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Clinton News-Record, 1979-03-08, Page 4.PAGE 4 --CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, THURSDAY, MARCH 8 , 1979 The Clinton News.itecord 1s published each. Thursday et P.O. Bon i9. Clinton. Ontario, Cathode, NOM iLO, Member. Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association G Is registered as second class mall by the post office under the, permit number 1117. The News -Record Incorporated In 1924 the Mural' News -Record, founded in 111111; and The r Clinton New Era. founded In 11143. Total press run 3.3.11. iC A itember Canadian Community Newspaper Association Display advertising rates available on request. Ask for Rate Card No. 9 effective Oct. 1. 1978. General Manager • J. Howard Aitken Editor - James 1. Fitzgerald Advertising Director - Gary L. Hoist News editor - Shelley McPhee Office Manager - Margaret Gibb Circulation - Freda McLeod Subscription Rate: Cando -'14.00 per year Sr. citizen -'12 per year U.S.A. i foreign .'31 per year Let's try it first There has.been a great deal of effort put up lately by the hospital boards of Goderich and Wingham to try and stir up interest in the recent government order that all hospitals in the province must cut back expenses, and hence beds. In fact, both Wingham and Goderich are circulating petitions, some of them here in Clinton, hoping to get enough signatures to force the government to back down. But Wingham and Goderich are merely indulging in empire building, and complaining about extra beds that cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars a day to maintain, is senseless. Clinton hospital administrator Doug Coventry probably said it best of alt recently, when he told the hospital board and the press, that all the hospitals.s`hould try and live within the restraints first, and if that doesn't work, then start squawking. There is little chance that anyone will die, as claimed by Huron Medical Officer of Health Dr. Brian Lynch, as a result of a. few closed hospital bods, and to push the panic button now before we have tried to live within the new guidelines, is like the proverbial boy calling wolf so many times, that no one hears anymore. Proceed cautiously Although the subject certainly needs looking into, Huron County Council should proceed with extra caution on any move to reduce the number of county councillors by eliminating the deputy -reeves. The move would reduce the county council to 26 from 45, which granted wouldmake the council less cumbersome _and more streamlined, but would it really make it more efficient? Most members of county council are working men and women, who have a job back home, duties in their own municipalities, as well as their county council position; all in all a very full life. To cut county council by nearly half would double the workload on those remaining, and either fewer people would seek county council positions in the future, or the county would have to hire another dozen expensive bureaucrats to do the same job now carried out 'by volunteers, who receive only a small stipend. At present, municipalities with 1,000 or more voters are allowed both a reeve and a deputy -reeve, and with several municipalities recently qualifying for a deputy - reeve, some on county council want the minimum raised to 2,500 voters, leaving Goderich, Exeter and Stephen Township with deputy - reeves. We suggest that a compromise of 1,500 voters Would effectively limit the growth of county council without shrinking it to a size where workloads would discourage good men ,from running. remembering our past 5 YEARS AGO February 28, 1974 While rumors have been rampant in Huron County since the provincial by- election 'in 1973, last Friday was the first time there was any official indication that a nuclear power station is planned by Ontario Hydro for this area. At the county council meeting in Goderich, however, a hefty delegation of Ontario Hydro representatives spilled the beans and confirmed what the public and press has been surmising fo ,months. Clinton Public Hospital will have a new administrator. He is Douglas S. Coventry of Nipigon, Ontario and he will replace Orville Engelstad, who is stepping down from the post after four years. Mr. Coventry was the administrator at the Nipigon Hospital for the past three years. Central Huron Secondary School will be competing in the Huron -Perth District Collegiate Drama Festival to be held in Exeter on Friday, March 1. The play they will present will be, Sorry Wrong Number. 