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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1984-03-28, Page 4•77" 1 Pogo 4 t . ,..-R, Times-Adyocat•, March 28, 1984 Ames INN dvocate Times Established 1873 Serving South Huron, North Middlesex Advocate' Established 1881 & North Lambton Since 1873 Amalgamated 1924 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 Mali 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' INETEtz- What in God's name? Many devilish acts are committed in the name of God. The Ayatollah Khomeini, a very religious man, is accused of sending children onto battlefields as human mine detectors, and Iranian soldiers barely into their teens are now awaiting an uncertain fate in Ira - qui prisoner -of -war camps. TheIranians in turn accuse the traquis of resorting to poison gas. Yet both sides in the Iraqui-Iranian war use Allah as their rallying cry. The IRA plants a bomb in a busy London depart- ment store or shoots a father in front of his children, and all in the cause of uniting into one peaceable kingdom a country with a Catholic south and a predominantly Protestant north. Proponents of the present policy of apartheid in South Africa, (and the slave trade that once flourish- ed both in Europe and America), could cite chapter and verse to "prove" God favours such policies. Night after night, the medium of television brings the war in Lebanon into our living rooms, making the BtuE RIBBON AWARD 1980 contradictory term "Christian gunman" seem less and less outrageous with repetition. The cataclysmic end result of anti-Semitism was revealed at the end of World War II, when a horrified world found out that a nation professing to believe in God who sent His Sop to earth as a Jew had found a final solution for six million men, women and children belonging to that same race. These events%re not peculiar to our century. Two hundred years ago English satirist Jonathon Swift noted that we have just enough religion to make us bad, but not enough to make us Iove one another. Man's acts of inhumanity to his fellow man, excus- ed by perpetrators invoking God's name, run like a dir- ty thread through the tapestry of history. Holy wars, pogroms, crusades, inquisitions, burnings at the stake, annihilation of entire cultures, and other appalling acts have all been carried out under the banner of religion. Those who commit deeds that violate all godly prin- ciples and claim God's seal of approval on their actions can truly be said to be taking God's name in vain. Voice grows feeble It will not happen this year and perhaps not for several years to come, but sooner or later we who live in the rural counties of midwestern Ontario face the prospect of having our voice in provincial affairs, already small, grow still more feeble. The Ontario Electoral Boundaries Commission has recently tabled a proposal for riding redistribution which, if accepted, would see this area lose a seat in an expended Ontario Legislature. As part of its electoral redistribution the corrimis- sion proposes replacing the provincial ridings of Huron - Bruce, Huron -Middlesex, Grey -Bruce and Grey with ridings of Bruce, Huron and Grey, doing away with one seat from this area while expanding the Legislature as a whole by five seats to 130. This is, or course, nothing more than a continua- tion of the trend which started back about 1925 with a shift in the balance of population - and hence in elec- toral representation - to the rapidly -growing cities and away from the countryside. In 1925 the Counties of Bruce, Grey, Huron, Lambton, Middlesex and Perth were represented by 16 seats in a 11 -seat Legislature, making up nearly 15 percent of the total. By 1975 revisions of the riding boundaries had reduced these counties to seven seats in a 125 -seat assembly, less than six percent, while if the latest pro- posal is enacted they will drop to six seats in a 130 -seat assembly. It can be argued that is democracy. Why, after all, if our share of the total population is shrinking, should we expect a disproportionate representation in govern- ment? And yet there are some very good arguments in favor of at least retaining the status quo. For a start, the existing ridings already fall within the population guidelines for southern Ontario of 60,000 people, give or take 15 percent. The local riding of Huron -Bruce, for example, now has about 57,000 peo- ple while the proposed riding of Huron would have about 64,000, Bruce would have 60,000 and Grey a whop- ping 74,000, bigger than all but the largest city ridings. There also is an argument to be ' madam t rural ridings contain a much greater diversity oMterests and problems than most urban ridings and the distances involved make it difficult for an MPP to pro- vide an even level of service to all his constituents. It is a far cry from a city where a member may repre- sent 70,000 people, all living within a 15 -minute bus ride of one another. This does not necessarily mean giving rural ridings the same considerations which apply in Nor- thern Ontario, where, because of low population den- 'sity and immense distances, ridings may have