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Times -Advocate; August 31, 1988
Times Established I8
Adso(ate Established 1881
Amalgamated 192.1
•
Ames
dvocate
Published Each Wednesday Morning at Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1S0
Second Class Mail Registration lstumber 0386.
Phone 519-235.1331
ROSS HALCH
Edilor
HARR1 DtSRIES
( ompbsit+on Manager
CCNA
Serving South Huron, North Middlesex
& North Lambton Since 1873
Published by 1.W. Eedy Publications limited
JIM RE(AEIi
Publisher & Adseriising Manager,
• DO% SMITH •
Business Manager
ismacei
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
Canada: $25.00 Per year; U.S.A. $65.00
Andy was a friend
A friend to all.
That is a good way to describe the late
Andy McLean of Seaforth.
All of,us in the newspaper business, eve-
ryone in Seaforth particularly and all of
Huron county generally have lost a
friend.
In addition to his many years as publish-
er and editor of the Huron Expositor. in
Seaforth, A.Y. as he was affectionately.
known was recognized throughout Cana-
da as a devout Liberal.and a shrewd and •
caring newspaperman. .
He represented the Huron riding very
capab ' in Ottawa as an MP from 1940 to
1953 and was a member of the Canadian
delegation to the United Nations. -
In the newspaper field he served terms
as president of both the Ontario and Ca-
nadian Community Newspapers Associa-
tions and in 1960 received a life member-
ship in the latter group.
Andy was one of those individuals who
dedicated his life to helping others and
was particularly aware of the need to help
residents and businesses make their com-
munities better places in which to live.
Andy's knowledge not only of Seaforth,
but Huron county in general proved valu-
able when he was named editor of the Hu-
ron County Atlas in 1983 after his retire-
ment a year earlier. He produced an atlas
which was twice as big as expected and
covered every community in the county.
He was a Liberal supporter all his life.
In fact, we talked to him at the annual Hu-
ron Liberal barbecue at the Jack Riddell
farm only four days before his death.
These are only a few of his many contri-
butions to life itself. He will be missed by
many people.
But, his contributions to the town .of
Seaforth, the political arena and the news-
paper business will long be remembered.
By• Ross Haugh
You get what you pay for
Ten million dollars is a hard pill to
swallow for a village of 1,700 like Lucan.
Village taxpayers, when presented with
a projected cost . of over $3,000 per
household for a combined water pipeline
and sewage plant project, were out in
force last Tuesday evening to take council
to task over what went wrong.
The general tone of the first half of the
meeting was that some terrible mistake
had to have been made. Many questioned
the need for the project, some accused
council of mismanagement, . and others
felt the pipeline should have been built
years ago.
The truth is few of these citizens have
ever attended a council meeting to see
first hand the anguish and hard work
council have poured into agonizingly
slow negotiations with engineers, lawyers
and ministries.
Eventually, everyone came to the reali-
zation these projects are inevitable if Lu -
can is to have any kind of future at all.
• It's just that no one wants to pay for it.
Lucan cannot afford the $10 million it
will cost to bring in lake water and to
build a sewage treatment plant without
, the 80 percent the province will contrib-
ute. But it will still cost $830 a year for
each household over 10 years.
Some suggest the province should gtve
more. But let's face it, the province docs
not print money- all grants come out of
taxpayers pockets anyway. There must
be a point when a municipality has to pay
for what it gets. Unfortunately, Lucan
needs two projects at once.
As reeve Norm Steeper has often point-
ed out, each project is worthless without
the other. New sewage capacity is worth-
less without a good water supply; and to
put water into new subdivisions without
controlling effluent problems.in the Aus-
able River would be reprehensible, if not
criminal.
Life used to be much simpler. •A small
pipe and pump was a high-tech replace-
ment for a few gallons of hand -pumped
water a day. Now wt expect water to
backwash pools and pressure to spray
across a lawn.
A sewer used to be a simple drain into
the nearest river, trusting the lakes to
take care of themselves. Without sewage
treatment, today's populations Of south-
ern Ont' ' would devastate the lakes in
weeks. conservation is the only hope in
curbing demands on our resources.
