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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1998-01-07, Page 4Page 4 • Tires -Advocate, Jdnuari 7, 1998' Publisher & Editor: Jim.Beckett Business Manager: Don Smith • Production Manager: Deb Lord - Advertising; Barb Consitt, Chad Eedy• News; Heather Mir, Hate Monk, Craig Bradford, .-Chantal- Van Raay, Ross Haugh. Production; Alma Ballantyne. Mary McMurray, Barb Robertson • Brenda Hern, Joyce Weber, Laurel Miner • • Transportation: Al Hodgert . Front Office & Accounting; Sue Rollings, Carol Windsor. • Ruthanne Negrijn, Anita McDonald. Cassie Dalrymple, Ruth Slaght, Shelia Corbett ' • GCN* The Exeter Times Advocate is a Member of a family of community newspapers ,providing news, advertising and information leadership. 1) 1'1'()121:1.1, Caring and sharing Th• ere.,could beano better indica- g for on the type of community in which - we live than -the two main stories on the front page -of last week's Times- - Advocate.. The organizers of the first ever Exeter Christmas Dinner held at-the:Ranch House had "Enough food to feed. an army" thanks to the generosity of sev- eral local businesses."Although the numberof.people who took advantage of the -free meal -was far less Than the, organizers expected, the willingness of the donors and volunteers to lend a -- hand was.everything one could hope - for. The excess food' went to other places : where there was a greater need and was , certainly used to brighten the Christmas .of several hundred others. - Organizer J.os Bervoets described it as an amazing event. "I'm so -proud to be a part of Exeter," he: said. The other story "Finkbeiners faring well after fire" reported that almost $26,000 had been donatedby.people who wanted to help the family per a fire destroyed the family home just be- fore Christmas: This money will go a long way in_help- ingghe family build a new home.___ Both stories ,are examples of how closely knit -communities can get behind a worthy cause. . When people -care the results can truly' work miracles. Your Views Letter to the editor • Looking back and looking forward The statisticians are busy right - flow' in caltltnting up the scores- for the past year..:. • : Dear Editor: caution often_ repeated and particularly'apt at • this time of year is.to look: both ways before ventur- ing into crossing. especially a wide -one. The figura- tive street ahead in this case will take twelve months to cross and the hazards unpredictable as_ to nature and timing. Another bit of advice that often follows is that"we'should learn from past mistakes in order -to prevent their repetition. If this hit of wisdom were heeded. especially by those in.authority. then each year would.hc an improvement qp-the previous and 1 -at my age should he living in a veritable- Utopia. _ -The statisticians are busy right now, in counting up the scores for the'past year in an attempt to rate the - performance of Canadians. 1 have heard much about the areas-ofincreaseor decrease in such matters'as.. violent crime. gross larceny and the like, but little : • about acts or movements having to do with charita- ble humanitarianism. even the outstanding news nem of the year -concerned a violent and plurally fa- tal automobile accident. At least the stress was pri- . marily on the coincidental remo �� u.manitarian positives as -a result of tragedy. A`tialaniing factor against the negatives is the naming of those recog7 nized for positive contributions to their communi- tics; their countries or the world. The turn of the year, provides a good time for the professional pundits and the wisecracks psychics to . come up with their forecasts of events. tragic.•politi cal and acts of God for the,year ahead. Some of . them even strike oil; figuratively. and post their bat- ting averages. if favourable..a year later. Elections are easy enough to predict and even the potential winners. at tines. it is a good thing that earth- • quakes; Volcanic -eruptions and meteor -strikes are largely questionable. This year we arc already hear- ing references to the millennium year two years hence, a lot of 'sages and pseudo -sages have begun their count downs to the turn of the century: This writer will hazard no predictiond,beyond such cer- tainties as the scasonalsequence and the next con- secutive failure of the Maple. Leafs to win the_Stan- ley Cup- At this point -in Jime it mi" be interesting to rc- : call what Pear's-Encyflopedia has to say about how our calendAr evolved and the months got their .names. Th! Julian calendar was named for Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. with the year length established al - 365 pt days. with Leap Ycar introduced. This Ju- lian'c lendar.was amended to Gregorian in Italy in -1562. and adopted in England in 1752: The Gregori- an calendar began the practice of not counting cen- tury years as leap years unless- the first two digits - • were divisihlc by 4. Hence year 2000 A.D. will he a leap year. the first.since.1600. January is named for Janus. thc two-faced god of the Romans. the one looking backhand thc other for- ward. February was named about 700 B.C. as 12th . month. March was named for Mars, god of war. April was named for-thetime of year when buds open and May for mother of Mercury. June was , named for Juno; wife of Zeus, July for Julius Caesar and.August by Emperor Augustus•as his lucky month. September. Octoher, November and Decem- ber. originally designated as 7th, 8th. 9th'and 10th months were moved .to 9th to 12th positions on cal- endars about 700 B.C. Now that you have met the components of the year. I hope that -the new year will prove friendly to Gerry Dobrindt Exeter Publications Mail Registration Number 07511 3UNICRIPTION RATES; One year rate for Canada subscribers - $35.00 + OST Two year rate for Canada subscribers • $53.00 + GST OTHER RATES • Outside Canada - $102.00 - Published Each Wednesday Morning at 424 Main St., Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1S6 by LW. Eedy Publications Ltd. Telephone 1-519-235-1331 • Fax: 519-235-0768 emall:taeeedy.com O.S.T. 18105210835 IM EITER GOING SMflN QR WINDSURFING, DEPENDING ON EL N1&o1 Missiles and musings By Craig Bradford Don't fret over our junior hockey misfortunes . Oh.. this -is our winter of discon- tent. • - •Not only is it wet and windy in- stead. Of snowy and shiveryoutside, Canada just isn't the country it used to be. Take for instance our woeful performance at the World -Junior Hockey Championships over , thc pond in hellish (at least for; our boys) Helsinki. Eighth! You never thought you'd - live to seethe day Switzerland fin- ished any where near. let alone atop, our pride and joy. the junior champs. Yes. let's hang our heads in shame over this vile development. How could it have. happened? Was there foul -play involved? Did those • low down Finns slip something into, our water bottles? Did the U.S. use biological 'weapons to render our young men incapable of winning? And don't talk to us about those Russians...remember the •Cold War? - •- No. no, .none -of the .above'.