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The Citizen, 2000-07-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2000. PAGE 5. Other Views Is there an Is there an elevator in your life? There’s one in mine. Otis. Every morning when I go to work I stand before Otis and summon him like Royalty. “Stop here” I command with an imperial punch of my index finger. “Now”. Occasionally he does, but mostly he’s a no- show. Otis is a public servant of sulky, sullen disposition. If Otis was a Grade 5 student his report card would read, “Does not take direction well.” Funny things, elevators. I am ancient enough to remember when the boxy beasts came with actual human operators. Perky widows or wizened gents, most often, complete with quasi-military uniforms and white gloves. They perched on wooden stools and operated a polished brass door handle and a bronzed grill that fanned across the doorway between floors. “Second floor,” they would intone five thousand times a day, “linens, woolens, notions, ladies lingerie, foundation garments.” Or something like that, depending on the building their elevator graced. The elevator operators are gone now, to that limboland that is home to the ghosts of telephone operators, stenographers and other sundry trades that have been subsumed by robots. Point is, riding an elevator used to be a humanizing experience. A chance to chew the fat with Old Eddie or Sweet Heloise, whom you saw a couple or six times a day and whose life history you had a handle on. About a trillion dollar I picked up my newspaper at breakfast one morning and discovered that the Canadian economy had grown to the point where it was producing no less than $1 trillion a year in output. This was hailed as a great accomplishment but news must have been a bit slow that day since it was not exactly spelled out just what such an achievement was compared to. No foreign economy measures its output in Canadian dollars so it would be difficult to say what that really meant. Perhaps we should have reached that point years earlier, who knows? This is the sort of statistic that all countries like to use when the urge strikes them to brag about something. For a while we used to hear over and over again that the United States had the only trillion dollar economy (measured in U.S. dollars). What we did not hear was the fact that any country’s growth looks much bigger than it actually is over a period of time due to the effect on inflation on prices. When I arrived in Canada I recall that gasoline cost 19 cents a gallon (or about four cents a litre). I could go to an afternoon double feature at the movies for 12 cents. If you added up all the spending then, of course it was only a shadow of its current figure but inflation has done by far the greatest part of the work in getting our statistics up into the trillion dollar range. Yet inflation is not something that countries are proud of although some countries, including more than a few South American ones, used to like to inflate their way out of debt. To show you how some comparisons are really meaningless, let me make another one. I have already been a millionaire twice in my lifetime and that without winning one major prize in a lottery or even without making a killing on the stock market. I did that first simply by crossing the border from Yugoslavia into Greece and changing my Swiss francs into elevator in your life? Arthur Black And who knew yours. And now? Well, riding an elevator nowadays is ... something else. A kind of suspended animation in which certain behavioural gestures are de rigeur. You don’t look directly at the other passengers. Rather you lift your eyes heavenwards to give the impression you are thinking great thoughts. The hands, if empty, are crossed over the nether regions. Talk - if any - is excruciatingly small. “Some weather, eh?” “Thank goodness it’s Friday.” There are things one could do, of course, to enliven the thousands of elevator rides one is condemned to endure in one’s lifetime. One could get on first on the ground floor, wait for the car to fill up, then burst into The Maple Leaf Forever, briskly punching out the rhythm on the floor buttons. One could, in a crowd of fellow travelers, open one’s briefcase or purse, peer in and shout, “Getting enough air in there?” One could, when arriving at one’s floor, leap at the doors and attempt to claw them apart - Raymond Canon The International Scene Greek drachmae at the rate of about 10,000 of the latter to one Swiss franc. In no time at all 1 was a millionaire several times over. I do not recall any Canadian or Swiss newspapers carrying a headline trumpeting this “remarkable” achievement. At any rate it felt so good that, as soon as I was finished in Greece, I set off for Italy and changed some more of my money. Presto! I was a millionaire again since the rate of exchange for the Italian Lire, while not as high as that of the Greek drachmae, was still high enough for me to enter the exalted club of millionaires. I was sadly brought back to earth when I crossed the border back in Switzerland and found myself once again in the category of mere mortals. My millions melted away like the Alpine snow in mid-summer. But there is one current statistic for which we should be very happy. After years and years of deficits the current account in our balance of payments is actually in surplus, in other words we are not required to borrow money all the Final Thought No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. - Herbert Spencer then smile shamefaced when they open on their own. One could do any or all of these things and more, but one won’t - because one is Canadian. Canadians don’t do such things. Which may help explain a recent press release from a company called ENN. ENN stands for — (you