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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1979-07-25, Page 4 (2)Page 4 Times -Advocate, July 25, 1979 .Times Establishes! 11173 Advocate Estoblrshed 1 88 1 Imes:• 4vpcate SERVING CANADA'S BEST FARMLAND C. W.N.A., O.W.N.A. CLASS 'A' and ABC Published by J. W. Eedy Publications Limited LORNE EEDY, PUBLISHER Editor — Bill Assistant Editor — Advertising Manager Composition Manager Business Manager — Phone 235 - Batten Ross Haugh — Jim Beckett — Harry DeVries •• Dick Jongkind Published Each Wednesday Morning 1331 - at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Moil Regrtirotion Number 0386 A,,olgomuled 1973 • SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $1 1 00 Per Year: USA 522.00 Damned if we do Editors . of the Campbell, B.C.. Courier write: "Getting out this newspaper is no picnic. If we print jokes. people say we are being silly: if we don't they say we are too serious and need a laugh. If 'we stick 'too close t� the job. the bosvisays we ought to be out hunting up news. If we're out too much. he wonders where we were in- stead of being here for phone calls and unannounced visitors. "If we don't print contributions. we don't appreciate genius. If we do, the paper is filled with junk. If we make a change in the other fellow's write-up, we are too critical: if we don't we are sloppy or asleep. "IF we clip things from other papers. we are too lazy to write them ourselves: if we don't, we are too stuck on our own stuff. Like as not. someone will say we swiped this from some newspaper. We did " Is it worth it? Between the years 1967 and 1977, 38 Ontario children were killed in school bus accidents. In that same ten year period. 2.172 suffered personal injuries. mostly caused by poor bus design and faulty equipment. According to a spokesman for the Ontario Association of School Business - Officials.- plans of the federal depart- ment of transport to improve the safety of school buses would be an expensive and- unneces§ary change. Among these proposals would be higher seatbacks with increased padding. stronger body joints and protective cages around gas- oline tanks. These alterations would cost $1.200 and $2.000 for each bus. - Ottawa backed away from the im- provement program last fall and will likely be under similar pressure when this matter comes forward again. It's ironic that in the Year Of The Child. we are prepared to trade a few dead and injured children for some questionable savings in school board 'budgets. An official of the Ontario Public School Men Teachers' Federation looks at a "double standard". - one for the automobile and another for school buses, as unacceptable and should not be tolerated. With each succeeding accident in- volving a school bus, the alibis for inac- tion become weaker, Over 600,000 children travel this way every day of the school year. What is their safety worth? The problems are known and the technology for their solution is available. St. Marys Journal Argus New energy source A St. Thomas man has proven the feasibility of using waste products as an energy source. Assisted by govern- ment funds. he has tapped an old dum- ping ground. long since filled in and covered. to provide a big supply of methane gas. And that gas has been heating a 20 x 39 foot greenhouse for some time. He says the supply of gas from that one dump will last the pre- sent operation for 15 to 20 years. Installation . costs of such a heat source are high, says the green house owner. but after installation the fuel itself costs nothing. Oil -fired heating units cost their operators in the range of $25.000 per acre per year. In addi- tion. of course. the burning off of the trapped methane may well prevent a tragedy in the future when uninformed developers try to use the dump site for housing. Despite some public discussion on the use of waste product gases as fuel • By SYD FLETCHER Ne s kind of a little guy. one you might not notice on the street unless your kids were with you. They'd probably know him because he &avg. tbegn. pp ,that big, green bus on their school trip to Toronto or Midland or the Zoo You name it, if there's any place that is worth visiting within five or six hundred miles, he's been there, ac- companied by fifty or sixty of our nations finest, trying to outdo themselves singing, laughing. asking where the nearest bathroom is, or saying. I'm going to be sick. I really think 1 am. what'll i do. i think I'm going to be.... Some bus drivers refuse to go on long distance trips. For them it's a not too subtle form of torture. After fifty or sixty miles you begin to see the signs of strain—short temper . and eyes darting nervously from side to side, sources, we have read of very few other practical applications of the proven theory. Some years ago the Hon. Alvin Hamilton, former minister of Agriculture in the Diefenbaker government. was reported to have in- vested in a plant to produce methane from animal manure out in Saskatchewan. It sounded like a tremendous idea. for the extraction of the gas left the fertilizing qualities of the manure un- diminished - and odorless into the bargain. Certainly the process of extracting methane from municipal dumps should fill more than one urgent requirement, for our larger cities are trying in vain to find land into which -they may dump their wastes. If a fuel potential can offset the nuisance value of garbage we should be doing all we can to promote the plan. Wingham Advance -Times Perspectives _ • �+.. , �.: a �spj :.