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Times-Advocate, 1984-03-21, Page 4Times -Advocate, March 21, 1984 imes Times Established 1873 Advocate Established 1881 Amalgamated 1924 • l NMI dvocate Serving South Huron North Middlesex & North Lambtdn Since 1873 Published by J.W. Eedy Publications Limited LORNE EEDY Publisher JIM BECKETT Advertising Manager BILL BATTEN ROSS HAUGH Editor Assistant Editor HARRY DEVRIES Composition Manager DICK JONGKIND Business Manager Published Each Wednesday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Mall Registration Number 0386. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada: $22.00 Per year; U.S.A. $60.00 C.W.N.A., O.C.N.A. CLASS 'A' and 'ABC' Expensive bail-out Whether those employed on the Challenger jet pro- gram at Canadair in Quebec realize it or not, they have hit the jackpot. The decision to transfer the project's $1.35 billion long-term debt means over one million dollars of taxpayers' money has been ear -marked to save each of the 1,200 jobs involved. Senator Jack Austin, the minister who reports to Parliament for the Crown •company, said "It is a business decision made for business reasons." The accumulated deficit, the largest run up, by any Canadian company in our country's history, will be transferred to "bld" Canadair, ,a debt -riddled, skeletal creation of the federal government. Its only function will be to act as a siphon for interest payments on its "negative net worth" that are expected to total $150-200 million annually. This money will be funnell- ed from taxpayers' pockets right into a pit whose bot- tom seems a long way down. The "new" Canadair will arise free and unfettered from the ashes of its previous incarnation like the fabl- ed phoenix, with a further $310 million in its bank ac- count even before the restructuring, scheduled to be made official by month's end. During the St. Laurent era, cabinet minister C,D. Howe's "What's a million?" contribution to the historic Trans -Canada Pipeline debate in the House of Com- *CNA mons was quoted repeatedly, and with devastating ef- fect, by a fire and brimstone orator from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The following year John G. Diefen- baker,by now leader of the Conservative Party, used the pipeline to bludgeon the Liberals out of office and onto the opposition benches.. The inflation psychology of the past decade seems to have affected the present government, which treats a billion or so dollars with the same airy insouciance as its predecessor did with an amount one thousand times smaller. The sum of one billion dollars is so large it bog- .gles and befuddles the average human brain. Think of it this way. If you had begun a spending spree on the day the Western world has set as the date of Christ's birth, 1 A.D., and spent $1,000 every day, rain or shine, Sundays and holidays, day by day,. week by week, month by month, year by year, century by century, by March 1984 you would not yet have spent a billion dollars. You would still have more than 275 million to fritter away. And all that figuring doesn't include one cent of simple or compound interest. Let's hope the revamped Canadair will be an eagle, not an albatross. If this bird doesn't fly and has to be bailed out again, guess who will pay for the plat- tinum parachute. Let's spend at home Perhaps, just perhaps, we are our own worst enemies. How else to describe Canadians' penchant for visiting other nations, while tourism operators and their employees in our own country are facing such dif- ficult times? It's a paradox, but the facts are relatively simple. Last year, Canadians took more than five billion of their dollars out,of the country to travel and sup- port tourism operators in other nations. What's more, about $3.2 billion of the total bill was spent in the United Stats. Naturally, there are some good reasons for the spending. The winter weather in Florida, Arizona and California, for example, is certainly warmer than it is in St. John's, Chicoutimi, Thunder Bay and Cold Lake. But that's a cross we have to bear, even condon- ing the sun -seekers who drift south to recharge their batteries. Nevertheless,we're now entering the sunny season when Canadians can get the ready-made warmth in their own country. So, there's little reason for them to take their money south of the border. Still, many per- sist in making the trek. There are good reasons why they should change their ways. Canada's campgrounds, trailer parks, cabins, lodges, motels, hotels and tourist facilities, for in- stance, are at least the equal of those in the U.S., and travellers don't have to worry about losing money on currency exchange rates. (Don't, forget, the exchange rate is more than 20 percent, and that ca h is lost money. ) Then there are the funny little items that people tend to forget when they add up the cost of a trip. We sometimes don't compute, for example, that the use of Canadian roads is generally free, while travel' on those south of the border costs nickles, dimes or dollars. But there is more than out-of-pocket costs involv- ed in the choice between vacationing in Canada or the U.S. As it stands, it is a crucial matter of jobs, and in which country they will be available. With 1.6 million or niore of us unemployed, Cana- dians badly need the jobs that can be provided if we vacation in our own country. In addition, they are the kinds of jobs that really count. Many of them are filled