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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1979-04-05, Page 4PAGE 4 —CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, THURSDAY, APRIL 5 , 1979 A The Clinton News -Record Is published each Thursday at P.O. Box 39, Clinton. Ontario, Canada, NOM 11,0. Member. Ontario weekly Newspaper Association T" 1t Is registered as second class mall by the post office under the permit number 0017. The News -Record Incorporated in 1921 the Huron News -Record. founded In 1801. and The Clinton New Ira. Mounded In 11103. Total prow run 3.300- Me. .300. Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association Display advertising rates available on request. Ask for Rote Card No. 9 effective Oct. 1, 1970. General Manager - J. Howard Aitken Editor - James E. Fitzgerald Advertising Director - Gary 1.. Hoist News editor - Shelley McPhee Office Manager . Margaret Olbb Circulation . Freda McLeod Subscription Rate: Condo -'11.00 per year Sr. citizen -'12 per year U.S.A. & foreign . '30 per yoor Step backwards Huron County council, long known for being one of the most democratic governments, and most progressive rural county governments in Ontario, took a step backwards last week when they decided to trim their ranks from 45 members to 29 by eliminating nearly all the deputy - reeves, effective in 1981. Some people, including many county councillors, are hailing it as a step to more efficiency, and the streamlining of a cumbersome, and we admit, sometimes awk- ward size of county council. But the decision to eliminate the many helping hands will mean more work for those left, and ultimately, will spell the end of the volunteer reeve ,and deputy -reeve who holds down a full time job, as well as juggling his municipal and county duties. The readers write Dear Editor: Some 2,500,000 Canadian families will be eligible to receive a Child Tax Credit this year. Many Canadians, however, may wonder if they are entitled to these new tax ,advantages and how to apply for them. As the purpose of the new Child Tax Credit is to help Canadian families with low or middle incomes meet the needs of their children, it is important that they know they are eligible for benefits and how to claim them. I am enclosing some explanatory booklets on the Child Tax Credit and the Family Allowances program. I trust they will be useful to you in informing the public and in ensuring that all families concerned obtain the amounts to which they are entitled and of which they are in need. ' Thank you for your co-operation. Yours truly, Pierre Couture, Director of Information. In a few years, the younger, progressive person just won't be able to afford the time to be on county council, and the job will be left to retired people with more time and money on their hands, or the job will be gradually turned over to the highly paid civil ser- vants, who will not only cost the taxpayers more, but won't be as accessible. This has already happened with federal and provincial govern- ments, who have lost touch with their people, so too is it happening to our county government. Next, the experts and politicians will berecommending the town and township councils be reduced to a mayor and a couple of councillors, or worse yet, bring in regional government, the ultimate of buf- foonery. Dear Editor: The Royal Canadian Air Force Association will be holding its national convention in London this year at the Holiday Inn from September 12 to 16 inclusive. It is being planned as a gala event as it will include commemoration ceremonies for The Battle of Britain on September 15. Len Lapeer, national manager of the RCAF Association in Ottawa will be in London on Saturday, March 31 for a press conference to announce the convention and provide information on the guest of honor for the occasion. The convention is expected to attract between 300 and 400 delegates and will be hosted by London's 427 Wing of the RCAF Association. remembering our past 5 YEARS AGO March 28, 1974 The Clinton Junior "D" hockey Mustangs may move up a notch next year and enter a team in the Ontario Hockey Association's Junior "C" league. The Huronview Ladies Auxiliary's dream came true on Monday when they presented the keys for a special wheelchair tran- sportation van to Huronview. The ladies raised money by soliciting donations from nearly 50 service clubs, groups and church organizations across Huron County. The Clinton square dance club, the Wheel 'N' Dealers. hosted about 20 clubs from the Southwestern Ontario Square Dance Association last Saturday at CHSS. After an afternSoon of workshops, the group had an evening of round and square dancing. 10 YEARS AGO March 27, 1969 Ball and Mutch Ltd. of Clinton will expand its furniture sales operation and close its hardware section which is the successor to Harland Bros., Hardware and tinsmithing. When it's all over, Bainton's Ltd., Old Mill in Blyth may find that it suffered more from loss of merchandise than loss of customers as a result of last week's burglary and theft. It became a matter of adding insult to injury when, after thieves made off with $32,000 in coats and jackets, customers stayed away in drovies, and for no reason because there was still lots to buv. 25 YEARS AGO April 1, 1954 The remmants of the old county cour- thouse at Goderich have been almost completely removed. The soldier on top of the World War monument still stands on guard, but there is little for him to watch. At a special meeting held two weeks ago, the members of county council decided that Goderich would be the site for the new courthouse and that construction would begin as soon as possible. The resblution drafted by Clinton Town Council asking support for a move of the county offices to