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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1997-01-15, Page 44-TtIS IMMON =PONTOS, i awry 1f, 1I S Your Community Newspaper Since 1860 TERRi-LYNN DALE • General Manager & Advertising Manager MARY MELLOR • Safes PAT ARMES • Office Manager DIANNE McGRATH - Subscriptions & Classifieds PAVE SCOTT • Editor 5.i CAMPBELL - Rr4iorter ARB STOREY • distribution A Bowes Publishers Community Newspoper SUBSCRIPTION RATES: LOCAL - 32.50 o yeas in advance, plus 2 28 G 5 7 .jENIORS . 30.00 o year, to odvancq, plus 2 10 G S T USA d Farman: 32.50 o yeor in advance, plus 578.00 postage, G 5 T exempt SUBSCRIPTION RATES Published weekly by Signol-Star Publishing at 100 Man St , Seaforth - Publication maul registroeon No. 0696 field of Seotorth, Ontora Advertising .s ocoepesd on condition !hot in the event of o typographical error, the odverhsing space occupied by the erroneous dem, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for of the applicable rote In the (vent of o typographical error, advertising goods or services of o wrong price, Esoods a services moy not be sold Advertising is merely an offer to sdl and may be withdrawn at any hme the Huron Expositor is not responsible lot the loss or danage of unsolicited manuscripts, phew, Of ether motor:o!s used for reproduction purposes 5 -henget of oddress, orders for subscirphons and undelir arable copies ore to be sent to The Huron Expositor Wednesday, January 15, 1997 Editorial and Business Offices - 100 Main Street.,Seafodh Telephone (519) 527-0240 Fax 1519) 527-2858 Mailing Address • P.O. Box 69, Seaforth, Oratorio, Nott 1 too Member of the Canadian Community Newspoper Association, Ontario Community Newspapers Association and the Ontario -Press Council Editorial Shape your future in Town of Seaforth How often do you get a chance to shape the future'' The Seaforth and area residents survey designed by town council is a chance for you to have some direct input into how Seaforth is guided into the next century, All you have to do is take a few minutes sometime in the next week (by January 22) and fill out one of the forms at town hall, the Expositor office, the arena, the PUC or Seaforth Food Market and let your concerns be heard. This is an anonymous survey so there's no excuses for not participating. Aside from rating a variety of services in town, there's space for comments on improving Seaforth or to include a plan for the future. So to all those armchair politi- cians out there, here's your chance. Your ideas might just lead as into the year 2000. - DWS Letters to the Editor Does Huron want addiction assessment services to continue? Dear Editor: In February '1996, the Ontario Substance Abd'Se Bureau announced that there would be a restructuring process initiated for all sub- stance abuse programs in the province. This process began with the formation of six regional committees in Nov. /96. Huron -Perth is part of the Southwestern Ontario region along with Thames Valley,Lamhton, Essex, Kent and Grey -Bruce. The com- mittee is to examine all addiction programs in Southwestern Ontario, and submit a draft plan to thc Suhstancc Abuse Bureau as to how this could be accom- plished in this region. The final plan is to be submitted to the Suhstancc Abuse Bureau by the middle of March/97. Local district health councils have been given the responsibility to organize a community con- sultation in their own district so that residents will have input into this plan. One community consulta- tion for both Huron and Perth counties is planned for Jan. 22 from 7-9 p.m. at the Mitchell Community Centre. As you can see from the above dates, the time frame for planning and consultation has been on a "fast track" with no input until now from the communities involved. As of January 13, 1997, ser- vice providers still had no knowledge of the contents of the plan. It is imperative that citizens of 1-luron County attend this meeting as it will be the only opportunity they will have to express their concerns regarding addiction services available to them- selves and their families in Huron County. The Huron Addiction Assessment and Referral Centre (HAARC) has provid- ed assessment and referral services, out-patient coun- selling, supportive coun- selling for family members, group program for family members, an Adult Child of Alcoholic Group, and educa- tion and inservicc presenta- tions for business and other agencies in the community. Last year alone, staff did 76 community presentations on substance abuse, reaching approximately 3,500 people. Do the citizens of Huron county want these services to continue? If your answer is yes, i urge all interested citi- zens of Huron County to attend this community con- sultation so that your voice will be heard. Sincerely, Meryl Thomas Program Director Thanks for sponsoring free taxi Dear Editor: Thanks to the Seaforth Taxi service and the people who sponsored it. Even though we walked home, we greatly appreciated Seaforth survivor of Great Storm on lake Former Seaforth resident Ted Bullard dodged death by a whisker more than once in his 93 years, before a heart attack got him for good sud- denly last summer in Saginaw, Mich. He was the last known sur- vivor of the greatest storm ever seen on the Great Lakes, hack in 1913. It drowned 283 men all told, and sank eight ships on Lake Huron alone. They went down with all hands. Mos) of these steel freighters weren't finally found until half a century -later, in deep water, upside down on the bottom. Alt told 18 ships sank or were stranded on the Great Lakes, and 188 men