the legs and tail tip with
splashes of white.
Fitting that he should sport the colours of a
What constitutes
a citizen?
Every country has specific rules as to how
you become a citizen if you were not born in
the country but even that prerogative is
being called into question as various nations,
either new or revised, come to grips with the
question of who should be allowed to vote or
even stay. It is not always a cut and dried
proposition and more than a few people's
noses are out of joint when it is discovered
that they have been relegated to something
approaching a second-class citizen.
Take the three Baltic states, for example,
which recently gained their independence
from the Soviet Union since being under
control of that country dating back to the
beginning of World War H in 1939. To start
with Estonia, when it was absorbed by
Moscow, about eight per cent of its
population was considered, from an ethnic
point of view, to be Russian. By the time the
Estonians got their country back, this eight
per cent had increased to 28 per cent.
Because they were Russians, many of them
held important jobs in Estonia under
Communist hegemony and a considerable
number of them did not bother to learn
Estonian or even live like Estonians.
When the Estonian government got around
to drawing up a citizenship law, many of
these Russians found themselves out in the
cold. It seemed that the only ones who
would be allowed to stay would be those
who were there in 1940 or the descendants
of such people. This seemed a bit too harsh
so the law was modified to include those
who are lawfully employed in civilian jobs,
or who are included in the country's social
welfare program. There are still some grey
areas but at least the government is headed
in the right direction.
Latvia, which borders on Estonia, has a
much larger percentage of aliens, so much so
that the country still has not got around to
establishing the sort of law which we just
police car, since he's almost as wide as one.
He certainly doesn't have the metabolism
of a working farm dog. If Rufus moved any
less he'd have to be reclassified as a garden
plant. Rufus's idea of a perfect day is one
spent lying on his back with his tongue
lolling out the side of his mouth while he
passes gas. He doesn't sit up, beg, fetch
sticks or roll over on command. He's scared
of cats, not fussy about other dogs and
basically a bit of a chickenbleep when it
comes to anything that moves.
But he does have one unsurpassed talent,
my Rufus.
He can bark.
Lord, can he bark.
To knock on the front door of my house is
to unleash a firestorm of barks and woofs
that shiver the timbers and rattle the
windows and cause roof shingles to curl.
It's a weird thing, dogs barking. Kind of a
neurotic habit they picked up when they
became domesticated. Wolves only bark
when they're young. As they mature, wolves
develop a more sophisticated language of
guttural growls and snarls. But not dogs.
"They're immature, like teenagers" says
biologist Raymond Coppinger, "very hard to
train."
That certainly fits Rufus. I've tried
everything from dog biscuits to verbal
looked at in Estonia. Lithuania, on the
contrary, started out by offering citizenship
rights to anybody who was a permanent
resident. However this generosity ended in
1991 and the current requirements include a
language test and 10 years of residence.
These three countries are new at the game;
Germany, on the other hand, is not. The
rules in that country are downright unique.
The German government decreed that the
right of citizenship was a blood, not a
birthright. This means that ethnic Germans
who have been living in other European
countries or even Asia, are allowed to get a
German passport on demand. However, the
children of guest workers who have been
born and brought up in Germany, speak
perfect German and have little or no contact
with their families' countries of origin have
to wait years before they can get German
citizenship; as a result few have even
bothered to try.
Even some of the ethnic Germans are
finding it hard to prove their origin. One
questionnaire contains no less than 59 pages
while I can vouch for the fact some of the
ethnic Germans speak something less than
good German. In addition a lot of documents
were lost during World War II, a fact that is
making it had for some people to prove
citizenship of any kind.
The recent break-up of Czechoslovakia
caused further citizenship problems. Much
of the problem rests in the hands of the
Czechs whose government has decreed that
dual citizenship will be honoured with any
country that does not officially bar it. There
is one exception and that is Slovakia. The
Slovaks are understandably upset, claiming
that there is an unwritten agreement on the
question of dual citizenship.
If I can relate to this, it is because I, too,
had my own problems. I discovered to my
surprise and horror that there was no
document to prove that I had ever entered
Canada legally or officially. I was doing
military service at the time and I was curtly
informed that, as I was neither a British
subject nor a Canadian citizen, as far as the
government was concerned, I was
threats and banishment to the basement.
Rufus just keeps on barking.
Apparently, I'm lucky. Rufus ONLY barks
when somebody comes to the door. Doctor
Coppinger claims that dogs may bark at the
moon, at the wind or just for the hell of it.
He once clocked a sheep dog in Minnesota
that barked non-stop for seven hours.
At, as far as Doctor Coppinger could tell,
nothing in particular.
Back in the old days when we hung out in
caves and carried clubs and spears, it must
have been dandy to have four legged burglar
alarms sleeping beside you. Dogs smell and
hear intruders long before dozy old'homo
sapiens do.
