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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1983-10-19, Page 4PAGE 4 —CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19,1983 The Clinton O'lourofte ¢ord Om pu00lzPoed moth Wied.eeraday et P.O. Son 39. Clinton. O..terio, Concede. NOM 189. Toil.: 482.8443. 8arloeuription Nate: Li Canmda • 419.73 Sr. Citizen • 916.79 per veer foreign - 993.00 per year it am registered mm second demur ...ed by the post office Bonder the permit number 0817. The f,,ecvm.0tedor® ineorporoteel in 1924 the Herron Sti mvs.0lomoryf. founded in 1881. maid The Clinton i9eva9 Fres. learn ori in 1863. Toted prelO runs 3.700. ti Incorporating (TIn LYTH STANDARD) J. HOWARD AITKKEN - Publisher SHELLEY M€PHEE - Editor GARY HAIST - Advertising Manager MARY ANN HOLLENBECK - Office Manager MEMBER Display advertleing rates arallable ow reapreat. deb for Nato Cord. 14o. 14 affective October 1. 1943. A MEMBER l School Safety Week The Canada Safety Council's annual School Safety Week will lee observed from the 17th to the 23rd of October. The 1983 theme is "MIND THAT CHILD" and the thrust will be on community involvement. Children are our greatest natural resource and their safety and well-being is our greatest responsibility. The traffic mix is a very hazardous environment for children. Lack of courtesy or a split second of impatience on the part of a driver could have tragic con- sequences. So, when driving, always be particularly cautious in school zones. Come to a full stop when a school bus with flashing lights is encountered. Do not pass in either direction until the warning lights hove been turned off and it is safe to do so. THIS IS THE LAW and children expect you to obey it. Parents, who have the greatest influence on the attitudes and behavio o( children, should become involved in school safety programs. Especially they should explain to their children the need for school bus discipline and obedience to crossing patrols. Because children spend so much time at school the teachers and staff also have a large degree of influence on them. School safety need not be considered as an "extra" subject but should be integrated as a necessary lifestyle into every activi- ty. The Canada Safety Council has a number of curriculum integrated school pro- grams ori fire, school buses and playgrounds. Children do not have the advantage of being able to draw on years of ex- perience to help them in their decision making. So it's up to the adults to MIND THAT CHILD and to emphasize this responsibility during School Safety Week. Behind The Scenes Imagined racism? A federal cabinet minister did it the other day. Howard Cossetl did it a couple of weeks before that. A restaurant owner in British Columbia did it a couple of years ago and has been tied up in the courts ever since. Each one said something simple and got called a racist for saying it. Howard Cossell of course got the most headlines for his misstep 1 Howard gets more headlines than the President of the United States after all, and probably more money ►. Howard was describing a football game and said something like "look at the little monkey go." He made one mistake. The guy he called a little monkey wasn't white but black. Immediately, a leader of a black group in the U.S. started screaming that he was a racist and he shouldn't be allowed on national television. Howard call- ed a white baseball player a monkey a few weeks earlier but nobody noticed. The federal cabinet minister was speak- ing to the Ukranian-Canadian Committee and made the mistake, not in what he said himself, but in who he quoted. He quoted the late Sir Clifford Sifton, the Canadian in- terior minister who opened up the Canadian west for settlement nearly a century ago as describing the immigrant from central Europe as a "stalwart peasant in a sheep- skin coat, born on the soil, whose fathers have been farmers for 10 generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen children." He might as well have declared all Ukranians should be put back on the boats and sent to Russia the way a Conservative M.P. m England was about Blacks and East In- dians. The Ukranian association protested. Ramon Hnatyshyn, a Conservative M.P. raised the matter in Parliament and By Keith Roulston demanded the minister apologize or resign. It didn't comfort him that the Prime Minister said he didn't know what the fuss was about because if somebody said his great -great-grandfather had come from France in a homespun cloth and wooden shoes and wasn't very clean_ A Ukranian himself got in trouble with his fellow Ukranians over racism. A restaurant owner who sold Ukranian food called his restaurant Hunky Bill's and was taken before human rights commissions by other Ukranians who claimed by calling himself a "Hunky", a formerly derogative term for people from central Europe, he was dea- meaning all Ukranians. Racism is