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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1995-06-21, Page 441 -THS HURON EXPOSITOR, Are 21. 111114 Your Community Newspaper Since 1860 TERRI-LYNN DALE - General Manager & Advertising Manager MARY MEU.OR - Sales PAT ARMES - Office Manager DIANNE McGRATH - Subscriptions UNDA PUUMAN -Typesetter TIM CJMMING - Editor GREGOR CAMPBELL - Reporter BARB STOREY - Distribution A Burgoyne Community Newspaper SUBSCRIPTION RATES: LOCAL - 28.00 o year, in advance, plus 1.96 G.S.T. 5E4oR§25.00 a year, in advance, plus 1.75 G.S.T. Goderich. S rotford addressee: 28.00 o year, in advance, plus 7.28 postage, plus 2.47 G.S.T Out -of Of -Area: 28.00 a year, in advance, plus 11.44 posbge, plus 2.76 G.S.T USA & Foreign: 28.00 a year in odvonce, plus S76.00 postage, G.S.T. exempt PI�B�S�RI ION TES: ublisFied veek y by Signal -Star Publish_inngg at 100 Main Si,.Seaforth. Publication moil registration No. 0696 held of Seaforth, Ontario. Advertising is occepted on condition that in the event of o typographical error, the odrertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged, but the bolance of the advertisement will be paid for of the applicable rob. In the event of a typographical error, advertising goods or services at a wrong price, goods or services may not be sold. Advertising is merely on offer to sell and may be withdrawn at any time. The Huron Expositor is not responsible for the loss or damage of unsolicited manuscripts, photos or other materials used for reproduction purposes. Changes of oddreu, orders for subscriptions ond undeliv- erable copies are to be sent to The Huron Expositor. Wednesday, June 21, 1995 Editorial and Business Offices - 100 Main Street.,Seaforth Tone (519) 527-0240 Fax (519) 527-2858 Address - P.O. Box 69, Seaforth, Ontario, NOK 1 WO Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Community Newspopers Associotion and the Ontario Press Council Editorial Scrutiny is needed Once again Canada Post is about to cost the Canadian taxpayers, businesses and the Federal Government more money. Canada Post will soon announce that mailing a letter in Canada will increase to 45 cents. Around the same time they will reveal another substantial loss for 1994/95. A multi-million dollar loss is anticipated. Canada Post blames the loss on the fact that they did not get a hike in postal rates as expected- in October 1994. As a result, the Corporation has been losing $1 million dollars a week. To avoid controversy the stamp increase and multi- million dollar loss won't be revealed in the House of Commons until late June. Friday, June 23 happens to be the last day Parliament is expected to sit before the summer recess. Canadian taxpayers, business people and the government need to know what the role of Canada Post should be. While Canada Post .has a duty to play in mail delivery the coalition has questioned the presence of Canada Post in ventures that lose huge amounts of money. These losses must then be covered by revenue from other profitable postal activities. This eventually results in postage increases to consumers and business people. An independent examination of how Canada Post operates is needed to assure Canadians that their tax dollars are not being continually used to prop up this Crown Corporation. Taxpayers should not have to bear the brunt of Canada Post's inability to operate responsibly. • This editorial has been printed at the request of Signal -Star Publishing. Turn off trial coverage In Canada and the United States we are staring into the faces of evil in two high-profile murder cases. Every week is a trying time as we are exposed to images which are more and more horrible. There is no need to recount any of them here. We have all heard more than enough. Even those people who have thrown out their TV's and stopped reading newspapers can't escape the sordid details spread by coffee -shop gossips or overheard on the radio. We know how upsetting it is, as adults, to hear these stories. Imagine how frightening and damaging it is for our children. It is impossible for you, as parents, to completely protect your children from the tragic details of these crimes. What you can do is reduce the amount of exposure they receive. You can videotape television news and watch news reports only after the children have gone to bed. When the topic comes up you can discuss it with them so they have a chance to express their fears. You should shield them from the worst details of the case when possible but you must listen to them if they have concerns. They should understand that the actions of the perpetrators is wrong and hopefully they will be punished for their actions. Children must be street -proofed and given the education to protect themselves from possible abduc- tion. They should certainly not be given a false illusion of security. At the same time, our streets are safer than the impression gained from court reports and television shows. Keeping children in the house in the false security of a 'cocoon' is like condemning your children to prison. If innocent people live m fear it is