HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1979-08-09, Page 4PAGE 4---CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, THURSDAY, AUGUST 9 ,1979
The Clinton News:Record Is published ePch
Thursday at P.O. See 39. Clinton; Ontario,_
Canada. NOM 1LO.
Member. Ontario, Weekly,
Newspaper A„s eclatlon
it is registered as second class mall by the
post office under the permit number 01117.
The News -Record Incorporated in 1924 the
.HaronNews•Record. founded In 1{i1. and The
Clinton New Era. founded In 1963. Total press
run 3.300,
Member Canadian
Community Newspaper
Association
Display advertislng ,rates
available on request. Ask for
Rate Card No. 9 effective Octal.•
1971,
General Manager • .1. Howard Aitken
Editor . James E. Fitzgerald
Advertising Director • Gary L. Hoist
News editor • Shelley McPhee
Office Manager • Margaret Gibb
Circulation - Freda McLeod
Subscription Rote:
Canada•'14.00 per year
Sr. citizen •'12 per year
U.S.A. & foreign •'30 per year
Taking a bum rap
Canada's farmers and fishermen
have been taking a bum rap from
consumers who continually lay the
blame for rising food prices at the
dockside, or at the farm gate.
Bluntly stated, a lot of the com-
plainers don't know what they are
talking about. In fact, Canadians are
among the best fed people in the
world, and at prices that are among
the lowest in the World.
It's true, food prices have been
rising at an inordinate rate during the
past couple of years, but so have the
producers' costs.
Certainly, farmers and fishermen
have been farming well of late, but
that's the nature of ' the. `business.
Producers earn a great deal of money
in the good years, hopefully offsetting
losses in the lean periods. '
Some misinformed city slicker
complainers are bright enough to
remain silent when food prices are
dropping, and producers are in
trouble.
While there may be room for
complaints about the inadequacies.
and pricing policies of the nation's
processing and distribution system,
overall, consumers are getting food at.
reasonable cost.
Much has been made of the fact that
it now costs $61 per week to feed a
family of -four people in Canada.
Atrocious, some, consumers would
say.
Yet Canadians only spend. about 22
percent of take-home pay on food. The
complainers should look at Japan
where, families spend as much as 40
percent of income on food. Or Europe,
where it's not considered
unreasonable if food costs surpass 30-
35 percent of family income.
Canadian consumers complain
about hamburg at $2.50-$3 per pound.
'Yet the same product in Tokyo ap-
pears on retail store shelves priced at
$10-$15 per pound. And the Japanese
don't complain.
What's, importantto note, par-
ticularly considering the energy
crunch, is that North Americans have
not been faced with outright shor-
tages of food. The producers are doing
their job.
Rather than complaints, Canadian
consumers should be patting: farmers
and fishermen on the back. They
deserve a break. (by Roger Worth,
director of Public Affairs Canadian
Federation of Independent Business)
Family farms are safe
The decline of the Agribusiness - the
involvement of huge corporations in
farming - confirms something that the
private farmer has known all along:
If you want to be successful, you
and your workers must be willing to
do the work, the way it needs to be
done, and when it needs to be done,
says Donald Shaughnessy, in, a recent
"Dollar Sense" column.
Big corporations engage in farming
the way they engage in producing
cars or refrigerators or television
sets. If something goes wrong along
the way, it can be corrected at a later
L stage.
Example: A farmer must plant his
corn by June 10 - in my part of the
province. But if an Agribusiness has a
10 -day strike, and does not get the
seed in until June 20, no amount of
overtime is going to make up the 10 -
day loss of time.
Instead, the Agribusiness faces the
prospect; of a 10 -day delay in. har-
vesting, and the attendant frost
problems. Farming is a business with
tiny profit margins, and a 20 per cent
crop loss due to frost is a disaster.
No wonder Greyhoufid Corp. in the
United States, Boise Cascade and
other large American corporations,
have been anxious to get out of the
growing business.