a problem in North America but when people overreact to imagined slights they undermine their own cause. We have enough real racists to deal with, without going to ridiculous extremes to find racists under every bed. If these cases weren't so ridiculous they'd be funny. But they're worse than that; they are dangerous. Bad things done with the best of intentions are still bad things. What we are getting here is a milder case of the hysteria in the U.S. about Communists under Joe Mc- Carthy. With the best of intentions, leaders of various racial and ethnic groups are threatening to ruin careers and businesses for what they think is a good cause. The term racist is being thrown around in the same kind of indiscriminant manner that Red was three decades ago. Supporters of McCarthy, remember, also thought they had a holy cause. We must work to stop hate literature and racist attacks but we also must remember that in trying to blot out even the most trivial of insults. we can do damage to the very basis of our democracy, freedom of speech. If we curb that to curb imagined racism, we've played right into the hands of the real racists. d Bus safety starts here Sugar and SpIce Angry Canadians CANADIANS -are in a bad mood these days. Not bad in the sense of angry or ugly. Iliad in the sense of gloomy, depressed. And not without reason. After riding a post-war boom, with in- dustry thriving, new money coming in, new opportunities. opening up, and a general sense that the man might be right after all, that the 20th century did belong to Canada, we have skidded to a low that hasn't been touched for decades. Trouble is, during that boom, we grew accustomed to affluence and a measure of ease, and we weren't built to cope with that. We were a rather dour, independent, sturdy people, far more used to battling for an existence than lying around enjoying life. We just couldn't cope with the ideas: that we would get a raise in pay every year; that practically everybody could own a house or car or both; that there was a job for everybody; that we might even be able to borrow money from the bank in a pinch. All of these were alien to our Canadian experience, which had always maintained that lite was real and earnest, that fun was almost sinful, and that if things were going well, you kept your fingers crossed and knocked on wood. Those of us who had grown up during the Depression, of course, never believed for a minute that the prosperity would last. We went around like so many Jeremiahs, warning the young of the horrors to come when the bubble burst and boring them to death with tales of our own impoverished youth. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the boom didn't end with a bang but a whimper. We Cassandras of gloom were scoffed at. By Bill Smiley r nere were still plenty of jobs. Everybody could go to college, on loans and grants. Everybody really needed a summer cottage or a ski chalet or two cars or three sowmobiles. The banks would lend money tci' anyone who didn't havetwo heads, and the loan companies looked' after them. The Canadian dollar was buoyant, and we were a little sickly glad when the Yanks had to pay a dollar and five cents for a Canadian dollar's worth. If you were temporarily between jobs, unemployment insurance was easy to get and fairly generous. If you were really strapped, you could go on welfare and sit home watching TV. If you got sick, hospital insurance looked after all the bills. Gas for the car and fuel for the furnace and food for the belly were cheap and plentiful. And then the rot set in, slowly. A touch of mould here, a cockroach crawling there. . Strike after strike after strike made us one of the world's most unstable industrial countries. As a result, capital investment began to dry up. Another effect was that many of our manufactured products had priced themselves out of the world - and even Canadian - markets. Branch plants began to close as their owners pulled in their horns and retreated to the comparative stability and higher production of the U.S. Other plants running three shifts cut to two, then one. Foreign investors found more fertile fields for their money. Our armed forces became ineffective for lack of funds, and lost much of the pride they had once held in theirrole in NATO. It snowballed. Inflation became more than a topic of converstation; it became a bogeyman;. Then, suddenly, there wasn't much gas and oil left and their prices soared. A new, ugly racism reared its head, The news isn't all bad KaIQidoscopQ With depressing news about everything from unemployment to bankruptcies clut- tering our daily lives, it is perhaps time to reiterate just how fantastically lucky we Canadians really are. First. let's consider the basics: Food - Thanks to our hard-working fanners and fishermen, the country has no shortage of foodstuffs. What's more, the prices i compared to most other countries are