- The answer 'to our perceived terrible showing is taro=fold: parity and -the law of averages. - Let's start with the latter. Cana- da's.strcak of championships at the international junior hockey level eventually had to come to an end. Eighth place may he hard to swal- low, but programs arc expected to peak after much building, take a hit and rebuild. 'Though junior hockey is much different than the NHL.' even dynasties like the '70s Mon- treal Canadians, the New York Is- landers four -peat to follow and the Gretzky-Mcssic'r alliance 'in Ed- monton in the early to mid -'80,s all eventually ended. ' Yes, the .escalating free agent market and the big business focus of our professional .game helped change thc NHL so dynasties are difficult to build let alone sustain, but even in the golden era of Origi- nal Six hockey, a team could go from sipping bubbly out -of the Stanley Cup -one-year to the cellar the next: Our fall from total dominance in junior hockey shouldn't be viewed as a disgrace. but a chance to make our young hockey players even het - ter by learning how other countries' systems caught up to ours. The.pari- ty throughout the world of junior hockey is a .good thing for the game, albeit a shot . to our• national ego. . . So chin up — there's,always next year, and now there's something to prove. A View from Queen's Park i TORONTO -- Premier Mike Harris will he throwing out notonly a large number of politi- cians in the next election. but a lot of Ontario history. - , in what he gleefully calls his Fewer Politi- cians Act. the Progressive Conservative pre- mier will reduce the number of provincial rid- ings from 130 to 103 and give them the same boundaries and names as federal ridings. This means some historic names will vanish. including St. Andrew -St. Patrick in downtown Toronto. St. Andrew was held from 1943 to 1955 by Joe Salsberg, one of only two Commu- nists ever elected to the legislature. • The other around the same time was Alex MacLeod and both were among the legislature's most stirring orators and quit their party be- cause of Soviet repression. The erudite, respect- ed McLeod oddly still had an office in the leg- islature in the 1960s as a backroom adviser to Tory education minister, later premier, Wil- liam Davis. Heavyweight Kelso Roberts, who sat for St. Patrick, ran for Tory leader against both future premiers Leslie Frost and John Robarts and led By Eric Dowd Robarts on the first ballot in 1961 before other candidates ganged up. Fellow Tories Allan Grossman, a longtime minister, and his son Larry, a minister and later losing opposition leader, represented the com- bined St. Andrew -St. Patrick, and teacher Zana- na Akande, the first black woman in the legisla- ture, was elected there for the -New Democrats in 1990. . Neighboring Toronto St. George -St. David also disappears. St. George was where rebel Al- lan Lawrence mounted the slickest leadership campaign and came within a few votes of beat- ing Davis. shocking his party's establishment, but thereafter found life- so uncomfortable he quickly switched to the Commons. St. David was held by noted Toronto mayors Allan Lamport, a Liberal known for such mala- propisms as "if someone is going to stab me in the back, I want to be there" and the Coopera- tive Commonwealth Federation's William Den- nison, and Tories Roland Michener, a future governor-general, and Bud Price, even more self-effacing than his father, the most famous bagman, Harry Price. Are we losing some of our history? The name of Fort William in the northwest, a historic bastion in the transhipment of furs and. trade goods, has not withstood Harris's attack. Its MPPs include the first woman leader of a major party, Liberal Lyn McLeod. Dovercourt riding in Toronto's west end goes down on a sudden, unwanted wave of. fame. Its MPP of three decades ago and onetime Ontarid Liberal leader Andrew. Thompson is now the senator notorious for not turning up. Don Mills, which disappears, is named after the renowed post-war model community. its MPPs included Dennis Timbrell, who probably would have been Tory leader if he had run against Mike Harris, but turned down the chance. Riverdale, well-known enough to have a TV soap opera named after it but another riding which vanishes, had the most influential byelec- tion in memory, when New Democrat Jim Ren- wick defeated former evangelist Charles Tem- pleton in 1964. A Templeton win would have made him Liberal leader and possibly given his party success that took two more decades to achieve. Welland -Thorold was the, riding of the most effective. consumer advocate, the NDP's Mel Swart, who daily stacked his desk in the legis- - 'mute with boxes of cereals and detergents while asking why they cost more than in the U.S. - • . York Mills was home to scalpel -sharp Dr. - Bette Stephenson, a former president of the Ca- nadian Medical -Association and longtime min- ister who would have been premier in 1985 if the Tories had not been biased against women. Harris, who says fewer MPPs will save mon- ey, probably would argue that it does not mat- ter if names disappear as long as residents have ridings to vote in.. - But many federal riding names are mere hum- drum locations on a road. map, or unwieldy (such as Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey), and when the federal. government decides to change any, the provincial riding names will change automatically with them. Names of federal ridings also change some- times merely because of an MP's 'whim, so On- tario will give up still more of its history with - out even firing a shot.