by students, who may not be able to attend sessions in the fall if they don't earn some cash. Others belong to the young unemployed, who haven't had the opportunity to show their skills, even on a short-term basis. So perhaps Canadians should have second thoughts about relaxing for a week or two at a U.S., rather than a Canadian, resort this summer. By spending the cash in Canada, you won't have to feel guilty about depriving Canadians of jobs. What's more, your spouse or children might ac- tually appreciate seeing a greater part of their own country. It's a point worth considering. All thumbs, but not green I refuse to yield to the blandishments of the spring seed catalogues, whose technicolour pictures contrast so enticing- ly with the dirty snowscape outside. When it comes to growing things I'm all thumbs. And they aren't green. The windowsills in our house resemble grotesque wards for the terminally ill. Pot after pot show the ravages of root rot, the futility of fertilizer, or the nadir of neglect. A prayer plant my husband gave me a year ago does not, like others of its genus, only close its foliage piously at sunset. Its leaves are usually clasped in supplication, and I have a sneaking suspicion the ungrateful wretch is praying for a new owner. My Green Ice African violet, once my prized possession, is no longer in bloom- ing health. I have cut out and given away numerous offspring, and I think my dear mother plant has finally had one Caesarean too many. The last time I visited an old friend, I noted the absence of a Martha Washington geranium I had started for her. She told me she had discovered that Martha was infested with mites. When she failed to respond' to a kill -or -cure treatment, out she went. What an ignoble fate for a member of such an aristocratic family! (1 didn't tell my friend that my Marthas too, mere slips o; girls, had suc- cumbed to some vague, undiagnosed il- lness resembling the ague or the vapours. I didn't have any more either. ) Outdoor gardening is the same - plow- ing, cultivating, planting, fertilizing, watering, weeding and hoeing - and for spears it6eb long grass last spring. Later, delicate green ferns marked the location. Indelibly and inedibly. We pull our potatoes out of the ground like grotesque necklaces; the twitch grass roots string the Sebagos together like beads. Our baby carrots never grow up, the lettuce bolts, onions bunch, beets bleed and cabbages lose their heads. Despite my warning that vine crops would cross-pollinate if planted too close, Don put all members of the cucurbilaceae family in one cozy little corner. We harvested a bountiful crop of squapumps and cuculoupes. Perserving, freezing, canning and pickling this cornucopia of abundance is another story. I have shed many a tear in- to a sinkfull of onions. or mourned a slice of thumb which had inadvertently added an unplanned piquancy to a jar of peaches. I can picture George Gershwin cosily cocooned in his New York penthouse, dreamily writing in elegant copperplate, "Summertime, and the Jivin' is easy."' What a dreamer! Down here on earth, one has to work like a slave all summer in order to eat like a king all winter. However, our troubles may soon be over. Recently we have heard rumours that we will be eligible for a special grant if we promise not to put a single, solitary seed into the earth this year. 4 R .:mL yz•ii c `•i� Reynolds' Rap by Yvonne Reynolds what? Bigger and better weeds. If redroot pigweed were a saleable com- modity, the Reynolds family would now • be millionaires. Only the peas were happy in our garden last year. Finding themselves with no visible means of support, they curled their little tendrils around the nearest goldenrod or chickory and never looked back. Or down. We neglected to stake the tomatoes. The unfettered plants sprawled like un - corseted old ladies, relaxed and compla- cent, quite unconcerned that most of their fruit was on the ground and easy prey for slugs, grubs, sap bugs and blossom end rot. I couldn't even find the asparagus i "1 haven't regretted one day of Trudeau's leadership —1 think it was a Thursday in March of 1976!" Born 30 years too soon Sometimes I am con- vinced I was born 30 years too soon. When I see the wonderful opportunities for travel young people have today, I turn pea- green with envy. When you and I were young, most of us didn't get much farther than the next town. A minority visited the citycasiongl- y,and it wastde'red 1 c a ggcc dns big deal. And a shal whale of a lot of people never did get to see a big city in their entire lives. And were no worse off for it, of course. Man, how that' has changed. Nowadays, young people go galloping off to the four corners of the earth with no more thought about it than we'd have given to a weekend in the city. They're so blase abott it that it's sickening to an old guy like me, who has never had the time or money or freedom to do it. In my day, during the Depression, the only peo- ple who could afford to travel were the hoboes. They could afford it because they didn't have any money. They rode free on the tops and inside the box -cars of freight trains. And they didn't have any responsibilities except the next meal and a place to sleep. Looking back, I was one of the Lucky ones. Most of my generation of youth was forced by cir- cumstances to stay home, get any job available, and hang on to it like grim death, never venturing forth on the highroads of life. I was the envy