It is interesting to observe that the
Soviet Union is into Agribusiness in a
big way. Farm workers are "em-
ployees" and do things the "company
way". On their off -time, they are
allowed to farm tiny plots -1.25 acres -
for their own profit.
The result is that the private plots,
which account for only 3 per cent of all
cultivated land in the Soviet Union,
produce almost. 30_per cent of the food.
Yet big companies have a role to
play in agriculture. They produce the
farm machinery, they are gradually
taking over the production of seed, '
and they have an armlock on fer-
tilizers and insecticides. t
They can 'probably go no further.
Farmer 'organizations are gaining
control over the marketing of their
output, and governments are shutting
out the big corporate farmers.
Inone case, a U.S. corporation k ras
feeding 300,000 steers. The U.S.
government allowed more Argen-
tinian and Australian beef to be im-
ported, undercutting th U.S price.
Forevery one=cent-a-p° nd a price ..
dropp d, the corporal on l st $3-
millio. It was soon out of busi es's.
Judging by these events, it nooks
like the Canadian family farm will
survive and prosper.
(Mr. Shaughnessy is with G. H.
Ward & Partners, Cobourg.)
L
•
Nimirinemisomme
5 YEARS AGO
July 25, 1974
Funeral services will be held this af=
ternoon from the hall Funeral Home for
Jabez Rands of Clinton, a 45 -year veteran
of the Clinton Public Utilities Commission
and the unofficial historian of the town.
Mr. Rands was 71- years old.
After a seven month wait, Clinton
council learned last Thursday at a closed
meeting that it will cost an estimated
$400,000 to repair Clinton's 94 -year • old
Town Hall, and as a result, council has
asked, a London firm of architects to
prepare rough plans for a new Town Hall.
Mayor Don Symons said that it was too
costly to think of fixing the old Town Hall.
when a new one could be built for about
$,200,000 and the London architectural firm
of Tillman and Lamb has been engaged to
bring in a. new Town Hall plan.
10 YEARS AGO
July 31, 1969
CFB Clinton may "very likely" be one of,
several defence department bases slated
to close as the government tries to cap
defence spending, Huron MP Robert
McKinley told the News -Record this week.
Almost 1,000 people enjoyed the Bayfield
Lions Club's 23rd annual" frolic _ at the
fairgrounds last Friday evening and
Harold Weston, Lions president called the
remembering
our past
event "very successful."
Property has been changing in Lon-
desboro recently. Mr. .and Mrs. Mervin
Duncan of Stratford have purchased
Norman Alexander's farm on the 11th
concession. Mr. and Mrs. Alexander have
settled in\the village, having bought a
home from John Radford. John Radford
has purchased the store facing the high-
way from Mrd Alexander.
Mother Nature, in one of her vicious
moments, flattened Exeter district crops
with a bombardment of -hail and deluge of
rain last Thursday. Clinton, which escaped
the storm entirely, was able to help the
storm victims by opening its . hospital to
half a dozen adult patients and one iinfant.
who were among those evacuated when
flood waters rushed through South Huron
District Hospital. Nurses accompanied the
Exeter patients, some of whom were still
- in the Clinton hospital yesterday.
t The Rev. Herbert W. Wonfor, who
--'succeeds the Rev. G.L. Mills as minister
on Ontario Sreet United Church in Clinton,
will be inducted at a special service this
evening.
25 YEARS AGO
August 5, .1954
Summer is going along swiftly. The
Library Park fountain sparkles prettily
On the -wall
It's a little like being an observer of
the Fall of the Roman Empire.
That's how I feel as I read and hear
the latest energy crisis news.
One of these days, in, the not -distant
future, the last drop of that black stuff
is going to drip into the last recep-
tacle. How then, brown hen?
Will we freeze in the dark? Well, a
heck of a lot of red-blooded Canadians
will need every bit of that red blood to
avoid doing so.
It's not as though the hand -writing
has not been on the wall. It's just that
nobody has been looking at that
particurar wall. We've all been
looking out our picture window, in-
stead.
