HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1994-08-24, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1994. PAGE 5.
The draggy
side effect of
being Canadian
Americans with highest glee
Applaud the climber of the tree
Englishmen have half a mind
The tree is not the proper kind
Canadians with liny frown
Take an axe and chop it down.
Robin Skelton
O Canada. It’s true you know - this
country does drag a huge psychic sea anchor
behind it, slowing down its passage through
the International shipping lanes. Canadians
are diffident, cautious - second-guessers by
nature.
Americans say "Hell, let's go for it!"
Canadians say "But what will the
neighbours think?"
Canadianism has its good side. We don't
run roughshod over other national
sensibilities. It will be a long time before
Canadian troops invade Grenada, subvert the
government of Chile or bomb Iran. It's not
our style.
But there's a down side too. There's a
draggy side effect to being Canadian. Don't
By Raymond Canon
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Air safety
I have long ago lost track of the number of
hours that I have spent flying from Point A
to Point B, either as a passenger or at the
controls of an aircraft myself. I really don't
worry too much about crashing although I
will admit that I still make sure I know
where all the exits are when I get in a plane.
I got to thinking about all this again when
I found myself crossing the Atlantic in a
Boeing 676, a twin-engined plane. Time was
when such an aircraft would not have tfeen
allowed to fly the Atlantic with a load of
passengers. Now, due mainly to the
increased safety records of the engines, such
a thing in the industry is routine.
In spite of such advances the airline
industry is becoming more concerned about
crashes. Boeing, the world's largest builder
of commercial aircraft, recently predicted
that, unless safety could be improved even
more, by the year 2010 jet airliners would be
crashing on the average of al least once a
week.
This docs not take into consideration such
countries as Russia and China where safely
is something of a bad joke. It was not loo
long ago that Aeroflot, the Russian airline,
had one of its modern Airbus jets crash in
Siberia; it turned out that the 15-year-old son
of the pilot was at the controls at the time.
The plane was reportedly on automatic pilot
and the teenager accidentally switched it off
and the crew was unable to get the plane
under control before it crashed.
The main reason for the Boeing prediction
is that flying is not going to become more
dangerous; it is becoming considerably more
frequent, growing at about the rale of five
per cent a year. In I960, considerably fewer
people took to the skies, but those who did
were 20 times as likely to be killed in a crash
take my word for it. Ask the Kinsmans.
Bob and Rita Kinsman own a very
successful motcl/rcstaurant complex in
Cottage Country - the Muskoka district of
Ontario. The Blue Heron Restaurant and
Motel has seven rental units, 23-scai
restaurant, a lakeside dock and a one-
bedroom apartment.
A success story - with just one liny black
fly in the ointment. The Kinsmans were
approaching retirement age. They wanted to
get out of the grind and enjoy themselves.
And they hit on a novel way to do that.
Bob and Rita Kinsman announced that they
were sponsoring a competition. Contestants
had to first pony up $100 each. Then they
had to write a 200 word essay explaining
why they would like to take over the Blue
Heron Restaurant and Motel. After all the
entries were in, judges supplied by the South
Muskoka Literacy Society would go over the
essays and choose the grand prize winner.
In other words for a hundred bucks and a
couple of cents worth of ballpoint ink,
somebody was going to win a flourishing
resort business, worth close to half a million
bucks.
The Kinsmans arc an adventurous couple
but they're not flat out crazy. They reserved
the right to cancel the contest and refund the
money if they got less than 4,000 entries.
It became a media sensation. The
newspaper wire service picked up the story.
than anyone who flics today.
Crashes back in the 1960s tended to be
caused mainly by technical problems, such
as metal fatigue in the airframe or engine.
Today it is more likely to be pilot error.
Boeing's study, which I mentioned above,
considers that 60 per cent of all accidents in
the last 10 years could have been averted if
the crew had done their job properly.
I can relate to that in my experience as a
pilot. Every time that I got into the plane, it
was with the best of intentions. I never had
an accident, but the two limes I came closest
were due to errors on my part. I was flying
for a crop-spraying company at the time and
took someone up for a familiarization flight.
We took off into the wind and set out to take
a look at some of the strips into which the
pilot might be flying. That passed without
incident but, when we returned, we
proceeded to land in the same direction as
we had taken off. I emphasized the
importance of getting down in the first few
feet of the runway but it become obvious
that I was not going to come close to that.
We went off the end of the runway and only
the long grass and some quick action on my
part prevented us from going into a drainage
ditch of considerable size. I look a quick
look at what passed for a wind sock and
realized that, in the time we were up the
wind had shifted and had actually blown us
down the runway instead of helping us to
land. Both I of us learned an important
lesson from that oversight.
At any rale the industry has now formed a
task force to look into the ways to eliminate
one particular type of crash called
"controlled flight into terrain." This is what
takes place when the crew has everything
under control and everything is working
normally, yet the aircraft flies into the
ground. This kind of crash caused over half
of all the deaths during the past six years.
There is no one reason for the crashes and
for this reason the taskforce is looking for a
number of ways in which the crew can work
TV crews showed up to film the Kinsmans
and shoot a little footage of the sun going
down from the Blue Heron dock.