10 YEARS AGO February 27, 1969 Huron MP Robert McKinley disclosed last week that aeronautical and armament of- ficer training, conducted at CFB Clinton since the base at Centralia closed in 1966, will move to CFB Borden, this summer, but may be replaced by training groups from other bases. Charles S. MacNaughton, provincial treasurer and minister of economics promised that if CFB Clinton were to close like the one at Centralia, the government "would again address itself to a solution," but hopes that a harmonious arrangement with the federal government could be arranged "the next time" because the province "can'tgo on investing in deac- tivated air bases." The town of Clinton had adopted "The Home of Radar in Canada" .as its official motto and intends to drop use of the former slogan "Hunting Ground of the Hurons." Names and addresses of buyers are not "Next time find out if your barber is a Conservative before you begin badmouthing Joe Clark." Compelled to look Isn't it comical the way some people become compulsive collectors? They save everything from pieces of string, yarn and ribbon to shoe laces with frayed ends. They hoard foil, cardboard, used envelopes and scraps of paper. They keep leftover wrapping paper even though the pieces are too small to cover more than a toothpick, and they retrieve used wrapping paper even though it's too crumpled to wrap another gift. They keep broken flower pots that could be used in a "pinch" .and save cracked saucers to put under them. ;They hang on ' to a pepper shaker although its matching salt 'shaker disappeared years ago. Even teapotA without spouts or lids are worth saving., The compulsive savers keep bent nails thinking they may be able to straighten them. They collect different sized screw nails. When they need a screw, they have a wide selection to rummage through, but, nine times out of ten, none of them fit the hole. These chronic hoarders firmly believe someday they will find a purpose for the keepsakes and to throw them, away would be wasteful. If the need arises, the trick is to remember where they stashed them. by Blaine townshend I did not consider myself a com- pulsive saver, until the day I walked into my storeroom and was buried under an avalanche of boxes - shoe boxes, dress boxes, shirt boxes, jewelry boxes, chocolate boxes, cup and saucer boxes, large boxes, small boxes and odd -shaped boxes for that hard -to -wrap present I'm bound to buy someday. I store the boxes from one Christmas to another because everyone needs boxes at Christmas. When I'm shop- ping, though, I inevitably ask, "Could I have that in a box, please?" Nevertheless I think it's practical to save boxes, and I weeded out only a few. A few days later I opened my tea towel drawer. With each towel, I pulled out a handful of elastic bands,%and by the time I reached the bottom of the drawer, I had a mound of bands on the 'cupboard. They were wide strong elastic bands, too good tothrow away. For want of a better place to put them, I threw them back in the drawer. Last weekend I visited my parents' home', and Mom led me to a closet that was half filled with old clothes of mine. All were out of style, but over the years I reasoned that, if I saved them long enough, maybe they'd come back into fashion. Most of them fell into the category of "good enough to wear around home." I bet I have the largest wardrobe in town to wear around home, Mom's message was clear. Either take the cast-offs to my own place or throw them. out. But how can I discard the dress I wore at my sister's wed- ding, or my first high -heeled shoes, or the only hat I ever owned and wore only once? Mom wasn't finished. She showed me a large cardboard box overflowing with scraps of material from my clothes - clothes that hit the rag bag years ago; clothes I forgot I had; and clothes, now 'so faded, that to patch them with the bright scraps would only add insult to injury, Mom didn't seem enthusiastic about making an old-fashioned patchwork quilt. The pieces had to go, at least --the smaller ones. Cardboard boxes, elastic bands and scraps of cloth are practical things to save, in my opinion, and clothes from special occasions are sentimental keepsakes. I , thought my hoarding habits were sensible ones, but today my penran out of ink. A pen holder near my desk contained eight pens. None of them worked; most weren't even the refillable kind. Why did I save them? Probably for the same reason I collected the four pencils that were too short to sharpen and had no trace of rubber left on the end. Frying pan to fire When I leaped from the swamp of editing a weekly newspaper into the quagmire of teaching in a secondary a look through the news -record files required on new, simplified purchase order slips put into use by Brewers Retail here and across the province, but customers at the Clinton store this week have been hard to convince and many sign their names somewhere on the forms anyway. Dean Aldwinkle, well-known Varna area farmer and hunter bagged two porcupines last weekend in the forest pine woods owned by Stewart Middleton. 25 YEARS AGO March 4, 1954 Termed by some, "most opportune", fire last ,Friday evening consumed most of the contents of the 98 -year-old Huron County Court House in Goderich. The Goderich Fire Brigade was assisted by the Clinton Fire Brigade and by pouring literally tons of water into the burning building, they were able to save the sheriff's, the engineer's, crown attorney's and the clerk's office from total destryction and by playing streams of water in the seven brick and steel vaults, which contained invaluable papers, assisted in saving their contents. Along with Clinton Chief Grant Rath other Clinton men who helped fight the blaze were Ken Cooke, Royce Fremlin, Frank M. McEwan, Dennis Bisback, Hector Kingswell, Joseph Murphy, George Hanley • and Tom Twyford. The rest of the fire brigade remained in Clinton as a safeguard in case of a second alarm being turned in. The council of the town of Clinton is prepared to offer any one of three sites to the County of Huron for the erection of a County Court House here at Clinton. A resolution to this effect is being circulated to each of the municipalities in the county. 