I've been thinking about it during a
particularly busy week in which a
dentist saved one of my ancient teeth,
a doctor gave me an allergy shot, and
a barber removed some of my ancient
white hair.
Needless to say, I drove my ancient
car to each of these places. None of
them is more than a ten-minute walk.
On my way to one of them, I drove
down to the dock, parked, and wat-
ched about three thousand boats
trying to wiggle their way out of
marinas, so that they -could open her
up and cut a swatch -across the lake
with their oil -burners.
At the' doctor's, people were
complaining because the air-
conditioning wasn't working. The
dentist used a high-speed electric drill
in his air-conditioned office, with all
the fluorescent lights on. The barber
was sweating, turned up his air-
conditioning; washed his hands in hot
water, and switched on his 'electric
clippers.
By George, I thought, it's going to
be quite a change., I visualized the
dentist pumping away with his old
foot -powered drill. The doctor giving
me a shot by flashlight, because there
are no windows in the joint. The
barber using the old hand -powered
clippers anld shaving myneck with
c lid waterj in a steamy -hot barber
shop.
--It wouldn't bother me' too much. I
was brought up on weed°stoves, coal-
oil lamps, a block ' of ice in • the
refrigerator, and a coal -burning
furnace.
But it sure would bother the doctor,
the dentist and the barber, along with
practically every human being in
North America under the age of sixty.
It's going to be quite an auction
sale, I thought, when that last drop of
black stuff flows from the last spigot.
Listen to the auctioneer. "Lincoln
Continental, 1982 model, like new.
Tear out the insides and you have a
grand out -door rec room for the
kiddies. What am I •bid? Do I hear
$30?
"Here's a real steal. A forty -foot
cruiser with built-in cupboards, septic
toilet, sleeps six.- Get a teamster to
tow it into your back yard and you
hive a dandy sleeping cabin for
guests. Will somebody start the
bidding with twelve dollars?
"And here's another beauty. Three
1980 Thunderbirds, worth $23,000 the
day they were bought. Cut the tops
off, remove the wheels, and they'll
make beautiful flower beds. Not ten
dollars apiece, not even nine dollars
each, but the three for $24.98.
"And here's todays super -special.
She's only thirty-five years old and
guaranteed to work day or night, not
like those electric things that were
always breaking down. An almost
automatic dishwasher. Yes, ladies
and gemmun, the real thing. This
little lady came on hard times. Her
husband had a heating oil franchise.
She's willing to wash your dishes like
they've never been washed before.
Only $300 a week."
And so on. Snowmobiles, aircraft.
It's going to be a -great day for the
junk dealers. On the other hand,
there's the bright side. Just as people
today pay fabulous sums for junk
furniture dug out of attics, the good
folk of 2010 A.D. ,might go as high as
$200 for an ancient, beautifully -
finished Cadillac ora fine specimen of
four -burner electric stove with infra-
red oven. They'd Make nice con-
versation pieces.
Away back there, I failed to con-
tinue the analogy to the Roman
Em ire. But it's there. They had their
bre d and ci cuses as the c untdown
app oached. urs arenas, li a theirs,
are packed s lid with sweaty, sadistic
spe tators w tching the gladiators.
We don't have enough Christians left
to , hrow to the (ions. But we can
always fire the coach, which is almost
as good.
And we have something Romans
didn't. We have an almost -instant
view of disasters all over the world.
So I guess mankind has made one
giant step backward in the past 1500
years.
It looks as though the hand-in-hand
waltz of the oil companies and the car
manufacturers,' which has lasted
nearly half a century,' is going to
become, "Good Night, Ladies."
But the merry Waipurgisnacht of
the western world continues its mad
whirl as oil companies and airlines
and Car manufacturers and boat
makers furiously advertise their
Turn to page 5
Distillery ery research
Dear Editor:
As a history graduate student at
Queen's University, I will be involved
in .a research project for Wiser's
Distillery this summer.
