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The Citizen, 1999-06-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 1999. PAGE 5. ^Arthur Black Bring back the cassette! Do you still listen to music on tape cassettes? Me too. That makes both of us cultural dinosaurs. Cassettes aren't quite as obsolete as Newfoundland cod, the Avro Arrow and the federal Progressive Conservatives - but they’re close. According to a recent study published in The Globe and Mail, Canadians bought just a little over 8 million pre-recorded music cassettes last year. That’s one-fifth the number of cassettes that were bought in 1985. Pardon me for ranting, but this is exactly what ticks me off about modem technology. I happen to feel quit comfy with music on cassettes. I have a cassette player in the dashboard of my car which nicely gets me through traffic jams and long, boring commutes. I have a cassette player in my bedroom. And in my workshop. I even have one of those Walkman things so International Scene What about those donuts'? Dear Rene I’m glad you had a good time in Canada even if your stay was a bit short. It was rather difficult to show you much of our country in such a short time since there is an abundance of different scenery. However, you did realize that snow, and lots of it, is a basic part of a Canadian winter but even spring comes in this country and we are always glad to see the last of the cold weather. But you asked me to explain why there were so many donut shops around and why many of them have the name Tim Horton on them. I promised you that I would tell you a bit more about it in my next letter to you and here it is. I have to be honest with you; a lot of Canadians are wondering why it is that we have taken to donuts in such a big way. Tim Horton alone expects to have 2,000 outlets by the year 2,000 and that is only one of the chains that dot the landscape here. You should know that this is not just another idea that came from the United States; the Americans are as puzzled as everybody else when they come here and find donuts being sold on almost every street corner and in such great numbers and varieties. Is Tim Horton’s just another Canadian company then? Well, yes and no. It goes like that I can listen to music the people around me probably don't want to listen to. This is what modern technology always does to me. I just get nicely settled in with some piece of advanced electronic wizardry and zoom! - the whole world morphs on to another plane. Remember MS-DOS? That was the computer cyberbabble language that you absolutely had to learn 10 years ago if you wanted to use a computer. I learned it. It cost me a fortune in Tylenol and ulcer medicine, but I learned it. Then along came Bill Gates and Windows. Overnight, MS-DOS became as useful as a BA in conversational Etruscan. I’d like to write off the cassettes demise as a mere case of media hysteria, but I know better. I’ve been trying to find a store that still sells music on cassettes. There’s a huge Virgin Records store a few blocks from where I work. It has three floors of CDs, Videos ... and DVDs. Whatever the hell they are. Oh yes, and if you ask a clerk who’s worked there for a while, he or she might be able to direct you to the shabby little four-foot by six- foot rack at the back of the basement where By Raymond Canon this. The company was started in Canada by Tim Horton who was a well-known hockey player. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car crash early in the history of the company and never got to see its success. The company has recently been bought out by the U.S.-based Wendy’s, which you remember as one of the fast-food chains you visited. But, in a rather strange twist, part of the payment was in shares of Wendy’s. The former owner of the donut chain, who had bought out the company from the Horton family, ended up with more shares in Wendy’s than even its famous owner Dave Thomas, who, you will recall, frequently does his own commercials. So you will understand why I said that Tim Horton’s was no longer a Canadian-owned company, but in a rather strange way it still is, at least partially and by analogy, Wendy’s. Wendy, by the way, is the name of Thomas’s daughter. You might be interested in knowing that Dave Thomas is as nice a guy in person as he appears on TV, He is down-to-earth, approachable, modest and has no trace of the colossal ego so prevalent with the heads of many companies. But let’s get back to those donuts. There is nothing quite like them in Europe and those things some of your friends tried to pass off on me as donuts in the Czech Republic are pale imitations of the real thing. Canadian donuts generally have holes in the centre and come in so many different kinds they keep the last of their music-on-cassette stock. Mostly Lawrence Welks Polka Party and The Best of Milli Vanilli as far as I could tell. All available on Compact Disc, of course. Only problem is, I don’t have CD players in my car, my workshop, my bedroom or on my hip. Which means I will need to buy a whole lot of new equipment if I want to stay even close to the crest of the technological wave. Which, of course, is the whole point ... to keep stupid, unquestioning slobs like you and me shelling out money for new ‘innovations’ that nobody really needs. You know the very best place to buy pre­ recorded music cassettes these days? Garage sales. That’s where you’ll find them. Right next to the electric typewriters, the Cabbage Patch Kids and the Swiss Fondue sets. One of my favourite poets-W.H. Auden, once said, “What the mass media offer ... is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten and replaced by a new dish.” Smart guy, Auden. He died in 1973. Just about the time music cassettes were becoming popular. that it is hard to keep track. They actually have their origins in the 19th century. I can certainly recall seeing them when I arrived here at a relatively tender age. However, then you could have any kind you wanted then as long as it was a plain one. That’s all they had then but times do change, as you already know. Alright, where did they really come from? My sources of information tell me that it was Dutch settlers who brought the recipe along when they immigrated here early in the 19th century. However, at that time the hole was nowhere to be seen. About the middle of the century, somebody got the bright idea that they might bake better if they were round and if a hole was cut in the center and so history was made. There are, however, still types of donuts without the hole, as you saw when you entered Tim Horton’s. I think you can understand when I say that they now come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you should open up a Tim Horton’s in Prague. Or get Hasek or Jagr to do it, when they finish playing hockey. Don’t say 1 never give you any ideas how to get rich. A Final Thought No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt A good place to be I went to see West Side Story at Stratford with my kids the other night. I’m not going to comment on the production here, that’s another page, but it did leave me pondering a question. How many times have you ever found yourself wondering what if? At the end of the ill-fated tale of Tony and Maria, I was thinking, “If he just hadn’t, if she just hadn't. What if Anita had? What if the Jets hadn’t? One miniscule moment in time, one slip of the tongue and the love story ends in tragedy. Oh, I have been there. Not that my story ended in tragedy, quite the opposite, but there were aspects of my life that I often reflect upon and realize how they have altered who I am as opposed to whom I might have been. Romanticism over realism, family over career molded me. Had I opted to move following school, had I chosen not to marry young, who would Bonnie be? Still in small-town Ontario? Married, a mother of four? A friend and I were talking last week and the conversational path we took led us onto the directions our lives had taken. In her case it was an educational choice which she believes altered the course of her future. Mine, a little more ambiguous, is defined by immaturity. It’s kind of amusing in retrospect that what got me to this so stable as to be boring point in my life was recalcitrant youth. It is mildly mind-boggling to realize that my four wonderful children exist because I was a willful teenager. I think there are points in each and everyone's life which define their present. They are those significant details which if altered would most certainly have rewritten destiny. Reflecting on them can indeed be, though admittedly pointless, somewhat insightful. As my friend and I confronted our existence and the knowledge that had we done what interestingly enough we wanted to do at the time, rather than what we did, we questioned each other on if we would do it differently given a chance. In love with family and home, there was no thought before the inevitable negative response. However, when then asked whether we would go back and do it again, not knowing what we missed, would our answer then be the same? For neither of us was the rejoinder spontaneous. This proposition made one pause. All the chances I had taken for granted or ignored could be there for me. But, as I fantasized about the accomplishments, the experiences, the fun I was sure would come as a result, I couldn’t imagine any of it without the people who share my ho-hum normalcy with me now. Knowing that to say yes, to the opportunity, even though assured that I would not remember this existence, could never be a possibility. My past wasn’t perfect. I made some odd choices, but while I regret a few I would not change any of them. They got me where I am now and it’s really a pretty good place to be. Tony and Maria on the other hand, might want to reconsider.