Which I guess is all Rufus is doing when
he barks. He's telling the rest of us —
members of his "pack" — that there's a sabre-
toothed tiger on the front porch.
Did you know that dogs bark in different
languages? According to a report called "A
Glossary of Sounds Made by Dogs and
Cats", pooches which say 'bow-wow' here
in Canada, say 'haf-har in Czechoslovakia.
In Greece they go `rav-ray'; in Spain they go
`guau-guau'. Taiwanese dogs say `wang-
wang'; Laotian dogs say `voon-voon'.
I think I'll read this report to Rufus.
If he's going to bark, he might as well
learn a few languages.
"stateless."
In the aftermath of World War II try
wandering around this planet with a
document that says you are a stateless
citizen. In due time everything got
straightened out but until it did I ran into any
number of road blocks. For this reason when
I travel with a Canadian passport today, it
means a great deal more to me than it does
to many. I worked a lot harder to get my
Canadian citizenship than most people.
Letters
MPP says
costs down
Continued from page 4
in tourist dollars and keep our Huron dollars
in the community. Entertainment is big
business and with tourism it is becoming a
bigger part of Huron's economic life.
Projects like roads and sewers have an
obvious impact as they allow for the speedy
transport of people and goods and allow for
the growth through house construction.
The other side of the coin is that Ontario
has, and will continue to reduce the cost of
running the government. Operating costs in
almost all ministries are down sharply. The
objective of the Social Contract was to
reduce the operating cost of government and
control the growth of the deficit. When the
government's costs outstrip its income then
the costs of borrowing goes up and in some
serious cases international bankers make the
decisions for you. When this happens these
decisions benefit them, not the people. The
first thing the international bankers hit is
health care, then education and any service
which help people.
Your government faces a very tough
situation. It must juggle the need to get
people working, retrain people for a changed
economy, control the cost of government,
and maintain the services that people expect
in Ontario.
There is no short or easy answer.
Paul Klopp, MPP Huron.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Let's be fair
Sometimes you just have to wonder.
Last week while coming home from work,
a story on the radio caught my attention. It
would seem the powers that be have
determined that female corrections officers
can conduct searches of male prisoners and
can enter their cells unannounced. It is not
an infringement of their rights. However,
and this should come as no surprise, this
doesn't work the other way.
This is equal rights? Whatever happened
to, you know, sauce for the goose, sauce for
the gander?
I wracked my brain trying to come up with
a logical explanation for this one that I
maybe hadn't heard, but in my wildest
imaginings I couldn't.
We really have come a long way, baby.
Right to the point where it's okay if the
opposite gender suffers injustices as long as
we gain ground. What a victory.
Beware gentleman; women still have a
long way to go. There are a lot of men who
treat females pretty badly. But is this really
playing fair? Have we become so
sanctimonious that we don't want the rules to
be the same for both sides?
I sure hope not because with decisions like
this one popping up daily, we're soon going
to lose the good guys as our allies.
Anyone listening can't help but hear the
frustration, already. Some places, like the
Waterloo Fire Department did some time
ago, make it easier for women to pass their
tests by lowering the passing rate for them.
As far as I'm concerned this is more
insulting then anything that's ever been said
to me by one of those macho lame brains,
who we must remember aren't the norm.
The men weren't happy either. And
imagine being told you didn't get the job, not
because you weren't qualified, but because
you're a man.
We're not winning any friends, gals.
Heavens, they're soon going to be afraid to
talk to us.
Just imagine what's going to happen to one
of those male cons when he makes a crude
remark to the female guard doing the search.
He'll be hit with a sexual harrassment charge
next.
Now there's an issue that's gotten blown
way out of proportion. What's annoying is
that it's a very important issue, which is
being made a joke of by the petty grievances
coming forward. Take for example the case
of the man who kept a photo on his desk of
his wife in a bikini. The female co-workers
cried sexual harrassment saying that it was
belittling to them.
More like 'what's it to them?' if you ask
me.
I don't like being the object of some
neanderthal's crude comment. It's something
every woman has been subjected to, but in
all honesty I must admit women can be
shameless. Men could not get away with the
comments I've heard, and said, about them.
What it really comes down to is aren't we
wasting time looking for insults when there
are people with real problems? A person
threatened by loss of home, life or livelihood
if they don't return special favours is a
victim of harrassment, but no one is ever
going to take these situations seriously when
people keep retaliating for unintentional
affronts?
Contrary to popular belief all men aren't
bad. There are a good number of them who
want the same things for women that we
want, bat they're paying the same price as
the others. If we want to fix the injustices in
this world, we have to see this isn't right.
Let's be fair.
Arthur Black