Clinton was not considered. Gerald Tebbutt, a grade 13 honor student at GDCI has been nominated as the school representative in the Western Ontario Student Leaders' Club. • Birdhouses of difforent'`aizes. shnt)Pq and Sincerely G. Keith McGibbon Program Chief, 1979 RCAFA convention Ear plugs for .,campaign commercials Anti -nausea pills for stomaching campaign speeches Shovel for all that bull they'll throw at you Fat wallet for helping pay the $50 million cost of election Do-it-yourself brain surgeori's kit for keeping an open mind For reminding yourself what the politicians see you as Pin, blindfold and list of candidates for making sound, well -thought-out decision on who to vote for Paper for writing down all the campaign promises Incinerator for the flood of pamphlets i1 DON'T FORkIT AY(tic 1 To It TAK01 FOA A AIDI Boots for kicking over candidates' signs on your property Sign for discouraging door-to-door candidates Survival gear for the coming election 7 Really odds n' ends I've always been well almost always. This is going to be another desperation column. I sat in front of the typewriter for a half-hour this af- ternoon with a mind as blank as a blackboard before the class smart aleck sneaks in. When no ideas came, I took a walk hoping for mental stimulation. All I got was a mud bath from a passing motorist - unintentional, of course. I couldn't get excited over any of them. At the time, I thought it was unfair, After supper, I turned on 'the but now I realize it was just. I've television in time to catch the weather splashed a couple of pedestrians precast - rain, cloud and fog for the • came as well. I've been hoping that, after five years of safe driving, the payment might go down a little. Silly-' me! It's going up instead. honest with you - After the phone bill and insurance notice, the utilities' bill can't be far behind. Why do bills always arrive on time or early, but never late? When I got home, I read a newspaper. It was filled with pictures of the leaders of the three major political parties and. reports of their campaign speeches. When they weren't making their own promises, they were running down the other guys' promises. 'c myself this spring, and now I know how - ,next three days it feels to be on the receiving end. -, I left the TV on; I think I was I picked up the mail, looking for the punishing myself for not coming up dramatic letter that is going to change with any column ideas. Why else would my whole life. (I've been waiting for 20 I subject myself to overdone com- years, and it didn't come today either.) mercials, hashed re -runs and canned Instead the mail included the laughter? telephone bill. I can't believe I talked to Mork from Ork "na nued" "na nued" my sister that long, but I did ! me once too often. I went back to the My car insurance premium notice typewriter. sugar and spice Finally, Spring! Like most people in this country with any intelligence, I welcome the advent of - spring, which in Canada consists colors can be seen at J. Plumtree's Barber Shop, Clinton. The whitefish run is on in Lake Huron and Bayfield fishermen had good catches on Tuesday. Ed Siddel brought in 2,000 pounds, Don McLeod had 600 pounds and Toms Brothers caught 2,900 pounds. The latter is perhaps the largest single haul of whitefish Toms Brothers have had and was from only eight boxes of nets. Never had they seen so many caught in so few nets. Master Keith Allen of Londesboro celebrated his 10th birthday last Saturday, March 27 and treated his friends to a very happy birthday party. Good policing in a town of any size becomes one of the things the people take for granted. The three-man force, equipped with cruiser, which it is Clinton's good fortune to possess has made Clinton prac- tically crime -free and definitely a more pleasant place in which to live. Just one year ago, Clinton was in the middle of very unsettled circumstances as far as the police force went. The previous establishment of chief and two assistants was upset when chief Constable J. Ferrand resigned, sometime earlier and his position was filled by a new chief. Then a series of break-ins, car robberies and apparently unsolvable minor discrepancies led to unrest among the people in Clinton. The businessmen especially were warned, to leave a light burning at night and to be sure windows and doors were locked. Then, early in April the chief constable resigned and with him one other constable, leaving Clinton almost unpoliced. The third constable stepped into the role of chief constable for an interim period and the break-ins continued until the first of May when J. Ferrand adcepted the position as constable chief once more. Two new con- stables were hired and now the force is doing an admirable job in the judicious policing of Clinton. 50 YEARS AGO March 28, 1929 That rash correspondent of ours down Kippen or Brucefield way started something by reporting that patchwork quilt. Mrs. Diehl came in last week with one of ore numerous pieces and now along c mes several others f`ar outnumbering either, In view of the interest that this seems to have for our women readers, The News - Record has decided to offer three prizes of $3, $2 and $1 for three quilts containing the largest number of pieces. The young people of Turner's Church presented their annual play on Friday evening, March 22 and despite the inclement weather, the house was fairly well filled. The play chosen was Deacon Dubbs and the cast was so equally balanced, it was difficult to select a star, although the work of -Miss Sadie Ball as Yennie Yensan and Leslie Lawson as Deuteronomy Jones in the light comedy roles might deserve special men- tion. , 75 YEARS AGO March 31, 1904 The bridge across the river one -and -a - quarter miles south of the Bannockburn Bridge went down with the flood on Friday afternoon and the timbers were seen in Bayfield on Saturday. One account of the condition of the roads and the river flowing over the road near the school, the public examination to have been held by Hullett Township SS No. 5 has been indefinitely postponed. 