50 YEARS AGO February 28, 1929 Miss Winnifred Jervis is engaged at the Vogue millinery for the sp^ing season. Every day, 10,000 women buy a bottle of Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, They know that there is no better remedy for their troublesome ailments with their ac• companying nervousness, backache, headache, "'blue" spells and rundown condition. 75 YEARS AGO March 3,1904 Our new serial, "My Lady Peggy Goes To Town," begins in this issue. It is rather of a different style from the last, but will prove not less interesting. The heroine keekg'the reader guessing all the wav through. Don't miss'the opening chapters. Mr. William Moser of Blyth spent Monday and Tuesday in town, somewhat impatiently it must be confessed, but that was quite excusable the circumstances considered. When a young man, the day and hour of whose wedding is set, finds, himself caught in a snow blockade and unable to reach his destination in time he will - well become at least as impatierlt as Mr. Moser was. The trustees of the Summerhill school have given Mr. S. S. Cooper the contract of building a new school on con. 16, Goderich Township. Mr. Cooper informs the News - Record that he will commence operations as soon as the spring opens. 100 YEARS AGO March 6, 1879 Londesboro has a school population of about 70 .and is desirous of having school accommodation to itself, which it will likely get in a short time. It would be well if some of the ratepayers of SS No. 8, Hullett, who are more solicitous that their children should be educated than smoked, would see to it that the smoke from the stove in their school )louse would go out the chimney and not out the doors and windows, and if anyone wishes to have their children smoked they can smoke them at home, If anyone imagined they were fitting from the bakers light weight bread, they can rest assured that such is not the case, as the Inspector paid all the bakeries an unex- pected visit a few days since and found that all their make was full weight. Gradually the buildings connected with the early history of Clinton are giving way, to be replaced by more suitable structures. Grant's blacksmith shop, on Albert Street is being pulled down and a good house is to be erected on the site thereof. school, I didn't realize it was frying - pan to fire. Like most people, I had a stereotyped idea of a school teacher. Someone who had quit work while I had still two hours, plus overtime or night work, to go. Someone who was fairly bright, rather shabby, not well paid but never really poor, looking forward to a steady pension after a mere 35 years of work. Someone who always had a modest home and a second-hand car, the required two or three children, a dowdy and modest wife, and a simple, rather sedentary profession that would enable him to live and collect his pension until he was 90. - But most of all, someone who had a week's holiday at Christmas, another in March and two whole months off in the summer. I am forced to admit, as well, that I rather looked forward to having a touch of authority. I had none over my kids, because I loved them too much. I had none over my wife, because -- well any of you married men know. True, I had been an officer in the RCAF, which suggested authority. But fighter pit is had no authority. An army, lieutenant could scream and curse at his men and degrade them. And himself. If we tried that with some ground -crew chap, he'd merely give us the finger. We were merely the curious young chaps who flew the things. They were the people who made the things fly. Only once did I have a chance to be a leader of- men, and thus throw my weight around. It was after I'd been shot down and captured. I wound up with about 40 Canadian soldiers. Shortly afterwards, their only two officers, who cursed and screamed and treated them like peasants, escaped. t was the only officer left. I was pretty keen to show that I was officer material and leadership calibre. I talked about morale, and trying to escape. The only comment sas made by a grizzled sergeant, who id flatly, "Screw that!" The others Merely laughed. So I found out that My authority consisted of cutting loaves of black German bread into equal aortions of six, with a dull knife, under the guillotine eyes of 38 of the rude a and licentious soldiery. And the only reason I had the job was that they didn't trust each other. So much for authority. But I knew it would be different as a school teacher. ,I would be firm, but just, a wise and benevolent father figure, but one who would brook no challenge to his decisions. Yes, a regular Mr. Chips, accepting confidences, doling out gentle but profound advice, having tea with my students, my wife hovering in the background, enjoying the .way I twitted the youngsters. , What a pipe dream! I "went into" education, as it is nefariously known, just about the time of the big baby boom at the end of the '50s. New schools were being built, and looked like, a chain of new shoe factories. Anybody of any sex, and I mean any, °that was warm and breathing and had anything approaching a university degree, was being dragged off the streets and stood up in front of 30 or 35 kids who were just getting into drugs and permissiveness. Every third student