� , pleas to the accs*-ipanying adults to help keep the noise down But not him. He seems to have a built-in tolerance toward such distractions. When it's time' to roll home he seems as fresh as ever. ready to put the -gas pedal to the mat and make time with the best of them down the open highway. ,Perhaps his training for driving a 60's comes from his love . affair with miniature standardbreds. Before 1 met him i thought that these little horses were just a bunch of ponies that amateurs like myself hitched up to a borrowed sulky and took over to a local.traLk fpr a Sunday afternoon's ,race with other like-minded characters. Not so. it's a game for professionals. This fellow has a couple of thousand dollars or so invested in each of his little horses, animals that can walk, i should say pace, all over a good number of your standard -bred horses that race at the regular tracks such as Dresden or Windsor. It seems that the • little horsesgrac't for as long a distance as their - bigger relatives but on a short track can really go at a good clip. it takes a lot of energy and patience to race horses and itis not always a bouquet of roses waiting. for you fp_ the -t: winner's 1 tracks and other drivers who don't hesitate to cut you off even of it means -a bad spill for somebody else. as happened to this fellow this year already. it's long cold hours of. working a horse in the winter when you would .mn.rl, ► h1PffS'fielvrtrr coffee instead of facing the rear end of a horse and the front end of a lazy wind --too lazy to go around so it goes right through you. Yet, I'm sure that there's an element of excitement and thrill there that makes the long days at the wheel of the green bus, threading in and out of traffic on the 401, just a little more acceptable because there's always the summer racing season ahead of all those June school trips. ar. "Doug ju.s1 reolembere l he buried live cases of heir from lust ]'cur's shortage. but forgot where.'' BATT'N AROUND .with the editor Getting healthier, thanks There's a great temptation to sit down and write a column this week that is light and breezy to convey to all my readers that after a sojourn in hospital, the editor is back at his desk and everything is okay. That is impossible. because everything is not okay with my world, but then, having had ample opportunity to look back, there is an admission that it never really was many times. Similar to your life. mine has had its ups and downs and there was a great deal of "the good life" and there is a solid base on which to build for a future that is slowly becoming clearer and more optimistic, For those not in the know, and in a small town that number is com- paratively small, the writer's two- week stay in hospital was in the psy- chiatric ward at University Hospital. Fortunately. I was able to recognize that I was having a problem that I could not handle by myself or through some very kind and patient friends. Similar to the home handyman who recognizes a plumbing problem and believes he can handle it, the flood was not abating and in fact was getting worse. Too late we often find that by the time we smarten up and call the plumber, there has been considerable more damage done through our own in- eptitude. The plumber can fix the cause of the problem. but even he can't help you with repairing the damage that the flood caused. The main problem in my life is a marriage problem, and through my in- eptitude I was attempting to place the blame on many of the wrong causes. What transpired was a month of con- frontation that widened the gulf between myself and the woman I love. Every emotion that the human mind and heart can muster was thrown into the fray, but unfortunately I was not always fighting on the right battle field. Much of the enemy was within. The stay in hospital gave me the op- portunity needed to take a good look at myself and to recognize some faults that had never before• been evident. I started to learn new and exciting things about communicating and inter - reacting with others. It was a course I wish 1 had taken many years ago and had then been - lucky enough to enrol in refresher courses through the years. A good *friend who went through some of the same help tells -the story of an acquaintance . who suggests that those who come out of psychiatric help "are never the same". While the comment was intended as a negative one, he obviously does not understand the situation. My friend and I agree wholeheartedly that you never are the same if your treatment has been successful... you can be a much better person. It is in many cases a treatment you give yourself. While I would wish to advise readers that everything s been patched up, that is not the ca . There has been too much hurt to arrive at that point so quickly. Sugar and Spice Dispensed by Smiley The jungle is moving in For weeks I'd been telling her. 1 said "The jungle is coming in on us. I'm no kidding. it's bloody jungle out there and it's going to get us." She thought I was hallucinatin again. Jungle Creeping in. Rubbish And then I took her out and-sp,os-d her She hadn't taken a good tour ofthe e's tate for a couple of years. And what s • saw -shook Iv*. "You're right. It is jungle." A few years ago we had a • kaleidoscope of colour out there.Now it's almost solid green, relentlessly creeping in from all sides. We had two rose beds. We had ac- tually planted some roses in them• and some of the roses actually grew. Peace - awes •Dypsomaniac roses. Red roses. As soon as they bloomed, I'd cut them, put them in a vase, and we'd sit around looking at them as though we'd borne children. •i cut them back dutifully, piled dirt around them in the fall. and a couple even bloomed