HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2004-09-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2004. PAGE 5.
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Thoughts on the phone-y war
/n the beginning, long distance
conversations pretty much depended on
how loud you could shout. Leather-lunged
chatterers could comfortably make themselves
heard from cave mouth to cave mouth.
Then we developed smoke signals.
Conversations — necessarily brutish and short —
could be carried out from mountaintop to
mountaintop, providing you had enough fuel, a
sturdy blanket, no wind and a reliable flint.-
Then on March .10. 1876 Alex Bell, bless his
Edinburgian/Cape Bretonian/Bostonian heart,
strung some electrified wire between two
rooms and shouted "Mister Watson, come
here, I need you" into one end of the wire. And
Mister Watson, hearing Bell's voice through
the wire, came on the run.
That's the official story, anyway. My guess
is. Bell yelled loud enough to be heard right
through the wall, but no matter, the principle
was sound. History says the world's first
telephone call had been placed, and answered.
It's been downhill ever since.
The Bell contraption begat the cumbersome
wall telephone which begat the clunky
handheld dial telephone, which began the
hernia-inducing walkie-talkie, the CB radio
and eventually, the light-as-a-feather, cute-as-
a-bug's-ear plastic gizmo that you see in just
about every second person's hand these days —
usually jammed up against their earhole
as they drive or walk or shop or sit on a
park bench or eat their lunch — the cell
phone.
And cellphone use is multiplying like a
galloping rogue virus. Between 2000 and
2004, cellphone ownership in Canada grew by
55 per cent. Nearly 14 million Canadians are
Ontario's Liberals have tumbled in
popularity and deserve it. but it is
difficult to see how they can be rated
worse than the ProgreSsive Conservatives.
Three recent polls have found Premier
Dalton McGuinty's Liberals several per cent
behind the Tories, a staggering finding
considering the latter were kicked out of
government in disgrace less than a year ago.
The public's anger at the Liberals mostly
stems from a single but huge fault in that in the
2003 election they turned a blind eye to signs
the outgoing Tories would not balance their
books as they claimed and continued making
costly promises they would not have the
money to fulfill.
In government this has forced them to
postpone some promises and increase taxes to
pay for others, breaking another promise, and
they quickly have a reputation for not keeping
their word.
This has not been the end of their
transgressions, because they made other rash
promises they had no power to keep to roll
back tolls on the privatized Highway 407 and
block housing already approved in an
environmentally sensitive area north- of
Toronto.
McGuinty also has looked. wishy-washy, for
example, on photo radar, saying he will .bring
it hack if municipalities ask, when in
opposition he wanted to reintroduced swiftly
because lives were at stake.
The Liberals have moved to rehabilitate
themselves by acts including providing more
money to hire nurses and reduce class sizes in
primary schools and making politics fairer by
curbing government spending on partisan ads.
But they still have long way to go.
Yet even compared to this litany of woe the
Tories do not have a record to boast about.
currently wireless subscribers.
Experts say by this time next year, fully 50
per cent of us will be 'wired for yakking'.
Is that a bad thing? Not for the travelling
salesman, the shut-in, the housewife whose car
has broken down on the side of the Trans
Canada, or the hiker who's fractured a femur
on the Juan de Fuca hiking trail. But for, oh,
say, 85 per cent of the schnooks who buy. lug
and natter into their cellphones every
day ....what's the point?
I had a cellphone once. I used it primarily to
tell my partner each workday, evening that I
was off the train and in my car and headed
home for dinner.
She knew that 'already. It was my regular
pattern, with or without the call. Most of the
calls I (am forced to) overhear each day are
equally fatuous and a stone waste of
everybody's time.
Which would rate as one of modern life's
minor annoyances — along with traffic jams,
email spam and the vocal stylings of Celine
Dion — if that were the extent of the
cellphone's depredations.
It's not. The fact is, the popularity of the cell
phone represents the death knell for a true
communications breakthrough.
The phone booth.
Under premier Mike Harris they mostly kept
their word and they cut taxes, but weakened
public services to the extent it contributed to
inadequate testing of drinking water that
caused seven deaths.
Ernie Eves, who succeeded Harris, did only
what he thought would get him re-elected. A
typical example was allowing electricity prices
to be set by the open market, but when they
rose, freezing them and leaving his successors
with the unpleasant duty of increasing. them to
realistic rates.
It also was Eves's Tories who controlled the
books in the election and maintained there
would be no deficit, which turned out to be
untrue, although McGuinty's Liberals are to
blame for accepting it.
But the real trademark of the Tories kicked
out of government was lavishing taxpayers'
money. on themselves and their political
friends while posing as the only party
interested in protecting the public purse and
keeping the minimum wage at a paltry $6.85
an hour.
The tip of many examples includes Chris
Stockwell, an environment minister, taking his
family, at taxpayers' expense, on an
extravagant European tour of little value to
government.
The Tories developed a habit of steering
money to friends through the province's
The public phone booth has been around for
more than a century. It has provided shelter
from the storm, surcease from traffic noise, a
cone of silence for personal conversations
and a handy place for cross-dressing
Clark Kent to assume his superhero alter
ego.