As was concluded at the meeting, Lucan
has no choice. Sewage and water cannot
continue to cripple the community forev-
er. Sixty-nine dollars a month is a lot of
money, but the time has come to stop ar-
guing about how it happened, pay the
money and make it work.
Ry Adrian !lane
Who remembers labour
Labour Day is around the comer
again. I remember labour, and I
remember being a labourer. How
many of my readers do? i mean
real labour. Not sitting in an air-
conditioned office pondering over
paper (i've done my share of that,
too). Not working 7 1/2 hours a
day. five days a week in an
environment -controlled.
computerized, unionized factory.
1 am talking about back-
breaking labour that strains your
muscles until they hurt. Labour
that makes your bones ache.
, Labour that makes you so tired
that you crawl into bed at an early
hour and drop off to sleep within
seconds. Labour for two dollars a
day, and later for seventy cents an
hour if you were lucky.
i remember cutting wheat with
a scythe day after blistering day at
harvest time. I remember the pull
in the arms, the sweat in my eyes
and the fear that the two women
binding the sheafs behind me
PETER'S
POINT
•
by Peter Hessel
would catch up with me. I
remember how my lower arms
ached when I had to milk 18 cows
by hand twice a day. seven days a
week. I remember the dust of
threshing barley in the barn in the
winter. 1 remember shovelling
grain and potatoes and sugar
beets and fertilizer and coal, load
after load. pile after pile. And I
remember carrying bags heavier
than me up two flights of stairs
to the grinding mill. Sometimes I
had a ten-minute wait till the next
load arrived. How I savoured those
breaks, especially when someone
brought me a tin of well water!
I have never worked in a coal
mine. but I think 1 know what it
was like. I have never worked in a
lumber camp, but lumberjacks
knew what labour was. Women
sewing in the sweatshops of
Toronto's or Montreal's garment
centres knew the word. The men
helping bricklayers and carpenters
'knew. Iron workers and railway
construction crews knew. Labour
Please turn to page 5.
a`C
•
0
S .moi,
IkAr,.
"ti0L0 IT— WHAT MAKES YOU THiNK YOU'RE EXEMPT FROM SERVICE CHARGES?"
Far from peanuts
We often hear complaints about
the enormous amounts of money
paid to some of the higher priced
athletes, fellows like Wayne
Gretzky and George Bell who
are in the two million dollar a
year range.
That sounds like a lot of mon-
ey, but is only peanuts compared
to some top notch movie stars
and entertainers.
We read a recent magazine arti-
cle listing the top moneymakers
in the entertainment business and
the fabulous salaries they pocket-
ed for the years 1986 and 1987.
Comedian Bill Cosby heads the
list with $84 million. Next
comes Sly Stallone at $74 mil-
lion, Bruce Springsteen at $56
million and the comic creator of
Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz
checked in at $55 million. Cer-
tainly not peanuts.
A total of 29 names were listed
and at the bottom was Steve
Martin at $15 million. Thc only
sports person we could find in
the list was boxer Marvelous
Marvin Hagler at $16 million.
Television talk show host Phil
Donohue was in at thc same
amount as Hagler, Jack Nichol-
son and Tom Cruise.
* * * * *
Do you know how many pco-
plc live in Huron county?
If -you haven't the foggiest
idea, join the group. We didn't
either.
It took a letter to the editor in
the latest issue of the Clinton
News Record to bring up the
subject. A reader complained of
From the
r: editor's disk
by fa
Ross Haugh
an error in the number of resi-
dents in the county.
A quick phone call to Huron's
deputy clerk treasurer Bill Al-
cock revealed the population in
Huron according to this year's
assessment rolls is 55,589.
The population is only counted
every three years now to coin-
cide with municipal elections
which began in 1982 to be held
every three years instead of the
previous system of every two
years.
Alcock reveals that of the close
to 56,000 Huron residents, 924
arc over the age of 85.
* * * * *
Had a surprise visit during our
recent holiday from an old-time
resident of this area.
Dropping in for a few minutes
was Joe Gunn who was in the
insurance business in Crediton a
long time ago and then moved to
the Chamber of Commerce in
Grand Bend and shortly after
that to the Chamber of Com-
merce in Comwall.
