HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2000-07-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2000. PAGE 5.
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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.