drowned in Lake Huron. Bullard was 11 years old on November 9 in 1913, and spent most of the five-day fury that followed in a cabin aft the steamer Turret Cape, with his friend Tommy McCarthy, son of Captain Patrick McCarthy. He must have been quite the sailor. He took the boat through the brunt of this great blast. The 253 -foot ship couldn't get in, so rode Lake Huron outside Goderich harbour for two days, as another ship, the Wexford and crew, also near- by and waiting for the waves to abate, slipped silently to their watery graves. Almost all of Goderich, and a band, were down at the harbour to watch the Turret Cape finally come in. "The waves were anywhere from 35 to 40 -feet high, the worst they had ever, ever been," Bullard said many years later in a televised interview. "The wind was up to 70, 80, 90 miles an hour in spasms. We were the luckiest people in the world and the type of ship we were on was the answer to our being saved." Bullard always considered Seaforth his "hometown," and named alt of his own boats after this town, "Seaforth I", "II", "III" and so on. They were pleasure cruisers, his last one a 30 - footer. He was fond of the water until the end, a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary's Saginaw Flotilla when Mike saw us walking up around 11:30 p.m. and he turned around and gave ut a ride to the Queens. Sincerely, Louise Dick for 36 years, from 1956 to 1992. CLOSE CALLS Even before the Great Storm from Nov. 9 to 13, Bullard had a brush with the Grim Reaper. Two years pre- vious, in 1911, he survived a tragic canoe accident on Huron. A friend, Mike Bowler, drowned. While studying mechanical engineering at Notre Dame University in South Bend Indiana (where his uncle was librarian) in the 1920s, Ted's fiance lost her life tragically. After World War II he became director of service for import and export parts for the Chrysler Corporation and spent much of the next 21 years travelling overseas, which again led to some close scrapes with death. Once over Brazil a twin - engine DC3 lost an engine and narrowly avoided a crash. A couple of years later a seaplane he was in went down on the way to Australia. A ship rescued crew and passengers on the South Pacific. KNOWN IN SEAFORTH Born in Manitoba in 1902, the Bullards moved to Acton in Ontario for three years, then to Goderich until 1916 when they moved to Seaforth. His father, William, was very ill at this time. His mother, Geitrude, was the organist at St. James Church and a music teacher who also played at Seaforth's silent movie house. open fields." When they first came to With communications town the Bullards were the knocked out it was some time only occupants of the closed before landlubbers learned Royal Hotel at the junction of about the boats bearing Goderich and Main Streets. nature's worst out on Huron. The movie house was next TWISTS OF FATE door. Ted's grandparents, Henry and Elizabeth Gibbons Ruff Bullard, also lived in Seaforth for many years. On land the Great Storm of 1913 was bad enough. On the water it was hell, particularly on Lakes Erie and Huron. SAVAGE FURY Their shorelines were sav- agely beaten by winds and snow. Eight years worth of work on a park project in Chicago was destroyed in as many hours. There was an estimated $100,000 damage (in 1913 dollars) to shoreline properties at Port Huron where roofs were torn off, trees uprooted, and concrete walks swept away. The mouth of the Port Huron canal was blocked by 640,000 cubic feet of sand washing over a protective breakwall. As author Dean Robinson described it in a 1981 Village Squire article: "Blizzards paralyzed traffic. Streetcars were stranded, scheduled trains cancelled. By Sunday, telegraph and telephone lines had been knocked out in Ontario and Michigan. Around Huron snow was piled four -feet deep. Cleveland was ren- dered immobile by 22 inches of the white stuff, and in that same city, at 4;40 p.m. Sunday, the wind was clocked for a full minute at 79 miles an hour. For the next nine hours it was a steady 60 to 62 mph. Down at the docks two-inch moor- ing cables were snapped and barges broke loose. Near Goderich, a family who had been away from their Colborne Township farm arrived home Sunday night and discovered their chickens had been blown into couldn't dock because there the wire netting of their was no place to moor. All - enclosure and frozen to berths had been taken by death. Early in the week that other boats. followed, snow was piled so INTO ITS TEETH high across Huron County So the Turret Cape steamed roads that rail fences had to on into Lake Huron, out of be parted so children could this little lull and into the be drawn to school across CONTINUED on page 5 The cabin tiny Ted and Tommy spent most of their time in had six hunk beds secured to the wall. "You got some sleep because you were so tired you passed out," Bullard said in a 1990 interview with The Saginaw News. "But it's not something Cm real thrilled about." The Great Storm was not the type of thing he wanted to celebrate with any kind of anniversary 77 years later. Bullard said a twist of fate had him on the lakes during the storm, and another irony allowed him to survive it. The Turret Cape was to take on a load of grain in Thunder Bay "but the loading machinery broke down and they weren't able to load that day," he said. "Tommy's mother got a phone call and was told the boat was delayed. They invit- ed us kids to ride back (to Goderich) with them." A tram took them to the Lakehead and the boat never loaded, which may have saved her. Bullard told the reporter he believed the light, empty ves- sel