HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuron Expositor, 2009-07-29, Page 4Page 4 Juiy-29; 2009 • The Huron Expositor
Opinion
Proprietor and Publisher, Bowes Publishers Limited, 11 Main St., Seaforth, ON, NOK IWO
We need local control
of - ecx�nomy
In some ways it is difficult to believe it was a mere
20 years ago that the Canadian Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney rammed. Free Trade down the throats of his
fellow countrymen and women.
To be fair, there were many economists that lauded its
benefits. There were promises of lower prices and better-
s products and jobs in developing. nations.
Opponents of Free Trade, meanwhile,' saw dark days
ahead. The Canadian Autoworkers Union, for one, saw r'
an end to its Auto act, which ensured that at least a
ortion of the vehicles sold on Canuck soil were ac ly
there, too.s?'�yt^n �.,F Y�iSa •.� J�»r y'.7oj;C+ f �'w' >.: ' '�v
.,tics of Free 'frade f'cresaw other"thin:gs, like a class
service -sector, he that paid little and offered even less
y of benes and uy of life
f forward to years later and it's.,,to see both <
grade's critics and boosters undersold thethefull rami -
.of it.
c.
-- . themost nervous of Nellies did not project the ,
tele job t > ton wtould o l; +I ce. minting-
gi lam' green light to scam er
���715'ere �
's nether rape.
sears: workersofthat
would toily > peanuts in rete r products of question-
al : ' ty wh +l�h, in turn, u dergo the costly ship ding
pias back to North America since, ironically, wor i
evelo� .
� Ates stall can't afford �c
Large >; ox stores have s itcasfully managed to
obliterate even the most bustling of downtown cores,
continent -wide. The promise was greater variety for
lour prices but the reality reads more like questionable
quality and dwindling, variety now that the competition.:
4t' ;
has been successfullydic, �1..,
Anall that, in a nutshell,` is why" tee aade doesn't
work. After all, to be successful, the multinationals in
charge of the show would have to be manned by the
sweetest, ;}f ost well-meaning and empathetic Chief Ex-
ecutive • $ cers on this earth with, naturally, only the
best intentions at hem. LOL, yes?
Now, fortunately, dere are some grassroots -level push -
backs against the g 'ain. For one, there are agriculture -
based movements designed to urge people to shop local-
ly.
And, there are much larger movements, including in
the U.S. where Ptesident Barrack Obama is &sting for
a Made in the 'U`SA plan as a way to stop the bleeding of
U.S. jobs.
One can only hope that such trends continue since
mass-produced goods and services promote little more
than mediocrity in terms of both goods produced and jobs
created.
And, perhaps more ironically, Free Trade has fed the
idea that everyone, everywhere, should consume and
purchase the same goods and services. That is indeed a
strange concept when one considers capitalism is about
competition.
-- The News -Record
Your Community Hemmer U .1110
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I'm not proud of my inability to 'parle
Francais' .after trip to Montreal
I have always admired and
envied those talented people
who can speak more than one
language.
I've envied those who grew
up in an environment where
learning two or more languages
came naturally because of their
multilingual parents.
And, I've admired those
who've done the hard work of learning a sec-
ond language, investing in those challenging
opportunities to immerse themselves in an-
other culture.
But, despite the fact that I live in a country
with two official languages and have a German
last name thanks to a great grandfather who
immigrated to Canada over 100 years ago, I
remain, sadly, unilingual.
-Living and working in Southwestern Ontar-
io, it's not really a major issue - in fact, there
are very few opportunities I've encountered
to speak anything other than English. But, a
recent vacation to Montreal made me realize
my inability to speak a second language is a
deficiency I'm not really too proud of.
Oh, we 'got along just fine speaking only
English in Montreal - everyone was accom-
modating and friendly, easily switching over
from French when it became obvious that we
couldn't understand them.
While it's a community where there are daily
opportunities to speak both French and Eng-
lish, the week we spent in Montreal made me
marvel at the ability of most. people to switch
easily back and forth between both languages.
And, I truly admired those store clerks who
had obviously learned both of Canada's official
languages after immigrating from a country
Ron & Dawe
bark nights at camp
Hey Ron...did your
hear a noise?
What if
there's a
lion out
there, or
a tiger?
Lions live in
Africa, and
tigers live in
India. There
aren't any
within 5,000
miles of here.
Susan
Hundertmark
where they'd spoken neither -
like the kind gentleman at the
gas station who was speaking
Chinese on the phone before re-
sponding to us in first French,
then English when we got lost
in Longueuil - and in excellent
English gave us easy directions
back to the route we needed to
find our campground.
The experience made me wonder what would
happen to someone from Quebec who decided
- as we did - to explore another province but
didn't know how to speak English. How many
of us in Seaforth would be able to take an or-
der in a restaurant or respond to a request for
directions in French?
The more encounters we had in Montreal,
the more frustrated I was that I wasn't able
to have a basic conversation in French and
frankly, didn't have the courage to make a
blundering attempt at it with any vocabulary
I remembered from high school.
While I took French in school from Grade
7 until Grade 13, I will blame my teacher in
Grade 13 "conversational French" class for my
inability to "parle Francais" with any confi-
dence after he told me I had the worst French
accent he had ever heard. After learning that
embarrassing fact in front of my classmates, I
was more than a little reticent to strike up a
conversation in anything other than English
ever again.
Maybe it's time to get over that adolescent
scar and give it another try. Because, after
enjoying the shops and the sidewalk cafes of
Rue St. Denis, Montreal is definitely a place I
would love to visit again.
Whew, that's
a relief. Now
1 con go to
sleep.
by David Lacey
Of course the woods
are crawling with bears
•
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