among the lowest in the world. The Japanese, for example, spend about 40 percent of take home pay on food pro- ducts, and the West Germans about 30 per- cent. Canadians lay out a lowly 22 percent, which is not bad at all. Energy - We may complain about the high price of oil, gas and electricity, but at least we have an adequate supply. In fact, Canada is now a net exporter of energy. Shelter - Canadians are among the best housed people in the world and, compared to people in other nations, the cast is reasonable One need only consider the tory size of apai tn}ents in Japan or even Europe to understand how well off we are. Wealth - On a per capita basis. Cana- dians are among the wealthiest people anywhere. We have such an abundance of land, water . lililIer Ain and ,tl;cr resources es that people. in ,it her countries have difficul- ty understanding why we haven't developed thein to a greater degree. Support Systems - Through such pro- grams as unemployment insurance and social assistance, Canadians are guaranteed that they won't starve and that they will have a roof over their heads. Medical care and education is available to all, and virtually anyone can receive a university or technical school education at bargain basement prices. The support system may not be as elaborate as some would like, but it surely provides all needy Canadians with the basic necessities. Lifestyle - With a relatively low crone rate and few racial problems, Canadians live in a peaceful environment that im- presses most visitors to the country. in ad- dition, we have a democratic system of government that provides the freedoms denied to a great proportion of the world's population. Canadians. it seems, are introspective. We complain about our seemingly horren- dous day -today problems, giving little thought to the hundreds of millions of peo- ple who go to bed hungry. So perhaps it is again time to take stock. No matter what the news headlines may suggest, Canadians are very well off in- deed. By Shelley McPhee sparked by the fact that so many im- migrants did so well with so little, because they were willing to work. A separatist party was elected in Quebec, and it was a whole new ball game. The employment force swelled steadily, whi14 new jobs failed to keep up. Huge mining and smelting companies which had been stock- piling their products because other nations could buy them cheaper elsewhere, closed down and put thousands of well-heeled workers on the pogey. Small farmers fell by the wayside when only the big ones could survive. And we kept paving our valuable farmland with asphalt and concrete. Retired people saw their life's savings gobbled up by inflation and the falling dollar. Small businessmen cut back on staff and service in order to stay in business. Doctors, fed up to the teeth with overwork and bureaucratic interference, began heading for greener and warmer, pastures. University students, toiling over their books, grew ever more bitter as tliey began to realize that the country did not want or need them, that the chance of a job on graduation was paper -thin. Thousands of high school students who should have been out working, went back to school and lazed away another year, because they were a drug on the market. And governments, national, provincial, and local, wrung their hands and waited for the wind to change, the miracle to take place, while they went right on spending more and more taxpayers' money. It's not much wonder that the prevailing mood of the country is morose and suspicious. But surely a nation that toughed it through two world wars and a world depression is not going to roll over and die. We aint' licked yet. And spring will be here. Probably by the first of June. The Canada Goose, how often we hear him overhead on these brisk autumn days as he makes his way south. James A. Michener is his monumental American novel Chesapeake so magnificently described the great bird. "In mid-September, as in each year of their lives, Onk-or and his mate felt irresistible urgings. They watched the sky and were particularly responsive to the shortening of the day. They noticed with satisfaction that their five children were large and powerful birds, with notable wing spans and sustaining accumulations of fat; they were ready for any flight. They also noticed the browning of the grasses and the ripening of certain seeds, signs un- mistakable that departure was imminent. "But one day, for mysterious reasons which could not be explained, huge flocks of birds rose into the sky, milled about and then formed _nto companies heading south, "This southward migration was one of the marvels of nature: hundreds, thousands, millions of these huge geese forming into perfect V-shaped squadrons flying at dif- ferent altitudes and at different times of By Shelley McPhee day, but all heading out of Canada down one of the four principal flyways leading to varied corners