a victory for the criminals. The most important thing you can do, when children are exposed to traumatic details, is tell your children you love them. - (TBC). Cabinet secretary just plain wrong I would like to send a big raspberry to Rita Burak. The new cabinet secretary for Ontario bragged last week that she was so apolitical she didn't even vote in thc prov- incial election. It was apparently an attempt to prove she is non-partisan and will do a fair job imple- menting the Harris government's agenda within the civil service. It's a sad state of affairs in Ontario and Canada when it is seen as an asset to ignore your civic duty. People fought and died so we didn't have to live in tyranny. We have more parties and more choices than ever and fewer people are voting. Where is the respect for our democratic rights and our democratic duty? There is only one thing more irresponsible than Pre- mier -elect Mike Harris' pro- posal to cut taxes...that is the PC leader's promise to scrap photo radar. by Tim Cumming Whatever the merits or drawbacks of photo radar the program is now in place. The program may or may not improve public safety...but it is making people drive slower. The program only targets those who break laws. To try and turn back the hands of time is a costly exercise. It might have been O.K. to stop the growth of photo radar or the purchase of new photo radar equip- ment...but to stop a program that is already working is an unacceptable burden on taxpayers. The English Canadian media have taken a very distorted look at the upcom- ing Referendum in Quebec. A recent poll indicated that the Quebecois would strongly support sovcrcignty if there was some political and econ- omic association with the English Canadian provinces. That was not what the headlines mad, however. The headlines told readers that Quebeckers would not sup- port independence. It doesn't matter what people in the rest of Canada feel about 'sovcrcignty association': Quebeckers believe some limn of associ- ation is a viable alternative. The media has filtered the events in Quebec through its own warped view of the situation. The bias of anglophones in thc media gave the mistaken impression that Quebeckers will easily defeat a referen- dum choice. As Canadians we should not be so quick to take a sigh of relief. Never before in Quebec history has the sovereignty camp been so united. Never before have so many econ- omic and political groups supported independence. Never before have the feder- alists faced Quebeckers and said that if you vote for Canada you arc voting for the status quo. Never before have anglophones shown such anti - Quebec sentiment. The referendum has not yet been won by the federalists, despite what Jean Chretien says. Flashback This grade four class photo from Seaforth Public School shows (front row) Murray Carter, Brian Flannigan, Glen Coutts, Don Albrecht, Keith Bennewies, Ray Scoins, Craig Willis, (second row), Ann Dick, Madelon Townsend, Ellen Calder, Joan Bach, Betty Muegge, Judy Boshart, Karen Nicholson, Joan Boyce, Gene Nixon, (third row) Agnes Carter, Ellen Gorwill, Kathy Boshart, Saakje Von Rooijen, Betty Jean Andrews, Marg Reeves,, Nancy Glew, Mr. Sims, (back row) Stewart Bannerman, Wayne Wilson, Jack Baker, Bob Govenlock, Ken Drager, Harold Dalrymple, Eric Eaton and Paul Besse. The photo was lent to the newspaper by Joan Addison. LACAC approves Legion sign A brick sign application for Seaforth Branch 156 of the Royal Canadian Legion has been approved by the Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC). The proposcd V-shaped masonry/brick sign will be 40" by 4', covered by plexiglass with internal illumination. LACAC minutes note the sign and its location adhere to Seaforth rules. * * * The following expenditures for May meeting attendance were approved by Seaforth Council at last week's regular meeting. Mayor Irwin Johnston, $460; Reeve William Bennett, $150; Deputy -Reeve William Teall, $210; Coun. John , Ball, $270; Coon., Brian Ferguson, $495; Coun. Michael Hak, $165; Coun. Heather Robinet, $315. * * * The Huron -Bruce Branch of the Canadian Diabetes As- sociation will be selling licenced raffle tickets in Seaforth in May, June and July. Dad had soft spot for strays On the morning he died my father gave Inc heck for skip- ping work to go see him in the hospital. He was a "company man" who believed in loyalty and duty above many things. He felt I was ripping off my employer. My old man was the son of an Ulstennan, who fled because of poverty and "the troubles". His mother was a "washerwoman" from Manchester, of Irish descent. The grandfather I never kncw, from County Tyrone, never lost the vicious mean streak so characteristic of many from that troubled corner of the United Kingdom. My father Icft home for good in his early teens during the Depression because his father threw his cat out the door and broke all its legs. When my old inan's father died he shed no tears, didn't go to the funeral and never ever cared to find out where he was buried. My old man never talked about his past. He was a man of action and few words, a driving