All that's changing now, Canada lost nearly
20,000 pay phones in the four years between
1999 and 2003. In Chicago, where the first one
was installed in 1898, the public phone booth
no longer exists at all.
And in Britain, home of world-famous fire-
engine red telephone booth, the news is even
grimmer.
Authorities are cold-bloodedly plotting the
extinction of the British icon. There are still
15,000 of them scattered across the flanks of
Albion. BT Payphones plans to eliminate.
10,000 public phone booths by this time next
year.
The reasoning is bottom-line, as usual. Four
out of five Brits now carry cell phones. Phone
booth revenue is down. Ergo, axe the phone
booths.
Before they send the last phone booth to the
knacker's yard, they might want to schedule a
business lunch at the Brooklyn Cafe in Atlanta,
Georgia. Or at the Main Street Bistro in
Sarasota, Florida. Or at the trendy Spoke Club
in Toronto.
The management in all three institutions is
planning to install vintage red British
telephone booths in their lobbies so that
restaurant patrons can carry on conversations
in private...on their cellphones.
Oh, right...private phone calls. Didn't we
have those once?
various hydro utilities they controlled. Tom
Long. who ran Harris's election campaigns,
was in a head-hunting company to which
utilities paid $250,000 U.S. to recruit a new
president and $83,000 to find a vice-president.
Debbie Hutton, whom he found working in
Harris's office, so he could merely have
stopped by her desk.
Hutton in her new job then spent $5.000
wining and dining Harris, ministers and Tory
insiders in restaurants whose elegant
thresholds most of us could not afford to cross.
Do Tories have to eat filet mignon before they
can talk to each other?
Harris also, after he stepped down as
premier was funneled $18,000 of public
money for advice on securing a new electricity
line. But whatever information he contributed
he probably gleaned while being paid as
premier.
He also now collects big money from a law
firm, right-wing think tank and company
directorships and surely could have donated a
few minutes, if it took that long, without
dunning taxpayers again.
The Tories often looked after themselves
more than they looked after the public, which
seems to remember' only what happened
yesterday and not the day before:
Final Thought
If you pick up a starving dog and make him
prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the
principal difference between a dog and a
man
— Mark Twain
Bonnie
AN.
Gropp
The short of it
History removed
You pave paradise, put up a pa,'king lot.
-Joni Mitchell
I t's been called a living museum, an annual
event that provides people with an
opportunity close up to see antique
machinery, and to try .first-hand old-world
skills.
But of all the attractions at the Thresher
Reunion in Blyth, the one that really piques my
interest was more of a teaser this year. The
Cowan homestead, an old log cabin moved in
from East Wawanosh Twp. to the fairgrounds
this summer, will eventually be restored to its
rustic splendour. One of its more recent
owners, Don Hill, who worked on the home for
10 years after he moved there in 1977 is
pleased. "I'm thankful to the Threshers for
moving it into town so it will be taken care of."
Unfortunately, there aren't many people who
feel the same way about old buildings. Next
week Brussels hosts its 143rd Fall Fair. It's
been held at the arena for many years now, hut
when I first moved to the village, the historic
Crystal Palace still had the honour of being the
venue. The Palace even then, had seen better
days, but its uniqueness, its stories were no less
real.
However, after the fair moved to the more
modern facility, the Palace sat vacant. Of no
further use, and probably beyond repair. it was
torn down a few weeks ago, then the refuse
burned. I for one was sad.
There's always been something about older
buildings that's appealed to me. My cousin
grew up in the country in the home in which
my mother grew up. The house, like many that
dotted the rural landscape, was not particularly
impressive from the outside. But it spoke to me
of freedom. Visits with her were always about
space to run — in the back fields, through the
big kitchen, up the stairs, back down and out
the door. I loved my time spent there.
I was raised 'in a new home. But two of my
friends in elementary school lived ,in glorious
Victorians, spacious houses charatterized by
dark, rich wood and high ceilings. The one,
from the outside, was rather plain, boxy and
understated. But crossing, over the front portal
was like stepping into an English manor. The
front hall was massive with shiny hardwood
floors leading to a curved staircase. French
doors and archways opened onto the perfect
children's playground, big rooms that begged
for dressing up for high tea, or cozy slumber
parties.
My other friend's home was adorned by a
wrap-around porch. All curves and angles, it
seemed less roomy inside than the other, but
had the wonderful character that only comes
with houses of this age. It was the place for
noisy dinners around the big kitchen table, or
quiet tete a totes in one of its many cramped
bedrooms.
Both houses are gone now. The first was torn
down several decades ago to make room for a
new post office. Despite my youth I was upset,
actually on two levels because the former post
office was a marvelous old structure with a
tower and clock. It was replaced with a cheesy
strip mall.
The second home was demolished just this
summer to increase parking for the hospital.
located across the street.
I know, it's only a building, right? But, I've
never been of the thinking that it's just bricks
and mortar. These houses weren't just
beautiful, there was history between those
walls. People lived there, laughed and cried
there.
Now, they've paved paradise. All I can say is
that I miss its distinguished presence.
Liberals bad, Tories worse