He is now in real estate in
Cornwall and is chairman of thc
Stormont, Dundas and Glengar-
ry county board of education.
* * * * *
The 1988 International Plow-
ing Match scheduled to be held
in Perth County near Stratford
from September 20 to 24 .prom-
ises to be bigger and better than
ever.
At Saturday's Middlesex
match, provincial director Fred
Lewis told us that commercial
space in the tented city was al-
ready sold out and he expected
record crowds, if the weather-
man co-operates.
If the climatical patterns so far
this summer continue, there
should be no problem. We don't
need any repeats of wet weather
experienced when the IPM was
held in Scaforth and Lucan.
l never read those things
I thought I came up with a
'great idea this week:.a column
about those international foun-
tains of fact and then some, the
weekly tabloids.
You know, the papers nonc of
us ever read: The Weekly World
News, the almost incognito
Sun, Thc National Examiner,
The Globe. Who needs the
Globe and Mail? It's all in the
Inquirer.
I went down to Shaw's Dairy
Store and bought an armful of
thc things. Proprietor Mickey
Struyke spilled the beans as I
checked out. She told me she
sells out of the things cvcry
week, so somebody in Exeter
must read them. Of coursc, it's
entirely possible that people
with Inquiring minds don dark
sunglasses and drive up from
Lucan to buy them.
When i got back to the office
and started thumbing through
them, I realized it was going to
be tough to write a humorous
piece about them. I mean, how
do you top guys who write
headlines like: SPACE ALIEN
BABY FOUND IN JUNGLE or
NINE-YEAR-OLD GIRL RE-
VEALS -- LIZARD MAN
MADE ME PREGNANT.
On another front page claims
EIGHT MILLION AMERI-
CANS HAVE RETURNED
FROM THE DEAD. That would
explain the National Examiner's
large circulation figures. In fact,
it would explain a lot of things
about America. Ronald Reagan's
presidency, for onc thing.
it also gives you hope for the
subject of this headline: WOM-
AN DIES LAUGHING AT
JOKE.
And then there's the 12 -year-
old boy who got his teacher and
six classmates pregnant. He'd
probably like to hear that joke
right about now. According to
Take Two
by Mark Bisset
the Examiner, school officials are
"vowing to have the juvenile Don
Juan locked behind bars for life."
But the cops can't seem to find
him.
;He's thought to be hiding in the
countryside.
Oh, it doesn't say which coun-
tryside exactly, but something in
the story might tip us off. See if
you can spot it. Wascalja, by the
way, refers to "pretty school
teacher Wascalja Ilalecki" who
was quoted earlier in the story as
sobbing: "My career is finished. i •
am carrying the baby of arlboy
half my age." •
Hcrc it is: "Wascalja told a
Hungarian freelance joumal4st
she was tutoring the schoolboy
stud, Henryk Paradowski, at his
home when he seduced her."
Did you get the clue? I know. I
realize it's a subtle one. I'll tell
you what: i'll write it again for
you, this time using a computer
enhancement.
"Wascalja told a Hungarian.
freelance journalist she was tutor-
ing.thc schoolboy stud, Henryk
'Paradowski, at his home when
he seduced her."
Beautifully written, isn't it?
Just the right European nuance.
These magazines offer every-
thing. One ad promises me,
"Now you can cat all you want
while extra weight disappears"
and an unidentified fat person
testifies: "I lost 71 pounds in six
weeks".
Sounds good. I wonder -- if I
lost 30 pounds in three weeks
and called it quits, would they
give me this DIETOL-7 for half
price?
As you work your way thmugh
the magazines, you eventually
come to the personals (unless
you're a single Examiner reader
who starts at the Personals and
works forward). Under thc ban-
ner SHEELA WOOD'S HAVE A
FRIEND CLUB, onc personal ad
reads: "CALIF - CORRECTION-
AL INSTITUTE INMATE.
Taurus biker, 40, 6', 170 lbs.,
italian/Irish descent, humorous,
romantic, well-mannered. Seeks
sincere one-man woman for pos-
sible relationship. Docs this
sound like you? Write."
I didn't make that up.