of America. Some flew at 29,000 feet above the ground, others as low as 3,000, but all sought escape from the freezing moorlands of the Arctic, heading for clement feeding grounds like those in Maryland. For long spells they would fly in silence, but most often they maintained noisy communication, arguing, protesting, exulting; at night especially they uttered cries which echoed forever in the memories of men who heard them drifting down through the frosty air: "Onk-or, Onk-or! " " + + + October 22 is a very special day for a certain Clinton landmark. The day marks the first anniversary of the arrival of the Clinton School on Wheels, CN 15099. Remember the rain, the singing school children, the excitment and cheers when the old school car carne rumbling down the tracks' It's come a long way snide that October day in 1982 and to celebratetfts first anniversary in Clinton the Restoration Committee will be holding supper. + + + Don't forget to drop into the Clinton Library this week for a hot drink and a tour of our fine library facilities. The open house is being held in conjunction with the Harvest of Savings week. + + + Further to Wendy Somerville's report on the possible fee increase at the Tuckersmith Day Nursery, in last week's News -Record, Karen McEwing iseurging all parents to write letters to our MP and MPP, as well as Frank Drea or Bill Davis, in opposition to this proposed increase and loss of govern- ment financial support. Already Tucker - smith Township Council has forwarded such a letter. BLOOD TRANSFUSION SERVICE , Help support UNICEF Dear Editor: Again, this year over one million Cana- dian youngsters across Canada will be "Trick or Treating" for UNICEF on Hallowe'en night. With your help, the contributions they col- lect will fund UNICEF self-help programs in 111 countries, protecting the lives of approx- imately 500 million children around the world. Our goal this year is $550,000.00. Your support of UNICEF's vital Hallowe'en fundraising campaign is essen- tial to its success. UNICEF has achieved so Much in the past with your help - we hope that we can count on your support again this year! Thank you. Sincerely yours, Judy Hobbs, Information Coordinator Ontario Unicef Committee Inspect goodies Halloween brings ghosts, goblins and, sometimes, real danger. The Ontario Lung Association warns about one danger for children' — risk of choking on holiday treats such as candy corn, hard candy, and peanuts. At Halloween, children go door-to-door "begging". Parents should insist youngsters bring the goodies home for inspection. For the youngest - two, three or even four years old - some of the candy can be divided or mashed before eating. The chewing and swallowing muscles of young children may not be sufficiently developed to cope with certain treats. Choking can result. Halloween goodies also may "go down the wrong way," and lodge in the lung instead of the stomach. This is called aspiration. A "foreign object" of any kind in the lung can cause life-long problems. At times, surgery for removal is required. The best warning is: Be sure children are old enough to chew and swallow correctly before trusting them with small, hard bits of food. Parents should aways be on guard against "small objects" getting into the hands of children. Particularly those young enough to want to put everything into their mouths. Choking, blocked air passages, even aspiration into the lung can result. Moreover, such items as eyes and buttons that might come loose from dolls, or wheels from toy cars. Set a good example. Don't put anything but food into your own mouth and keep the coffee table clear of small objects a child might reach for. For more information about protecting your lungs, contact your lung association - The "Christmas Seal" people. Drainage systems TORONTO - Provincial funds to help farmers install tile drainage systems in their fields are being)re-allocated to go where the need is gree est, William Doyle, assistant deputy minister of Agriculture and Food, announced today. "The ministry is transferring tile drainage funds from municipalities that are not going to use up their current allocations, pumping them into areas where there are farmers waiting to have this work done," Doyle said. This could mean up to $30,000 each to 140 municipalities, he noted. Each year, the ministry allocates funds to municipalities under the Ontario Tile Drainage Act which they, in turn, loan to local farmers for drainage projects. "The ministry is today notifying the municipal clerks involved of the changes in these financial arrangements," Doyle said. Farmers who have been waiting to pro- ceed with tile drainage projects should check with their municipal clerks regarding the availability of additional funds. Studies have shown that tile drainage in- creases crop yields up to 50 per cent and that each dollar invested in tile drainage brings a return of $18.