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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1995-05-17, Page 44 -THE HURON 'EXPOSITOR, May 17, HMS Your Community Newspaper Since 1860 TERRI-LYNN DALE - General Manager & Advertising Manager MARY MELIOR - Sales PAT ARMES - Office Manager DIANNE McGRATH - Subscriptions LINDA PULLMAN -Typesetter TIM CUMMING - Editor GREGOR CAMPBELL - Reporter BARB STOREY - Distribution A Burgoyne Community Newspaper SUBSCRIPTION RATES LOCAL 28.00 a yeor, in advance, plus 1 96 G 5 T SENIORS 25 00 o year, in odvonce, plus 1 75 G S T Goderich. Stratford oddressel 28 00 o year, in odvonce, plus 7 28 postage, plus 247GST Out -of Of -Area 28 00 o year, in odvonce, plus 11_44 postage, plus 2 76 G.5.T USA & foreign 28.00 o year ,n odvonce, plus $76 00 postage, G 5 T exempt SUBSCRIPTION RATES Published weekly by Signal -Star Publishing of 100 Main St , Seoforth Publication mail registration No 0696 held of Seoforth, Ontario. Advertising is accepted on condition that in the event of o typographical error, the advertising space occupied by the erroneous item together with 0 reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged. but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the opplicable rote In the event of a typographical error, advertising goods or services at a wrong !once. goods or services may not be sold. Advertising is merely an offer to sell and may be withdrawn at ony time. The Huron Expositor is not responsible for the loss or damage of unsolicited manuscripts, photos or other moteriols used for reproduction purposes Changes of address, orders for subscriptions and undeliv- eroble copes ore to be sent to The Huron Expositor. Wednesday, May 15, 1995 Editorial and Business Offices - 100 Main Street.,Seaforth Telephone (519) 527-0240 Fax (519) 527-2858 Mailing Address - P.O. Box 69, Seaforth, Ontario, NOK 1W0 Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Community Newspapers Association and the Ontario Press Council y , Editorial Too soon to name winner They're off and running again. The Ontario election was announced for June 8 and three hopeful candi- dates for premier were out of the starting gate the instant the flag was down. Political pundits are saying it's a race between the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. Bob Rae, they predict, will be soundly beaten at the polls. In the early going, Lyn McLeod looks strong. While McLeod herself is not particularly popular with Ontario voters according to the most recent samplings, her party is in the lead with the majority of people who have been surveyed. Apparently Ontarians are ready to- overlook McLeod's less -than stellar performance at Queen's Park up to now. Even more surprising, citizens in this province seem to have forgiven the Liberals for their former leader David Peterson who was not only turfed from office in the last election, but was thrashed and trampled in the dust by an angry electorate. McLeod has positioned herself well. Unlike PC Mike Harris who is promising only to make no promises - McLeod is proposing a very modest five per cent decrease in a published schedule of action which she hopes will convince voters it is entirely feasible. But voters are nervous. They are worried about the debt and the deficit, both provincially and federally. They are tired of governments who come to office on the strength of their promises - and then seem incapable of making those tough, hard-nosed busi- ness decisions that are absolutely necessary to pull Ontario back from the brink of disaster. Don't be surprised if voters watch, wait and weigh until the final second to make their choices on June 8. And don't count anyone out - not yet. It's just too soon in these unstable times to call a winner. - SJK Letters to the Editor MP can hold head high Dear Mr. Editor, Yes, you did your controversial 'bit' and now I'll do mine. Wyatt Earp! Boy, we need more of those heroes plus a few 'True Grit' John Waynes, and we'd have less troublemakers. Do you think Huron -Bruce wants a pussy -cat in Ottawa? Where were all these pro gun -control advocates when Paul came out 'guns flashing' from day one against gun control? Were the hunters and gun owners the only ones who knew what they didn't want? They were the ones we were hearing. Would Huron -Bruce rather have a member like Roger Galloway, Sarnia M.P.? Roger sat with an overflow anti - control crowd at Sarnia Collegiate and answered our daughter's concerns very positively, telling her that he supported the hunters and gunowners and then voted for gun control. I'd rather look into Paul's "clear eyes and get all gushy inside" than have my M.P. tell