My assignment is to locate any
printed or graphical material relating •
to the history of the distilling industry
in Canada. Although the emphasis
will be placed on the Wiser and Corby
families, I am interested in
photographs, articles, drawings,
posters, advertisements, labels,
permits, etc., that touch upon
Canadian Whisky distilling as a
whole.
If any of your readers can provide
me with material or leads on the
subject, I would be most grateful.
Sincerely
Katherine McKenna
\\ 227 Brock Street
Kingston, Ontario
KIL'1S3
Do you have an opinion? Why not
write us a letter to the editor, and
let everyone know. All letters are
published, providing they can be
authenticated, and pseudonyms
are allowed. All letters, however,
are subject to editing for length
or libel.
� J
a look through
the news -record files
but the grass turns brown • nevertheless
because rain has been scarce. The weather
has been wonderful and half of the people
who are taking vacation this summer have
come back brown and happy. while the
other half are happy in expectation. Only
one unsatisfactory element exists and that
is, the flies are here.
People came from as ,far away as the
Yukon to witness the three-day centennial
celebration. in Auburn. Visitors out-
numbered residents ten to one as they
lined the streets for a parade of more than
70 gaily decorated floats. Stored away in
1918, a buggy came out of the Auburn
district ' drive -shed to roll again in the
parade. The traction power was provided
by a horse owned by Lloyd Craig and a
pony owned by Dan Pitblado.
An early Roman holiday was the theme
of a gathering held last Wednesday at the
James Day cottage on the Bayfield lake
shore. It has become an annual custom for
the summer colony here to entertain a
group from Oakwood. '
Garbed in gay ,costumes as gladiators,
orators and noble Roman ladies, with their
children in costume too, the Bayfield
,group .awaited the arrival of the Bar-
barians from the Bend. They arrived in a
horse drawn rack, to the fanfare of
trumpets, with the mothers and children
dressed in tattered sacks and the ,men in
steel helmets, swords and battle ar-
mament, marching alongside to guard
therm.
50 YEARS AGO
August 1, 1929 •
What good is quality, value, service and
low prices if people don't know about
them. Advertise in the News -Record.
The Bayfield softball team played the
Wesley -Willis team on Monday night. All
went well until Clinton began to gain, on the
winning team, then the referee began
handing out some raw deals which
resulted in the game ending in a chewing
match. The score at that time was 9-5 in
favor of Bayfield.
Owing to the holiday on Monday and the
races in Goderich, the Goderich Township
council will meet in the forenoon.
Can you imagine a real Cook Stove for
$13.95; a beautiful Sunny Blue, five quart
tea kettle for.,$1.89; a copper wash boiler,
regular price $4.50 for $3.09, then come see
for yourself at Sutter and Perdue, Clinton.
Why look elsewhere? The value is here.
75 YEARS AGO
August 4, 1904
Some changes are in contemplation in
•
Why we need cliches
Dictionaries say a cliche is a
hackneyed literary expression, a
fixed`or stereotyped expression which
has lost its significance' _ through
frequent repetition.
In everyday life, it's a handy phrase
that slips out when we think we need
something to say.
For example, "How are you?" is an
autornatic greeting answered
customarily by "I'm fine." But is the
question sincere? Do we listen to the
response, and is the , answer always
honest?
The old cliche could lead us into a
trap: "Hi, how are you?"
"I fell Jast week and cracked four
ribs."
"Oh, that's great!"
When we leave a person, we have to
say something cheery, such as "Have
a nice day!"
there!" "Bye nc
When we turn
feel corn p. oiled i
ear : "Hetle we
"ake care!" "Hang'in
w!"
into ou driveway, we
to tell veryone in the
re."
If askd to pass the salt at the
itchen table,,,. !, send it along with a
""There yet- 9." With rt1ish, we
the Londesboro Methodist Circuit. It is
proposed to make' Londesboro .a. Station
with a minister of its own, while Constance
together with Alma 'and Turner's will be
made a•Circuit.