of my classmates, when, at 17, I nabbed a job on the upper lake boats, and could come home bragging of having been to such bizarre, exotic places as Duluth, Sault Ste. Marie. Detroit, the Lakehead. Today's youngsters would sneer at such bourgeois travels. They exchange anecdotes about Morocco and Moscow, Athens and Port-au- Prince, Delhi and Dubrov- nik.Fair nauseates me, it does. By the time he was 22, my own son had lived on Sugar and Spice Dispensed By Smiley both coasts of Canada, been to Mexico, New Orleans, Texas, Israel, Ireland, and a hundred other places that are just names in an atlas to me. He's been to Paraguay, South American, and has visited Argentina and Bolivia. He speaks four languages. I speak one, not too well. My nephews have seen more countries than Chris Columbus or Sir Francis Drake. One's an airline pilot, and knows Europe, North America and the West Indies the way I know my way to school. Another has worked in the Canadian north, Quebec, the Congo, Jamaica, and Costa Rica. My nieces are just as peripatetic. They've been to the West Coast, France, England, Russia. A four- day trip to New York, for them, is scarcely worth mentioning. Migawd, I'd have given my left eyeballto see New York when I was their age! I thought it was pretty earth shaking the first time I saw Toronto. Toronto, ye - e -c -ch! Thousands of university students annually take a year off, borrow some money, stuff a packsack and head out for a year of bumming around Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, India. Rotten kids! In the last decade, the travel bug has spilled over into the high schools. •h Some of them are beginn- ing to sound like agencies. with frequent an- nouncements of the P.A. system: "Will the group going to Rome in the winter break please assemble in Room 202 at 3:30 for a lesson in tying your toga." "All those taking the Venezuela trip are re- quested to see Mr. Vaga- bond in room 727 at 3:15 today." "Those who are involv- ed in the spring break trip to the Canary Islands should have their passports by March lst." "An urgent meeting will be held today for those who plan to take the London -Paris trip during spring break. All seats are now filled. If enough are interested, we'll hire another plane." It fairly makes your head swim, especially when your own idea of a trip south is 100 miles to the city for a weekend, a trip west means a visit to great-grandad, and a trip east means you're going to a funeral or a wedding among the relatives. Next thing you know, this travel binge will bulge over into the elementary schools, and great 747 -loads of little shavers from Grade Eight will be descending on the un- suspectng residents of Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro. Lord help them. The residents, not the kids. Perhaps this sounds like sour grapes. Well, it is. As Shaw said: "The trouble with youth is that it is wasted on the young." And as Smiley says: "The trouble with travel is that it is wasted on kids who don't know a Grecian urn from an Italian pizza." Oh, it's not that I haven't travelled. I've been to great Britain. And spent two years stagger- ing around in the blackout or wading through the tor- rential rains of bonnie Scotland. I've been to France. Slept five weeks in a tent in an orchard in Normandy. Been to Belgium. Antwerp; buzz - bombs. Know Holland well. Spent two weeks locked in box -car in a railway siding at Utrecht. Am intimately acquainted with Germany. Was bombed in Braunsweig • and Leipzig, and spent a delightful six months in salubrious Pomerania, as a guest of the Third Reich. Oh, I've been around all right. But somehow it wasn't quite the same. Rattling through Deutschland on a train with a to -day stubble of beard on your chin and a jag -end of sour black bread stuffed into your battledress blouse is not quite similar to climbing aboard a• 747 with your tote -bag and waiting for the stewardess to bring your fist meal. • Would I trade? Not on your life. A lot of learning The educational system must be doing a great job these days. The kids out there are obviously so much more intelligent than my generation ever dreamed of being. Why just the other day I was going through town and splashed a young fellow. He was able to tell me in such explicit •language just exactly where I should be going and how I should go about it. I tell you, that young man should be a teacher or a newspaper columnist with ability like that to ex- press himself. And it's amazing how me a thing or two about like that. Obviously a man much the youngsters know how to get away from the of much experience. about things like driving. corners faster and how to Perspectives By Syd Fletcher I had a young fellow with me and he said that I should really practice my starting up technique, that if I drove around with him a little that he could show Tam pass cars a little more ef- ficiently. I listened carefully because. I had seen how good he was at getting cars out of ditches and other awkward places And as far as hair. styles and clothes, just ask any youngster about the right things to wear and they'll be sure to tell you exactly what is proper. Better yet, try to tell them what you think is right and you'll be sure to get set straight on correct procedures these days. Oh I tell you these kids sure know a lot. Maybe Mark Twain had a point though when he said, "I can't believe how much my father learned in between my twentieth and twenty-first birthdays."