me a barefaced lie. 1 was disappointed when 'Mean Jean's' little boy Don Boudira finally found a reason for his position and "did what he had to do." But I'm sure, down in Jean's liberal heart, he's proud of his member for Huron -Bruce and next time they are out hunting will say, "Tres bien, mon ami!" Your 'bit' wasn't about gun contol, so I'II save my 'bit' for another time except to say that I've lived all my life with a "gun -toting" family and nobody got killed. I no longer have my gun, but if I take a notion to dispose of somebody (nobody in mind at the present time) I don't need a gun. I have a sharp ax, a trusty 3 -wood, a Bobbitt butcher knife and Tots of kindness! (e.g. killed with kindness!) Paul is still our M.P. and they didn't brainwash him. Isn't it disgusting in this democracy, we send a member to Ottawa to be a puppet? They might as well stay home and go hunting. He doesn't have to be front and centre to look after Huron -Bruce, he's not sitting still. There's more ways "than one to skin a cat" (oops! - sorry, animal rights' people). Hold your head high Paul, with your "clear eves beaming", sleep with a clear conscience and hanov hunting. Jean Ross Society can't rely on courts Today's novels, television programs and motion pictures revolve around the `Justice' system where justice is rarely done. The trials of O. J. Simpson and Paul Bernardo show an insatiable appetite for real-life crime drama. Someone told me an old axiom that one doesn't find justice in a court of law, one finds law. The reality is that by the time a case reaches the courts society has already lost. Courts are the worse place (other than daytime talk shows) to resolve our social maladies. Let's take a look at the recent court case where a U.S. father was charged in London, Ontario for assault. The man stripped his daugh- ter to her bare bouom, put her on the back of his car and repeatedly slapped her on the skin. He was acquitted on the charge of assault. But did that case really help society deal with the issue of spanking? A judge decided that case was not, in legal terms, assault. Perhaps the judge was right, in legal terms. In social terms, the verdict was unsatisfactory. Even those who favour spanking in some instances would realize this father stepped beyond the bounds of decency. The case may - have solved a legal problem. It did not help society. The conservatives in Canada and the U.S. place an emphasis on stiffer jail terms and getting `tough' on crime. The problem with that approach isit addresses the problem of crime when it is too late. It is like waiting until you have AIDS to put a condom on. If a man brutally kills his wife we should, quite right- fully, throw away the key. Yet what have we accom- plished? Have we saved ' the woman's life? No. Let's look at the O. J. Simpson situation. What will be resolved if O. J. is found guilty? Will the families of the victims be able to sleep better at night? Hardly. Even if he is found guilty there will be those who will insist he has been framed by a racist police department looking for a face-saving judicial victory. If heis acquitted the ques- tion remains who killed Nicole and her friend Ronald? Some will still believe it is O. J. Pretend for a moment that O. J. is guilty. (Guilty or not, any other black man in America would have been convicted by now in a `justice' system that is notori- ously inequitable). Would capital punishment have pre- vented this crime of rage? Would the threat of stiffer jail terms have prevented this incident? No, society needed to address this issue long before the murder of Nicole. Society should have stepped in to end O. J.'s pattern of violence before it (allegedly) escalated. That social response would require jail terms not for murder but for assault. That social response would also require counselling for perpe- trators of violence. It would also require changes in the media to the sexist, dominat- ing images of men over women. What if the millions of dollars spent on this legal circus was spent instead on rehabilitation and anger man- agement? I agree that criminals should not be let off with a Flashback slap on the wrist. But when we send people to prison all we are doing is making them into better criminals. We want to send our children to Harvard so they can network with the best and the brightest. So why do we send criminals into an environment where they can network with other criminals? Harsher jail terms and more mercenary responses to crimi- nals may feed our lust for vengeance. They will do nothing to prevent crime or save the victims or spare the families grief. I personally believe in harsher sentences for crimi- nals...but