100 YEARS AGO April 3, 1879 The snow is still nearly level on many parts of the country roads. Yesterday morning about five o'clock, the fire alarm was sounded, but the wind was sq high that very few heard it. The cause of its ringing was the discovery that a kitchen attached to the house of Mr. P. Cronyn was On fire; neighbors being soon on the spot the fire was put out before doing much damage. In a few moments 'after the alarm was sounded steam was up in the engine and it - was run out of the house but was not taken down. The origin of the fire was the ash barrel in the kitchen. The Clinton New Era has a subscriber who has paid for his paper up to the end of 1880. He is the only subscriber in Canada who has ever been know to pay for his paper two years in advance. If h had but known of Mother Shipton's proph cy, that the world is to come to an eild in 188 , he would no doubt have paid for that year too, when he was about it, on the chance that after #1 date no more papers would be wanted. 1 1, •I had to admit the day had yielded nothing dramatic I could share with you. Then I tried to recall something from earlier in the week. What were . the highlights of my week? My hockey team lost again, and I ran out of excuses. My brother-in-law introduced me to the sport of basketball, which I found more exciting than baseball, but even more confusing than football. The most surprising part was the sums of money the players are paid to throw a ball through a hoop. I previewed the spring fashions and learned the tall slim feminine look is definitely not made for my short, pudsy frame. I was disappointed to discover the postal hike scheduled for April 1 was not an April Fool's joke. Or was it? When the column deadline arrived, I was still searching the shadowy recesses of my mind for a provocative topic, but all I came up with were a few pet peeves that you're probably ex- periencing too. This really is odds n' ends. mainly of mud, slush, cold rain and "You don't care, do you? You'd live colder winds. in a pig -pen, wouldn't you? Other men It is the end of that suicidal season in help their wives keep the place decent, which we get more and more don't they? Have you no eyes in your depressed, irritable, and bone-weary of head? Aren't you ashamed of this living in a land where the national "wreck" room that used to be our sound symbols are the wet sniffle and living -room?" the barking cough, the national sight Faced with a barrage of rhetorical symbols are the filled-in driveway and questions, I shift uneasily and answer, the rusting fender. "Yes." or, sometimes, "No." I never It's a trying time. For years, I've know what to say, but it's always the advocated a mid-February holiday to wrong thing. save the national psych from self- Frankly, I don't care. And yes, I destruction. I've suggested calling it would live in a pig -pen, if nothing else National Love Day, the third Monday were available. And no, other men in Feb.: a day to ,love your neighbour, don't help their wives keep the place your neighbour's wife; yourself, and decent. Not decent men. And yes, I life, not necessarily in that order. have eyes in my head, two of them, one But I've been blocked, year after apt to be black after this column ap- year, by politicians, who fear the op- pears. And no, I'm not ashamed of our ponents might score a victory if it were wreck room. I know who wrecked it, named Sir John A. MacDonald Day or and I love them just the same. And if Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day; and by the visitors don't like it, they can go and industrialists and business community, visit someone else, with a real rec' who blanch with terror at the thought of , room. It is confusing, is it not? paying their employees for one more However, I am an amenable chap. I non-productive day in the year. Hell, a don't kick a dog, just because he bays third of their employees' days are non- at the moon. I don't kick a woman, just productive anyway. They may as well because she begins raving when the throw in a bonus. March sun filters into the dugout where Yes, I welcome spring, but there's we've spent the winter. one aspect of it that I very nearly I merely blink benignly, start talking loathe. That's when the first yellow sun supportively. Yes, we should have new begins to filter through those murky drapes. How much? Yes, we should storm windows, which we daren't take 'have a new chesterfield suite. How off until mid-May. much? Yes, it's time we got rid of that It isn't the sun that bothers me. It's old dining -room suite, which we bought the Old Battleaxe. She throws away her second-hand for $100 20 years ago. How survival kit, the cataracts are peeled much for a new one? Certainly, the from her eyes, and she starts driving rugs need cleaning and the wholeiouse me out of my skull. redecorating_ How much? "Bill Smiley, look at those drapes!" I It always comes out to somewhere look. They look fine to me.' Same old around $8,000. I remind that we have to ones we had in January. Green and borrow from the bank to pay the in - gold, turned to a sort of grold with come tax. That we have two cars which cigarette smoke and hot air from the we could sell in a package deal, to an ancient furnace, but perfectly ser- experienced mechanic, for $400. That if viceable drapes. we don't have some brickwork done, "Look at that rug. Filthy! Look at the the whole house will fall down, and chesterfield. The Boys have ruined it: we'll ,be sitting there, in full view, on jam, bananas, yoghurt! Look at that our hew chesterfield. woodwork. It was off-white in the fall, I suggest that she save money from and now it's off -black! The wall paper teaching her piano pupils, pay back the is disgusting!" $1,000 she has spent on long-distance Well, I look up from my paper with phone calls to her relatives, and take a every demand, and everything looks job as a cleaning lady for a year, and just the same to me as it did a month all will be doozy. Nejv everything. ago. Comfortable, Warm. Lived-in. She counters with arrows about the venture such an opinion. It is met wit booze bill, the cigarette account, and a torrent of abuse, self-pity, an materialistic avariciousness. Turn to page 5 e Open letter Dear Editor: Would you be kind enough to consider this open letter for publication Sincerely, J.M. , Goderich Watts Provincial Minister of Health, Mr. Dennis Timbrell, 10th Floor, Hepburn Block, 80 Grosvenor St., Toronto, Ont. "Dear Sir: "I am writing to xou with regard to recent "directives" from your ministry pertaining to the provision of health care in this province's hospitals. "1. You are suggesting that existing hospital beds be left unoccupied in order to reduce the numbers available to an arbitrary level of 3.5 beds per 1,000 population. Why? Please don't trot out the hoary myth of runaway health costs - health -care's percentage of the GPP has been declining for the last three years and is now, at 4.13 percent, at its lowest point in this decade. These figures are from the Ontario Hospital Association - if you are not familiar with them, try reading the findings of your own Elgie Select Committee on Health Care Costs. The number of available beds for active treatment patients in this province went down from 5.25 per 1,000 in 19;;O to 4.5 in 1976; that is the lowest ratio of any province except Newfoundland. So, why? "2. Your proposed "formula" would reduce the number of beds in one local hospital (Goderich) from the present level of 71 to 43. Over the last–few months the level of occupancy of these • beds has been 90 percent (I agree that this is already above the level of safety and means mixing young and old patients, clean and infected cases etc., but these measures have been forced upon us by previous reductions in the hospital's budget)...This means that if your proposals become reality we shall be forced to turn away a number of people requiring acute hospital care. Where shall we send them Mr. Tim- brell? When our "allocation" is full, what shall I say to the parents of the child with acute appendicitis - take your child home its chances of sur- viving any resultant peritonitis is 1 in 10? Certainly that is an emotional argument ,and advisedly so - some people actually care about what happens to their families. "3. Do you think that by legislation you can control the amount of disease in society? Well, history is full of examples of a little power going to the heads . of little men - remember King Canute aid his advisors? I am told that Idi Amin, in Uganda, has attempted to abolish certain infectious diseases by making them illegal - an intellectual feat on a par with your own. "4. You are also proposing that if a hospital provided services to sick people beyond the guidelines that you have thought up, such a hospital would be fined ($12,000 per hospital bed in excess of your formula). Now let's look at that one. The people of this com- munity have spent millions of dollars and years of their lives in building up their local hospital; it is their hospital and their property. Are they now to be treated as criminals for tending to the sick? Are we to prosecute the Good Samaritan? This is not just a silly proposal based on stupidity - it is a proposal couched in the language of insanity. "5. You are proposing furthermore that the people who are sick in hospital for too long, including 'people in psychiatric hospital beds, should be penalized (to the tune of $10 per day). This is equally insane. So we are to financially penalize both the Samaritan and the Pharisee? "6. You are, or should be, aware of a recent death in Toronto which occurred after the patient was shipped from hospital to hospital because all their beds were full. Are you expecting more such deaths Mr. Timbrell? (Of course not, Toronto's acute hospital beds are apparently to be reduced by over 1,000). But if not, why does a recent circular to all coroners in Ontario (Memo A-416, January 2, 1979) request that "the Ministry of Health be in- formed in advance of inquests where the Coroner suspects that Health services may not have been ap- propriately provided"? "7. The legality of your proposal has not yet, I think, been questioned. We live, unfortunately, in a society where political ignorance and apathy are widespread; indeed many people (especially those serving on Hospital Boards) seem to think that ministerial pronouncements somehow have the force of law and must therefore be obeyed. Yet it is only two or three years since the Supreme Court of Ontario, ruling illegal your predecessor's directives to close local hospitals, made clear what surely must be ob- vious to any thinking person. That is, that the public hospitals of this province are the property of the people of this province; they are not the property of the provincial government. "When the provincial government monopolized Health Care Insurance some years ago, carefully legislating out of existence any competition from the more efficient private sector, they contracted with local hospitals to provide health *care in return for adequate funding. The hospitals have more than kept their end of the bargain. Your veiled attempts to now indirectly dose down these hospitals, Turn to page fi • A