force. Bonding as a verb meant industrial ad- hesives. He was tough as a boiled owl. To take my father out of the fray you had to knock him out, he kept coming at you. Hc often said trying to tell mc something was "like talking to a brick wall". He thought it "went in one car and out the other". Dad was full of such folksy tidbits of speech, like: •"My way or the highway." •"Anything worth doing is worth doing well." •"The bigger they come the harder they fall." •"You think the world owes you a living?" •"A fool and his money are soon parted." •"Never arguc about religion or politics. You won't change anyone's mind and all you'll end up doing is making enemies." •"Always wear clean under - By Gregor Campbell wear. You might be in a car accident and have to go to the hospital." •"When your mother says 'jump' you say 'how high?'." WORK, WORK, WORK My father "didn't have a pot to pee in" when he started out as a "grease monkey" in Niagara Falls, Ontario. He enlisted in the navy, where he "did a little boxing", during the war. He got married when he came out, apprenticed as both an electrician and mechanic at the same time. He always had a job. My old man would have starved before accepting welfare of any kind. We moved eight times in 14 years, lived four places in Toronto, two in Georgetown, thence to Paris and on to Guelph. He had a nervous breakdown one Christmas Eve because of continuously listening to the high-pitched whine of jet en- gines while working main- tenance in the test cells where they were building the Avro Arrow, the fancy fighter that Diefenbaker scrapped along with my father's job. My old man was on mandatory 24-hour call all the year I was growing up. He worked and worked and worked, for everything we got. He was hardly ever home and ended up head of maintenance for 20 years at the Fiberglas A plant in Guelph, until the en- gineers took over and he got booted upstairs. Dad always told me to get an education so I wouldn't have to put up with what he did. He could be a tyrant and his men detested him. You did the job right the first time or you ended up "kicking stones down the road". My parents stayed married for 40 years, till death did them part. I never saw him take a drink, although I'm told by his step -brother and sister this wasn't always the case. There are a lot of things about my father I never found out. He could hear a thunderstorm coming with ears that seemed as good as a dog's. He would get in the car and keep driving until it was over. I always thought this strange for an electrician, but there wasn't much else 1 could see he was afraid of. For such a tough guy, dad always had a soft spot for strays. He loved all animals, except snakes, and used to buy a bag of grain to feed the wild geese on the river in the winter when he walked the dogs. FATHER VS. SONS Another of my old man's little sayings was: "It is the early bird that gets the worm." 1, on the other hand, felt it was the early worm who got eaten. There were a lot of things we never saw eye to eye on. He thought I looked like a sissy, or worse yet a girl, with my long -hair music and beads. For most of our early teens my brother and I were your basic juvenile delinquents. We had what they would now call "serious behavioral problems". It got worse later on. I'll bet you I'm still the only valedictorian ever chosen by fellow graduates whose selec- tion was vetoed outright by the principal at John P. Ross Col- legiate Vocational Institute. Suffice it say, it was the '60s and I was in the thick of it. 1 have lived on the street, been in a strait -jacket, seen the inside of a holding cell, -and been down to my last egg, with no spoon or fork to cat it with. I left home 'at 15 and hated my parents and hardly ever saw them until I was about 30. Whcn my brother left home at 16 he never came back, had nothing to do with either of them till the day they died. I remember the time I told my mother to *%ff! off. My old man suckered me with a right cross that drew blood, thus bouncing my "smart -ass" young mouth off the side of the refrigerator. "Do it again and: you'll be picking the teeth out of the back of your throat," he said. I did not doubt for a split- second and caught his drift. I shut up and didn't do it again. He also had this belt, that he had a way of snapping which scared the hell out of you, he would apply with a will to my bare scat or hands, always in the wake of mother's stoic ad- monishment: "Thls is going to hurt him more than it hurts you". I still don't believe that! Among other things, I got strapped for: • Attacking an umpire with a bat to the head after a called third strike. • Taking what wasn't mine. • Opening the door and trying to push my brothel out of the back of the car while we were going down the 401 at 50 mph. • Shooting the windows out of a neighbor's house with a gun. • Breaking into another neighbor's house and painting their basement. • Playing with matches in the closet where my mother's winter coats were kept. • Blowing the speakers out of Itis homemade stereo system by playing a single by the Bcatics a wee bit loud. see Rules, next page