the second year. The roses were planted cheek -by - jowl with a fine healthy row of peonies Y 14*oduced almosj obscenely. The second"year of the roses. the peonies were a little sick. The third year they were definitely ailing.. This year that particular flower -bed has produced two peonies, three rosebuds, two elm trees about eight feet high, a healthy young maple, and enough hay to feed a herd of cows. The jungle. Our other rosebed was somewhat of a failure from the beginning, despite all the fertilizing and fussing. Therefore, when a couple of acorns the squirrels had , missed sprouted. I thought, "Why not? it'll. add a nice touch of green." Almost overnight, it seems, those acorns have grown to g • • he a sawlog dimensions. First few years here we had tiger lilies and all kinds of other exotics. This year we had tigers. You could see them sitting there in the jungle at night, peering with yellow eyes. Some people might say they were cats. I know they were tigers. - "• ' A few years ago we had brown -eyed daisies galore. This year we had brown -eyed children" galore, slashing and galloping through the' jungle that once'was brown -eyed daisies. Even the woodpiles are creeping closer. At first they were orderly woodpiles, in their place, ready to be thrown ins the.g J1 ' , ling..rather a quai u h 'vi ?U'Sticity to the backyard. as it once was. Then we started piling fallen branches on top of them. Now they are horrible woodpiles, crooked and beckoning, festooned by vines and other creeping green things. Used to be a fine young spruce grow- ing near the garage. Top of it would have -made a nice Christmas tree. It's grown so fast in fifteen years that hazard to low-flying airplanes. We have squirrels so big and so bold they'll Jump up on the picnic table and snatch the second half of your peanut - butter -and -honey sandwich without so much as a, "Do you mind?". We have robins who pull out worms as big as rattlesnakes, and then have to surrender them to grackles as big as seagulls, strutting about the clearing in the jungle in that ugly, pigeon-toed gait of theirs. Bees as big as beavers buzz around our beer bottles. Huge black ants hoist themselves up the hair on my legs, spit in my eye, and waltz off to attack a starling. Every day we move our lawn chairs a little closer to the back door. /7. However, Kaaren and I have started to look positively at the situation after so many frightening weeks, of negatives and have set a mutual goal to attempt to gel the marriage back together. To facilitate that goal, the writer has moved out of the family home'into an apartment that is, fortunately, very close to home. We have negotiated an agreement whereby we can both provide that which each of us has to offer to our four very special boys, albeit on a part-time basis. Hopefully, our roles as parents will be strengthened considerably and that our roles as friends with many of you will follow the same pattern. Over the past many years. I have en- joyed sharing the good times of the Batten family with you and now find it very healthy sharing some of our problems because unless we are able to do that with each other we are not real- ly communicating. I do not suggest I have been able to fully cope with that which has transpired or that which the future will bring, and in some ways I hope some of you will be able to give both Kaaren and me the type of understanding that is required. We think that we have reached a healthy state in a bad situation and it will take time and effort to narrow the gulf. Out front. our mighty oak -grows ever greater. peers in windows. rubs his nose against panes. chuckles with amusement, gives the brick a smack with one of his huge. hands. and goes batik to ..tv'1,71:1 , :1he t ,ma1'W- 'wrn', so thathe an drop a dead branch across our TV cable wire. Up- the back of the house crawls a great green vine, with tentacles like' those of a giant squid, slowly. careful- ly, and with super -human skill pulling bricks loose, one by one. Every so often it starts to die nd�1,1waiph with glee and hope. BUS li i'gT'een tendrils sprout, every one of them a potential brick puller. We hack, we chop, we slash. To no avail. Everywhere the trees. the weeds, the vines, crawl toward and over the house, insidious, malicious, whispering to each other their eventual triumph. In this steady, frightening encroach- 7.."-:,14pAitese Is only one bright spot, one tt ng that won't grow. That's the privet hedge between the yard and the street, that gives us about as much privacy as a strippper at a medical convention. Planted at great expense, trimmed with decreasing regularity because there's nothing to trim, it looks like a kid who's been in a fight and had a cou- pleof frontteeth knocked out. that's the good part. Down at the ojiher end, where the snowplow man dumps forty- eight tons a year, it resembles a pygmy with a bad case of malnutrition. That's the way we plan to go, when the jungle forces us to flee. Straight out through one of the gaps in the hedge, pushing the grand piano In front of us. Mainstream Canada New Minister Talks Tough B1 1$ Roger Borth. Canada's anew Minister of Slate for Small Business and Industry is just getting settled in his new Ottawa office but he's already taken a swipe al some of the country's corpo- rate giants. in a maiden speech follow- ing his cabinet appointment, Ronald Huntington expressed strong feelings about corporate concentration in the form of conglomerates. In particular, he knocked the massive companies that "cover a wide and diversified interlocking of corporate .ac- 1ivities." Roger Worth is Director, Public ,4ffairs. • Canadian Federation of Independent Business. "Such giants can, and do, speed up the massing of capital into the hands of a few people, and that power can threaten the survival of our free enter- prise, incentive oriented soci- ety," he said. Harsh words indeed, but Huntington should know shat he's talking about. As a small businessman in British Columbia before en- tering politics, Huntington founded two successful enter- prises, one with sales of more • than 510 million per year: In addition, as a Conser- vative back bencher, he was responsible for the party's position regarding changes In Canada's competition policy, presently the weakest in the industrialized world. The new minister points out that he's not simply against "bigness." "Bigness to create economy of scale... within a specific activity of production, manu- facture, or service, is a fact of life, and to do so is in the pub- lic interest," Huntington em- phasizes. He believes such activities are necessary if Canadian com- panies are to withstand the rigors of international compe- tition. The concern lies with those firms that seek power for the sake of power. "It seems to me that every time we allow a particular group to have power, you can be certain it will find ways of multiplying in order tee gain more power," he says. The challenge, according to Huntington, is to find new ways to restore the basic in- centive aspects of the small business world,before the sys- tem itself is destroyed. "1 give that objective a very high priority," he adds. Small ,business, it seems, has a concerned voice in the corridors of power, a minister prepared to fight for compe- tition legislation that really counts. *own memory land 55 Years Ago - Mr. J. Passmore Hensall has recently installed a large radio 'receiving set in his store. You are invited to drop in and hear this outfit. A monster Sturgeon fish was captured by the fishermen at St. Joseph measuring nearly six feet in length and weighing 1-37 pounds The wine factory at St. Joseph was torn down last week. Mr. George Layton and Mr. John Laporte were elected- as Huron representatives to the new Ontario Bean Growers Association at an inaugural meeting in Zurich last week. The editor of this paper is on tour with the Canadian Press Party in England and Europe. 30 Years Ago B.W. Tuckey former -reeve of the village, christened the new pumping system at the Moodie well Thursday by using a well known soft drink which, by an odd coincidence is distributed by Tuckey Beverages. Loreen Venner, Iris Tomlinson, Barbara Brint- ness, Olive Petrie, Marilyn Skinner, Jean Thompson, Kathleen Armstrong, and Shirley Harness are at- tending Girl Guide Camp at Kitchigami. Cal Fahrner, Sarnia, Bob Pryde London, Mel Gaiser Shipka, Ray Wuerth and Douglas Pryde Exeter motored to Washington last week. James L. Hendry, tnanaket • rti`le "' Sgnk of xeter has received word that he is being transferred to the branch at Owen Sound. 20 Years Ayo The hot summer has Tuckey Beverages'' Exeter its "biggest season to date," according to manager Ross Tuckey. The 11 -year - old firm has increased its staff to 30 to handle the demand. - A new church, the town's 1 • eighth will be built in Exeter soon. Tentative approval was given to the local congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses to erect a hall in the north-west section near No. 83 highway. Blaring of the plant whistle Saturday marked the end of •) the pea pack .at Canadian lI Canners Ltd. here.- The corn pack is expected to start on August 24. A land judging competition for Grade 12 students at SHDHS will be sponsored by the Ausable Authority this fall. Over 50 students are expected to take part. 15 Years Ago Officials of the Eketer industrial Development Corporation and members of council were on hand Wednesday • to welcome Exeter's newest infusbry. Custom Trailers Ltd. The Corporation executive spearheaded a drive to raise funds for the building which will be located on the Keller property on Highway 83. Between 25 and 30 "in- terested citizens" using donated machinery, money and materials erected a new ball screen at the girl's diamond in the Exeter Community Park over the weekend. RAP refused to fix the dilapidated structure, although at their meeting Monday, they passed a motion aughorizing in- terested citizens to do it! The SHDHS board received approval from the provincial government this week for the proposed vocational addition_ t� th4: ,-- high sehAot.'�Ippl�,vxt rr * t the Ottawa' is. still needed;' , ilk: Included in the extensive addition will be seven classrooms, a science laboratory, a carpentry shop, drafting shop and a ��I� tr ••,.-hanks shop. 'lfe Workmen completed _ construction of the sanitary sewers on . Sanders and Andrew Stresets yesterday .and the pouring has also been finished by Hammond Construction on William St. from Huron to Sanders. • The leaders write To the editor: it seems rather pointless that the Exeter Business ;ten's Association request that Exeter main Street traffic be detoured for sidewalk sales days. Countless strangers passing through Exeter must have wondered the reason for the detour, as there was no indication of why it was closed. They probably thought Exeter was in- stalling sewers. Surely the association could get handy with a bit of paint and make signs to indicate Exeter sidewalk sales are being held! if the association goes to the trouble of getting permission to have the detour at least let the people know the reason. This would be the least expensive method of ad- vertisement and the signs could be used annually. Jean E. Simpson • •