popula- tions as low as 31,000. However it should mean allow- ing rural ridings to fall toward the lower end of the guidelines, not strictly requiring that they be on or above the target. The proposal of the boundaries commission pro- bably will not become law until sometime after the next election. In the meantime the commission will hold hearings to permit public reaction to its proposals. The meeting for Huron will be at Kitchener on April 16; the one for Bruce and Grey will be at Barrie on May 1. Anyone wishing to make a representation or objecjion is required to give written notice prior to the session. It is to be hoped individuals as well as municipal councils will protest this change in the strongest possi- ble terms. With the fight for dollars and services grow- ing tougher every year, we in rural Ontario can ill af- ford to be forgotten. Wingham Advance Times Spring without cleaning I would like spring a whole lot better if it wasn't associated with spring cleaning. After you have spent a week tearing the house apart - sorting, discarding, sweep- ing, scrubbing, washing, polishing - everything looks the way it's supposed to look all the time. You work your fingers to the bone and what do you get? Bony fingers! I have postmed my cleaning forthe past ten years, hoping some genius would invent a stable cleaner suitable for a house. A push on the button and out would go the dust under the bedstthe cobwebs in the corners, the cluster flies on the win- dow sills, and the mud tracked in by the dog. My house always resembles a disaster area. You can not eat off my floors. Not unless you want to contract some loathsome disease. You can't see out my windows; every day looks foggy. Lookingtinder chairs and sofas is strict- ly forbidden. If you lose something down behind the chesterfield cushion, hands off. I'll retrieve it when no eyes are watching, and mail it back to you. Good Housekeeping magazine is not allowed into my home; it would not fit in with my decor. Over the years I've developed, some tricks. They don't improve my housekeep- ing, just conceal my deficiencies. I keep the vacuum cleaner permanently and pro- minently in the diningroom. Can I help it if visitors assume they have interrupted Reynolds' Rap by Yvonne Reynolds my cleaning? A dab of floor wax behind one ear and a spot of furniture polish behind the other at least makes me smell busy. And no light fixture has anything stronger than a 25 -watt bulb. If the chaos is completely out of hand, I issue dark glasses at the door. In desperation I sat down recently and wrote out invitations to an exclusive stag party, assuring each guest his presence was vital to the success of the event. The first on the scene was Mr. Muscle. After an effusive greeting, I escorted my guest to the kitchen, lowered the oven door, and. invited him to make himself comfortable. Would you believe he refused to even get in, let alone spend the night? The last I saw of him, he was setting new speed records as he raced down the driveway. The next to appear on the scene was Mr. Clean, golden earring gleaming as bright- ly as his polished pate. He apologized for being late; he had never been at my place before, and lost his way. He took one look around and started to laugh. After he had recovered, he inferred I had called the wrong man - Hercules diverted two rivers to clean out the Augean stables, and I should obviously have issued my invita- tion to the Ausable-Bayfield Conservation Authority, with a back-up request to the Thames River Implementation Committee. Mr. Clean turned around and headed for the door, humming a little tune that I would swear sounded like "Cry me a river". The last guest, with white suit and mat- ching hair, was none other than the man from Glad. He offerd to pack house and contents into one of his infinitely expan- dable green bags and cart everything away. I asked for time to think about it. I am prepared to begin housecleaning. I have already acquired- a strong pit- chfork, a sturdy stable broom and two Venus fly trap plants. A trip in the old Chev Driving down the highway last Sunday night, I found myself cur- sing with a fine, taut vehemence that sounded vaguely familiar. The object of my affec-, tion was an approaching driver who refused to dim his lights, and I nearly went into the ditch in a combination of blindness and rage. When I cooled down I tried to remember where I'd heard those particular phrases before, in just that tone. Then I knew - my Dad had used them, in identical tones and an identical situation, about 55 years before. Except that he HAD gone in the ditch. I guess my father, and I say it with pride, was the worst driver that ever came over a hill right smack in the centre of the road. He wasn't reckless, careless or a showoff. He was just an incredibly bad driver. Of course he was about 40 when he bought his first car. I believe it was a 1923 Chev. He was the steadiest man alive, but every so often he'd do -something on the spur of the moment. That's the way he got the car. Plunked down the cash, took a driving lesson, which consisted of twice around the block, and drove it home. He tore