may want to sit down for this) - Elevator News Network. The name says it all. ENN is dedicated to electrifying the elevators of this country. So far they’ve hot­ wired more than 500 elevators in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Hot wired for what? Why to carry newscasts, of course. Programming includes (I’m reading from the press release) “the latest local news, business, sports, market updates, ferry schedules, marine reports, ski conditions, weather and traffic information...” ENN is sure this is going to be a big hit with elevator riders because, as an ENN spokesman says, “It helps them pass the time and lets them catch up on current events.” Oh yeah. The one thing I’ve been looking for to round out my life experience is up to the minute details on earthquakes in Chile, bombs in Belfast, market upheavals in Tokyo, insurrection in Africa. Massacres, floods, plagues, plots and primaries during my commute from Main to Floor Three. Sorry, ENN. No offense, Otis. But this is where I get off. economy time in order to finance the deficit in our international trade and commerce. We are currently earning about $4 billion more than we are spending so that we can pay back some of the earlier borrowing. What a nice feeling after all these years of debt! There are two good reasons for our ascent into the surplus category, both of them connected to our low dollar. The first is the attraction that our country has for foreign tourists; for most of them our prices are cheap. The same mechanism also makes foreign prices expensive for Canadians and so we stay at home for holidays. Above all that is our trade surplus. Over the past decade we have raised the level of our exports from 25 per cent to 40 per cent of our total output, which has resulted in a trade surplus of about $37 billion. Thanks to these two factors, our level of unemployment has not been so low in many years and we are running the above mentioned surplus internationally. Statistics are fine but you have to be selective in which ones you look at. In economics, as in other subjects, your glass can be either half empty or half full. Letters Letters to the editor are a forum for public opinion and comment. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of this publication. THE EDITOR, I have read with interest the editorial of June 28 expressing concerns and opinions regarding the present amalgamation process. The entire process has been frustrating for all of us who have been involved over the past four years. I concur completely with the concerns and opinions expressed. Mason Bailey. Bonnie Gropp The short of it You can’t always get what you want It’s been a rough week for my youngest. First, two concerts he wanted to attend didn’t work out. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, my teenager had to mow the lawn, clean his room and when he found a good deal on a CD he wanted discovered he didn’t have enough money on him to buy it. The final blow came on the one night he could have the car and was told he had to come home early. Believe me, I’m not having fun at his expense. It may sound like I have little sympathy for his troubles, but I certainly have empathy. What was going on with him really is similar to the trials that plague most young people, not to mention his mother at that age. But, for me there has been a revelation in the decades since. Those old rock and rollers, the Rolling Stones may have warned me in my youth, but it took maturity at the expense of some of my idealism to make me a believer. You can't always get what you want. We don’t have to be very old before this reality strikes. However, it seems sometimes that it takes a long time before we can accept it with grace. Things are going to happen in life and though we aren’t particularly happy about them, we smile and get on with it. Such has been the case with a certain group of people in recent months. This past week, the last classes of Walton Public School walked out of its doors. Memories will linger of the small school with a big heart in the minds of its alumni and their families for years to come. But what will stick with me, I think will be the quiet dignity with which they defended their school and community, then when the battle was lost accepted reality and prepared for the future. It was and is an example of what I have come to know about this hamlet, and for that matter most others of its kind. Despite small numbers they rally when necessary (Walton Hall for example), throw a party like no others can (Belgrave turkey supper and millennium celebration), and work together to revive a necessary element of their community (Cranbrook Hall and Ethel Minor Ball). What is lacking in population is easily made up for in spirit. And Walton certainly showed this from the beginning with regards to their school. When the government said no it couldn’t be built, they found a way. Threatened with closure in 1979, the school survived. And to anyone who has ever visited it, the realization that this was a special place was evident. Working with the newspaper for the past 11 years, I have many times had the pleasure of visiting the school to cover a variety of events. I recall the first time, being struck by its humble size, but then by its unique personality. There was truly a sense of family, a supportive and loving one at that. I eventually drew the analogy of principal as gentle matriarch, the teachers as her daughters and the little ones the extended family of nieces and nephews. Animosity, perversity and contention seemed to be non-existent as the older children usually took care of the younger group. Walton PS was an environment any parent would like for their young child. Those who had it and lost it should be applauded for their class in letting go.