A meeting of the West Huron license
commissioners was held at Inspector
Paisley's office on Monday. In addition to
the members of the board, there were
several Temperance advocates present
who entered their protest against so many
licensed houses in Clinton. The King
Edward was the principal bone of con-
tention. The board granted the King
Edward a license but as the population of
Clinton permits only five hotels, the
Queens was summarily cut off.
We would like to know who the health
inspector for the township of Hullett is. He
is needed in Constance to order cleanedout
a few pig pens and have manure piles
removed or else build a high board fence to
keep the smell from being offensive to
neighbours.
100 YEARS AGO
August 7, 1879
On Monday night a one -legged tramp,
who gave his name as Stokes, came to
town, and soon made his presence felt at
any rate. For no apparent reason he struck
with a stick all who came within his reach,
in some instances bruising his victims
badly. He was taken before the Mayor and
fined $4 and costs, or 30 days in jail.
Committed.
On ,Saturday last Messrs. Ouimette and .
Taylor of Londesboro shipped per G.T.R.
here, about five tons of butter, which was
destined for Montreal.
A young man named Alex Fair, a
butcher by trade, decamped last week,.
leaving a number in town who would have
been pleased to interview him on money '-
matters prior to his departure.
Miss Eliza Miller of Holmesville, who
was prostrated with a severe attack of
"inflammation on the brain" Ad on
Wednesday of last week.
The people of Bayfield cling tenaciously
to the "railway scheme" and although
they see no present prospects of their
hopes being realized, they anticipate that
"in the. good times coming" connection
with Clinton byail, will be a settled fact.
Not the slightest thing of importance
occurred on Tuesday - tl a Civic Holiday
here.
As high as 90 cents were offered for
Consolidated Bank bills in Clinton on
Monday.
i,
elaine townshond-,
t-
watch the cook place the turkey in the
centre of the table, and when .she
beams "Enjoy!" that's our signal to
dig in.
A cliche is often used to buy time.
For instance, "That's a very good
question," "I'm glad you asked that
• question," and "That's a difficult
question to answer," mean we don't
have an answer.
When you're hot, you're hot.
Sometimes we find ourselves
dominating a conversation. We've
suddenly been struck by a brain-
storm, and we're sharing our terrific
ideas with our companions. Words
and sentences come tumbling out of
our mouths.
Gradually, though, our train of
thought runs out of steam. We have
everyone,',s undivided attention, and
we don't want to lose it. While our
mind searches for more brilliant
thoughts, our mouth' fills -the gap with
"for the most part," "i"by and large,"
"as a matter of fact," "1 believe,"'
"actually," "really, "evidently" or
"and you know."
Sooner or later, our monologue
mUst end and we s m it all up with
"you know Where I' coming from"
"and that's the truth" or "you get my
drift?" -
If i we become irritated, we
repri>natid the agitator: "knock it
p
1 -
off!" "cut it out!" "smarten up!"
"you never give up, do you?" or
"Don't you ever grow up?"
And of course, we can always resort
to the veiled threat: "if you don't
smarten up...!"
We can't seem to argue creatively:
"I've got a bone to pick with you."
"Oh, ya?"
"You think you're smart, don.'t
you? Well; I've got news for you."
"Oh, ya? Well, I've got something
to say to you, too, Mr. Big Shot!"
"Get off your high horse."
Ultimatums may be delivered with
intensity but they are no longer
surprising: "You can shape up or ship
out." "If you don't like it, you can
lump it!"
Cliches. Where do they come from?
How many times must certain catchy
phrases be repeated and how many
people must identify with them,
before they can be classed as cliches?
Some cliches develop as slow as
molasses ; others catch on like
wildfire. Some seem as old as
Methusaleh, while others sound brand
spanking new. Some sound as Thad'as
a hatter, but on the other hand, some
are as wise as an owl. .
Most buy us' some time, when we
can't think of anything important to
say but our tongues ' have to wag
Anyway. You know how it Is!
f