in the gate at full bore, completely forgot how to stop, and went right through the back of the barn.. I'll never forget the an- nual.trip to the cottage in the "Old Chev" as it is still fondly known in the fami- ly. It was about 85 miles, and an all -day journey in those days. My Dad would be up bright and earlyand would lash all the heavy luggage to the bumpers, roof and runningboards. As soon as breakfast was over, he'd go out, walk around the Old Chev, give the tires a kick and climb in. There he'd sit and honk Sugar and Spice Dispensed By Smiley the horn angrily, while my mother ran around the house like a demented per- son, grabbing up babies, lunches, jars of preserves and all manner of things. Then, with us kids piled in the back, on top of the bedding, we were off, with a great grinding of gears and lurching until we got on the open road. After ten miles or so, my mother would be almost relaxed, when Dad hadn't hit any loose gravel and had managed to avoid several cars coming from the op- posite direction. But then we'd come to a detour. In those days, the detours weren't the simple. swing -outs we have now, on a highway construction job. They were sheer tests of n rve and skill, with wohbley wooden bridges, cliffs of crushed rock, holes you could lose a hippo in and murderous bits of bog. The next five minutes were sheer terror. We kids clutched each other in the back seat, ali eyes and white as paper... My mother clasped the baby close to her breast, drop- ped her- head and moved her lips rapidly. My Dad glared ferociously at the hazards, ground his teeth and pressed through, hit- ting the holes with a bone - jarring drop, skidding - perilously near the edge of a minor precipice, and confounding the blasted idiots who had created the detour. Limp and sweating, we were always glad of the flat tire that inevitably followed the detour. We'd pile out, hop the fence and dash about like animals let out of a cage. My mother would head thankfully for the shade of a tree and change the babe's diaper, while Dad changed the tire, with ap- propriate incantations. Next major panic was getting the Old Chev onto the ferry. We had to cross the Ottawa River, and it was a great thrill- each year. But watching Dad trying to get that car onto the ferry was enough to mark a child for life. Year after year, when he saw my father drive up, the ferry captain would roll his eyes and run for help. He'd enlist the engineer, the wheelsman, and every innocent by- stander, warn them, and arm them all with large chocks for throwing before and behind the wheels. Eventually, Dad would get the Old Chev wedged across the ferry so that nobody else could get on or off. The skipper would throw up his arms, shrug eloquently to the rest of the waiting- cars and cast off. Dad would sit trium- phantly in the car, ready to scare everybody out of another year's growth when we got to the other side of the river. There was only one other obstacle that really put us through the wringer, and that was The Big Hill, a few miles before we reached the lake. We'd go down a long, steep hill and right back up another one, longer and steeper. Each year we prayed we'd make it. Each year we all threw body English into the halting climb. And each year, Dad would forget to change into low soon enough, and stall about 20 feet from the top. Then there was the dreaded ordeal of backing down for another run, and the final ignominy of going and fet- ching the farmer with his team, after three futile and fearful attempts. Nowadays, when I see a movie about teenage hot- rod drivers, playing "chicken" and taking sup- posedly awe-inspiring chances, I just sneer. One trip to the cottage in the Old Chev with my Dad, and those punks would never have the nerve to climb into an automobile again. Score one for young generation "The young people of to- day are full of rudeness and lack respect for their elders..." • The young fellow in line in front of me in the little variety store asked for a can of Coke and one of lemonade. The woman slammed them down and snapped, "Ninety-six cents!" "Could I have another Coke please," he said politely. "This one is dirty". She eyed him up and down, obviously notinis dirty coveralls, the long hair and little beard and pushed the cans at him. front of him again. By this "There's nothing wrong time the people in the line Perspectives with that one." "But I have to put my mouth on the can," still respectfully. Grabbing a kleenex she wiped the can vigorously and slammed it down in By Syd Fletcher h xs> beh,nd were watching the little play with interest. "I don't believe I wanta Coke," the young fellow said. "Do you mind if I change this can for a Pep- si?" It was plain that he was not going to lose his temper nor was he going to leave his spot without his pop and with a clean can at that. The woman, realizing she was beaten, got another can down. The young man thanked her politely and left the store. The man in line behind me muttered, "Score one for the - younger generation". I heartily agreed. And the line at the beginning of the column? It was written by Arista- tle, over two thousand years ago.