that is only one piece of a complex puzzle. Unfortunately, as a society, we devote more resources to developing a new ice beer than we do to preventing crime. I say `Yes' to getting tough on crime...but the courts are not the best places to do this. I say: •Yes to stiffer jail terms. •Yes to better rehabilitation. ' Yes to more creative pro- grams to prevent crimes. •Yes to better enforcement of existing crimes. •Yes to better parenting in the homes. •Yes to preventing violence against women (and violence against all people). • Yes to changing harmful media images. • Yes to a society which pre- vents problems before they reach the courts. This Championship Football team from Hullett consists of (front row) Harvey Taylor, Nelson Govenlod<, Leo Stephenson, (second row) Jim Armstrong, John Armstrong, Vern Dale, Bill Carter, Torrance Dundas and Willis Dundas. In the back row are Bert Stephenson, Miller Adams, Robt. Dodds, Scott Hawthorn, Fred Armstrong, John Ferguson and Archie Radford. Remember, Seaforth celebrates its Home- coming August 3-6, 1995. Gargoyle not average lap dog It was four in the morning as t lay wide awake in bed. It was guilt. The previous day I'd found $50 in an old pair of pants and, on impulse, I went out and spent it instead of reporting it to the tax department. I flipped on the radio and caught the end of an interview on the Jim Bohanan Show from Washington, D.C. A woman was describing her "baby" as being "seven feet long from nose to tail". It sounded like another Fun With Fertility Pills experiment gone bad and I was about to change the station when I heard the word "dog". The next morning, I telephoned this woman, Patty Warfield, at her farm in Baker, West Virginia and the "baby" turns out not to be a dog after all, but a puppy who might be mistaken for a mastodon. Gargoyle is an 18 -month-old English mastiff who weights 235 pounds, is 35 inches high at the shoulders with a 48 -inch chest. And the best is, he's still growing. In fact, a dog this size you could actually sit down and see him growing. At this stage of development, Gargoyle actually outweighs Aicama Zorba, an Old English mastiff still listed by Guinness as the world's largest dog at 343 pounds. Can you imagine a puppy with a bigger chest than Sly Stallone, a puppy whose monthly food intake is estimated in tonnage? I mean the last three linemen drafted by the Hamilton Tiger Cats didn't weigh 235 pounds. How big is this puppy named Gar? When they paper trained him, they had to use phone books from large metropolitan areas. When Gar sank his teeth into his first pair of slippers and ran and hid them under the bed, he didn't even notice Patty was still wearing them. The day he broke his chain and took off running down the road, he returned a few minutes later with a car. How big is this pup? Gargoyle's doghouse is a Winnebago. So big, the pooper scooper at the Warfield residence is a front-end loader. This dog is so powerful, he has his own Saint Bernard to serve him brandy after dinner. Okay, I made those things up, but this is a very large puppy. "The gentle giant", as Patty calls him, recently won Best of Breed at the annual Westminster Kennel Club show in New York City. Right. Like there's a dog show judge in the United States of America who has the courage to walk up to a 235 -pound mastiff while holding a second - place ribbon in his hand. What docs Gargoyle eat, besides unsuspecting cattle that stray onto his property? Patty told me Gargoyle gets 12 cups of Puppy Chow with three pounds of cooked sausage each day. Apparently this is enough to entice him to come out of his box so they can get him started on breakfast. Gar runs three miles a day on a leash with Patty in the van. I can just imagine her sitting in the driver's scat with both feet on the brake pedal and the emergency stick pulled as high as it will go - still managing three miles a day. Gargoyle is truly a beautiful beast. Patty sent me a photo of him. He's beige all over, except for his black cars and black face with trademark droopy jowls. He looks sad. Probably because Ralston Purina doesn't make pizza. I had a good idea for Patty Warfield, who also has horses on her West Virginia farm. I think it would be great if she could crossbreed Gargoyle with a Clydesdale. Think about it - you would then have a animal that could pull a plough all day in the fields, come up to the house at the end of the day and jump 40 or 50 feet in the air and catch a frisbee in his mouth. You might get to see Gargoyle this summer when he's fully grown. Pauy is bringing him up to Toronto to perform and, if he does well in the preliminaries, I'm going to ride him in the Queen's Plate.