had more freeboard, so proved safer. "When the storm hit, the boats that were loaded Looked half submerged in the water," he said. Another factor was the Turret Cape's ocean -type design, a turret -type hull that curved from a wide base to narrow deck with a low cen- tre of gravity. The storm first struck in earnest when the boat was halfway across Lake Superior, bearing south to Sault St. Marie. When it got there, about midnight on Nov. 9, they Eighty students stranded in 47 storm FROM THE PAGES OF THE HURON EXPOSITOR JA NUARYy29, 1897 Two rinks of the Seaforth Curling Club went to Stratford on Wednesday, to compete in their series for the Ontario tankard. Seaforth was pitted against Berlin and won by 9 shots. Stratford defeated Preston and then Seaforth defeated Stratford. This makes our curlers win- ners in the group and they are now eligible to go to Toronto to compete in the finals for thc tankard. Should they decide to go to the Queen City we would take great pleasure in recording their victory and would gladly welcome the champions of Ontario and the Ontario tankard on their arrival home. *** HURON NOTES Hugh Semple who was sent up from Zurich on a charge of breaking into a store, was tried by the county judge, at Goderich on Friday of last week, and being found guilty, was sent to the common jail for 30 days with hard labour. - At the annual meeting of the Walton Cheese Factory the following were chosen directors: A. Gardiner, D. McLaughlin, James Ryan, Thomas McFadzean and George Jackson. The present cheesemakcr, A.B. Holland was re-engaged for next sea- son. JANUARY 20,1922 At Osgoodc Hall, Toronto, the Second Divisional Court on Thursday last ordered a re -trial of J.P. Fisher's suit against his nephew, Thomas McMichael, on the ground that Judge Lewis, Huron County, before whom the action was argued, did not In the Years Agone take down the evidence in the case. Fisher claimed wages for taking care of horses and doing chores for his nephew, who contended that his unole was too old to do the work properly and that he had set- tled in full. Fisher was awarded $124.80 by Judge Lewis, in the Judgement which is now set aside. * * * The Scouts .Contest between the Patrols, under the leadership of Alvin Sillery, Stanley Nicholls, Carman Ferguson, John Crich, Andrew McLean and Will Barber, held on Tuesday evening was very close. The prize banner was finally awarded to the Wolf Patrol. These contests create consid- erable interest among the boys. * * * Mr. George Bunach brought into The Expositor Office on Wednesday an egg laid by one of his White Leghorn hens, that measured 8 1/2 x 6 3/4 inches and weighed one- quarter of a pound. This is a big egg for any hen to lay and for a White Leghorn it has them, al I beaten. JANUARY 24, 1947 Miles McMillan, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. M. McMillan, Seaforth, who has been in the employment of the Imperial Oil Co. in Toronto since his retirement from the RCAF has been promoted by the company to a position in the International Petroleum Corp, a subsidiary of the company in South America. Mr. McMillan Who will be sta- 1 tioned at Talare, Peru, will leave for South America from New York on March 14. The appointment is for two years. A heavy rain which had fallen throughout Monday, changed late in the day to a driving snowfall. By Tuesday increasing winds and lowered temperatures created blizzard conditions throughout the area. The storm stranded nearly 80 High School students in Seaforth Tuesday night when the three school busses used to take thc pupils to their homes in neighbouring town- ships, were unable to make the trip. Many of the stu- dents were forced to remain in town a second night although an effort was made to get the busses through thc drifts on Wednesday. Temporary accommodations was found in homes in town for the pupils through the efforts of Principal E. Lome Fox, and staff of the High School. Contributions to the Aid to China Fund from the Seaforth Arca totalled approximately $200 as of Thursday morning according to Rev. H.V. Workman, chair- man of the committee in charge. The campaign con- tinues until the end of January with the Seaforth district objective set at $2,500. JANUARY 27,1972 Much of traffic acrossthe area ground to a halt on Tuesday as winds of up to 50 miles an hour reduced visibil- ity to a minimum. Fortunately there was little snow. Several schools were closed when school buses were unable to complete their trips because of high winds, icy roads and blowing snow. Traffic continued along No. 8 highway with only mail trucks failing to make their trips. The storm was a reminder of last year when Western Ontario was storm bound for several days. Visibility on Main Street at noon was limited to less then a block. * * * Possibility of a Municipal water system to serve Brucefield was seen Monday night following a meeting of municipal officials and ratepayers. The meeting arose as a result of concern as to the availability and quality of water in the village. Reeve Elgin Thompson agreed to contact the Ontario Water Resources Commission to determine a suitable date for a further meeting at which an OWRC representative could be present. *** Students of 12A and 12B at SDHS have formed a Geography Club and arc working on plans for a trip to Europe this year. Tentative dates have been discussed and it is hoped that the trip can be arranged during the winter break period, the last two weeks in March. While the club requires added funds to make the rip a reality, one hurdle' has been overcome. The trip has the blessing of Huron Board of Education.