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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2000-07-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2000. PAGE 5. Other Views I say, ‘Long live the windypuff! ’ One man's weed is another man's flower Anon A recent headline in The Globe and Mail shows just how disconnected we've become from the planet we live on. SPRINGTIME BATTLE WITH YELLOW MENACE MAY BE OVER it reads. It s talking about dandelions. Dandelions? Yellow menace? The story under the headline crows about a team of Canadian scientists which has discovered a naturally occurring but hitherto unnoticed fungus. The scientists believe this discovery could be a knock-out punch for the dandelion. It’s a naturally occurring mould which attaches itself to the dandelion plant and feeds off it until the dandelion dies. Once the dandelion is gone, the mould dies too. Sounds ideal - until you ask the question: how come we're killing dandelions in the first place? Do we kill them because they’re ugly? Hardly. The dandelion is a beautiful plant, be it young and golden or old and silvery. Because we think they're noxious? If so, we’re pretty stupid. Native people have known for eons that the dandelion is powerful medicine. Even the Puritans purposely packed dandelion seeds when they came to North American investment for the good In the past I have written about the American companies who have come to Canada to buy up short sections of either the Canadian National or Canadian Pacific Railways because the latter were losing, or claimed to be losing money on these sections and, failing a buyer being found, were prepared to shut them down and subsequently tear up tracks. This is what has happened to such places as Blyth, Brussels, Kincardine and Kingsville, all of which had railway service at one time but not any more. Places like Goderich, Clinton, Centralia and Hensall were spared this fate because an American company called Railtex came in and bought up the CN line running northwest out of Stratford. The line has been profitable right from the beginning and provides more frequent service than CN ever did. Subsequently Railtex was offered the line from Georgetown through Guelph - Kitchener - Stratford and on to London so it now has quite a little railway of its own. With the latter purchase it can now rent out the line to Via and Amtrak on the latter’s Toronto-Chicago run. The same company has also bought the line from Truro to Sydney in Nova Scotia and has seen a similar increase in freight traffic there. There is even talk of restoring some form of passenger service on the line which would be a first if it actually came to pass. Another American company, Ommtrax, got into the Canadian railway business in a big way when three years ago it bought up no less than 1,300 kms. of the CN line going to Churchill. Manitoba. It paid $20 million for this track and, for good measure, paid another $44 million for the port in Churchill. Since that time grain shipments have increased by about 30 per cent and the company is making every effort to double this tonnage so that the port can be made profitable, something that nobody believed possible just a few years ago. Furthermore, Omnitrax is attempting to lure America so that they could take advantage of it’s medicinal benefits in the New World. And the beneficial properties are considerable. In fact, it may just be the most nutritionally potent plant growing inside or outside our gardens. Dandelions are full of iron. They provide more potassium than bananas; more beta carotene than carrots; more lecithin than soybeans. Other countries recognize the dandelions value and deliberately cultivate them as a kitchen staple. And why not? The leaves of a young dandelion plant are delicious - and about 10 times more nutritious - than lettuce. Dandelions make excellent wine and you can even grind up the tap root to make a coffee substitute. So why do we hate this plant so? Partly because of our lawn fetish. Somewhere along the way we developed the Raymond Canon The International Scene imported freight into the port so that the rail cars do not have to be taken back empty to the wheat farms. It is reminding European shippers that the route from Europe to Churchill is shorter than that to the ports on the east coast. When the port is open, which is only for three to four months of the year, it is to the west's advantage to use the port as much as possible. Since Omnitrax is an American company, it is even trying to persuade American shippers in the midwest to use the port instead of the much longer route of either the Great Lakes or the east coast ports such as Halifax or New York. The irony of all this is that while American companies are buying up parts of CN, the Canadian company already owns considerable trackage in the U.S. and is actively engaged in trying to increase its services south of the border. CP for that matter is trying to do the same thing. Both Canadian railways have come to the same conclusion. The only way to make money is to get rid of all passenger services and to concentrate, wherever possible, on long distance freight and the only place to expand is I — J Final Thought Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather, indicates, his fate. - Henry. David Thoreau completely irrational notion that we ought to surround our houses and public buildings with a monotonous carpet of undifferentiated green. Something that grew really fast so we Could spend lots of .leisure time humping roaring, fume-spewing lawn mowers over it, trying to keep it short. The dandelion scoffs. We spend small fortunes on lawn rollers, fertilizers, aerators and mutant grass seed, only to wake up one morning