The story got so much airplay that even
the bureaucrats in Ottawa got wind of it.
And they proceeded to do what
bureaucrats do best: they killed it stone dead.
Ottawa announced that because of the
minimum entry requirement the contest was
illegal.
"The police said we could appeal" noted
Rita Kinsman ruefully, "but it would have to
be to the Supreme Court of Canada and that
could easily cost $100,000."
So the contest is dead. The 300 entrants
who have written their essays and paid their
$100 entry fee will gel their money back and
the Kinsmans will try to sell their business
the conventional, Canadian way: through a
real estate agent on the open market.
Pity. A pity that a little grassroots
initiative gets stomped to death by the
beancounters in Ottawa. Reminds me of the
story Derek Bumcy, Canada's ambassador to
the U.S., used to tell about the Newfound
land fisherman carrying a pail of lobsters up
from the wharf. A passerby warned him that
the lobsters could get away because there
was no lid on the pail.
"Not to worry, boy" said the fisherman.
"These arc Canadian lobsters. Soon as one
makes it to the top, the others will drag him
down."
even more efficiently than it does now.
One of the most interesting revelations
comes from a study of the crashes in various
regions. It turns out that accidents are more
frequent in Asia and Latin America. One
cause of this is the deference of co-pilots in
those regions. There is nothing wrong with
their flying ability; they arc just less likely to
point out to the boss pilot that what he is
doing is about to have the plane fly into a
mountain. As one commentator has put it,
this is a high price to pay for deference.
If better training could result in the
chances of a mistake being cut in half on the
flight-deck, the number of accidents due to
such causes would be cut from one in two
million flights to one in 10 million which
would be a five-fold improvement.
If such improvements do lake place, we
will not have to worry about Boeing's
prediction for 2010 coming true.
Parent states
hearty
approval
Continued from page 4
for its growth and change.
When questioned on the idea of antipathy,
hostility and rebelliousness in the cast my
son could think of nothing in reality that this
comment could be based on.
I think that the reason the young people
seemed oblivious to these intense ideas is
that they didn't exist, not as the article
intimated, that they were loo naive to
recognize them. This would be an insult to
their intelligence and sensitivity. Perhaps the
reporter has misinterpreted the natural
exuberance and innovativeness of youth
which is a gift to us all.
I would like to stale again my hearty
approval of the play and the process that
created it.
Beth Fulton
RR 1, Belgrave.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
When it was
a game
As every ball fan is only loo well aware,
the baseball strike is still on and for those
whom the boys of summer arc what the
season's about, there's something missing.
Fortunately, for parents of children who
play baseball, it's not the only game going.
There is always an alternative to the major
leaguers, one that it might do the guys in the
bigs, a world of good to come out and watch.
This past weekend my youngest child's
team participated in its playoff tournament.
They went into the first game confident after
finishing the regular play in second place.
However, with a little help from some of the
worst umpiring I've ever seen, they came
away from the tournament with two losses to
end what had been a good season.
With not even a win to show for a
summer's accumulation of cuts and bruises,
for the extra practices or the miles logged, a
bit of a dejected manner from our players
could have been forgiven. Amazingly, as
they gathered for their little celebration
afterwards, there was no whining to be
heard, just recognition for their
accomplishments.
Watching them play that day, I couldn't
help thinking that this is baseball (with the
exception of the rules and adult interference
that seems to go hand in hand with
organized sport). Though winning would
certainly have been a nice touch, these kids
still had a good time. They just went out and
did what they could, and, like the guys who
played back when it was a game and not a
business, just for the love of it,
Granted, major leaguers have it lough. A
salary cap would mean they couldn't make
$5 million a year. Free agency, they say,
infringes on their rights to sell their talents to
the highest bidder. Imagine having to play
for a team that could only pay you $1
million.
Wouldn't that just take the fun out of
baseball?
The veteran players will try to tell us that
they arc doing this for the younger guys, but
rookies like Toronto's Rob Butler would
maybe appreciate the opportunity al this
point to play every day. In a job where
experience counts, being sidelined isn't a
good thing. For a young player, who wants
to contribute on a daily basis, how much
moolah he may make after a few years of
regular playing under his bell, is the least of
his worries.
Arc pitchers like Jimmy Key and David
Cone, who were on track for the Cy Young
Award, really more interested in the
almighty dollar?
They can argue it all they want, but to my -
way of thinking the players and owners are
taking the fun out of basball. When the strike
is over, I'm sure, that like all the other fans,
I’ll still be watching, but it will be with more
of a cynical eye. Even Joe Carter came down
a notch in my book, when he said the strike
wasn't about gelling more money. If you’re
going to be greedy al least be honest about
it.
There's a line in the movie Major League
2, that I thought said it all, when the rookie
catcher points out to his disgruntled
teammates that there are a lol of people who
would like to be paid to play ball every day.
So true. And there's probably a lol of
young players who would step into their
shoes and do ii for almost nothing. As a
matter of fact, 1'11 bet there arc some who
would probably pay for the chance.