was a barrack -room lawyer. Hair became the thing for males. Jeans so tight a touch -would have blown them up, and T-shirts with messages so explicit a marine would have blushed, became the thing for females. Language that would curl a sailor's hair became the thing for both. And not only among the students. Teachers ranged from fitness freaks to alcoholics anonymous, from pedants to pederasts. They started appearingln long hair and desert boots, in gasp - revealing cleavages and miniskirts and sadistic high boots and Afro wigs. Any day now I expect to see a lady teacher, if that has not become a mere euphemism, carrying a leather quirt. (This is not a type of purse). But I tried. I did try. I walked through the halls exuding false con- fidence, conservatism, and daring, in my modest suit, my white shirt! my dark tie, my black shoes, and my dedicated expression. It didn't work. Oh, a few studetyts torn to pegel2 Not a joke Dear Editor: In reply to "Concerned" Uncle: unless I am badly mistaken his letter (March 1, 1979 News Record) does not suggest much concern of anything. To me it seems notb,,.jng but a big joke. He must be one of those educated people that. do like politicians do - have a long speech about little and leave us "ordinary" people wondering what it was all about. He is either trying to make me out as a fool, or he is so blind, he does not see things in a proper perspective. I am a concerned mother who wants this book just taken out of the school, so that our kids do not have to read it. Since we are responsible for our children's behaviour until they are 18, we should also have the privilege to protect them from bad influences. Just as a teacher is not teaching them to make a bomb and would not discuss it with them, so should these things not be discussed in the school. Would "Concerned Uncle" permit his "nieces and nephews" to walk the railing of a high bridge, or walk the freeway on a busy day? I think not, and that is only danger to the body. Or would he permit them to read "Playboy" in high school for literary reasons? I might not know English that well, as I have never learned it except to speak, but it is enough to help me through life and raise our kids, but perhaps not enough to be a match for his reply. At least I am honest and really concerned and don't treat my children's education as a big joke. Furthermore, I don't hide my name under a blanket - "Your colour is showing through" - Uncle. Sincerely, Corrie Brand, RR 3, Clinton. My guess is... Dear Editor: I think the dirty part of "The Diviners" is. about a wealthy veterinarian who is very religious. He tells his daugher that all she needs to know to conduct her life can be found in the Bible. She believes him and stays at home studying the Bible instead of going to school. One day she says to him. "Say, Dad, did you learn to be a veterinarian out of the Bible? I haven't, seen the subject mentioned. "SCARLET WOMAN!" he hollers, "Whore of Babylon! Do you doubt your father's right to tell you what to think?" And with that he kicks her out. She of course ,,has no.ducation and therefore canna .;get a job. She tries teaching Sunday School, but the pay isn't good enough so she turns to prostitution. With the money she earns as a prostitute, she goes to university and becomes a nuclear physicist and is, a great success. Her father dies a miserable death from rabies, having been very em- barrassingly bitten by a rabid member of a religious group called Diviners Canada, of which he was a member. My guess is that the dirty part of the book is about him getting the rabies. Sincerely, Jan Boccaccio, Varna Disgraceful book Dear Editor :- Having read some of the books that are being taught in our English Literature classes, I just wonder if the people of Huron County really know what is in these books. "The Diviners" has more than just a "dirty part" in it. There are numerous parts in this book that are sexually disgraceful, filthy, vulgar and ab- solutely disgusting, to say the least. If parts of this book cannot be printed in the pages of this newspaper, how can it be taught in our schools? "The Catcher in The Rye" and "Of Mice and Men" also leave something to be desired as they are both full of cursing, vulgar talk and continuously use God's name in vain. I think the time is long overdue that we as taxpayers and parents approach our school boards to have these books and others like them eliminated from our school' system. Of course, I realize that having read some of these books eliminates me from (Concerned Uncle's) proposed contest, but then again I think that "Having a little fun" about something as serious as this, leaves me wondering about "Concerned Uncle" especially why he didn't sign his name to his remarkable letter. yours truly, John Buruma, Clinton Not read it Dear Editor: I have not read The Diviners and therefore am qualified to enter your competition to guess what the dirty part in the book is about. I think the dirty part is about a fictitious chapter of Renaissance Canada where all the members bring in the latest passages of obscene writing they have found. They are reading them out loud to the meeting and the meeting is a mixed one - ladies and meh - and things get out of control, if you know what I mean. That's my guess. Okay? Yours truly Jeff Chauger ,• Goderieh • • • w 1