to an invasion of gaily waving yellow heads that seem to say “We’re baaaack!” Then there are the herbicides. North American lawn freaks spend millions of bucks each year mainlining chemical poisons designed to eradicate the dandelion and its kin. Nobody’s quite sure what else we’re killing, but hey - as long as we get rid of those damn dandelions, eh? Maybe that’s the good news about this new anti-dandelion fungus - at least it'll get us off our herbicide addiction. My guess is it’ll be about as effective as ail the other things we’ve tried in our ‘war’ on the dandelion. Which is to say, not very. Call it a butterchin, a windypuff, a fairy clock, a blowball, a dumble-dor or an Irish daisy. Call it what you will, the dandelion is here to stay. You can’t keep a good weed down. in the U.S. One can only wonder how many small places in southern Ontario would be getting efficient freight service if the American companies specializing in short haul services had been allowed to enter Canada earlier. Letter Continued from page 4 there is more than enough support for the claim that we spend far too much of our thought life and money on these gods, our sports heroes. We raise the roof when our MPPs are rumoured to be in the running for a 33 per cent pay hike or a bank president is to receive a multi-million-dollar bonus. Yet, we hardly turn a hair when Lenny Wilkens signs for $18 million American over four years to coach some dinosaurs. The double standard shouts out for attention as we seem to place a higher value on the guy who straps on the pads than our e'ected who hold our fate in their hands. The bottom line is that it shouldn’t matter a hill of beans whether the Jays fly or languish below 500, for they aren’t ours anyway, having parachuted in from such exotic vacation spots as the Dominican Republic and southern California. They aren’t here because they like us or necessarily for the love of the game - they’re in our backyard so we can throw money to them over the fence. It’s encouraging to see the SkyDome over half empty these days for it suggests that we’re coming to realize we’re being used to make the owners and players rich. Winnipeg and Quebec City suffered the loss of their teams because the balance sheets were Bashing 'ed. The fans protested, but in the end good business sense demanded a move. The crowds who attended this game aren’t unlike a herd of cattle hungry to have their pockets picked. What sort of sport is it when a bruising defenceman blindsides the other team's superstar causing a concussion, and claims afterwards he did it to ensure victory. Sick. Jim Newton, New Dundee Bonnie Gropp The short of it Here a bumpkin, there a bumpkin I grew up in a small town, large by comparison to where I live now, certainly, but to the worldly cosmopolitan, very definitely smalltown. However, living in the city while attending school didn’t seem to alter my life nearly as significantly as moving to a rural village in Huron County did years later. While in the city I could enjoy most of the things I had experienced before, though perhaps on a large and more diverse scale, now I find myself driving to find some of these things. That said however, it is all within a brief car ride’s distance. Twenty minutes or 45 will take me to see live theatre, 1 can go to a movie in 15 minutes or be able to shop in a specialty store in half an hour of leaving home. All about the same time it would take an urbanite to do the same things in their city. It was this realization that came to me when I found myself in a rather unique situation recently — defending rural life. While I believe there is no better place in which to raise a family, it is perhaps my history that finds me from time to time thinking I miss the activity of a greater populace. However, though there are aspects of city life I know I would enjoy I also recognize the greener pastures perspective — there are many I wouldn’t. The other reality is that “bumpkin” mentality is not reserved for small town. Nor does everyone in a small town have it. A recent social gathering in a nearby city found me sitting across from someone, who to his own great amusement felt compelled to refer to my family and I as the aforementioned bumpkins, as well as hicks and red-necks, all with a Grandpa McCoy, ‘aw shucks hitci, to his voice. Now I don’t mind laughing at myself and so I did — the first time. The second time I even managed a smile. But as the joke wore thin, so did my patience. That is until the irony thickened my skin. My family, I realized has experienced more culture than this man, even without leaving Huron County. My children have been exposed to opportunities that I know this person hasn’t even been close to. As 1 attempted to point this out to him, drowned out by his large laugh. I thought of the many well-educated, well-spoken people I have met here. Elegance and refinement, it would seem to me aren’t always found among the urbanites. I looked at my children, proud of their open minds, their acceptance of those who choose a different path than they would or live a different life than they do — and smiled. Who ever heard of a red-neck with an open mind? This dawning moment lightened my bitter mood and I no longer felt compelled to defend where my family lives or how we live. Watching him as he continued to find his little joke very, very funny, I started to view this whole thing a little differently. By my definition there was only one red­ neck at our table and he lived in the city. His narrow, stereotypical view about this wide world and the people in it made him more of a bumpkin than most country folk I know'. As my son noted liter, being a hick is not about where you live, it’s about how you live.