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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Citizens News, 1964-11-12, Page 2PAGE TWO THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1964 ealmsteoPti On Our Own Sunday is the big day for Hensa11 and Zurich. Switch -over to the new dial sys- tem will be completed and we will have entered into the new, modern era of the telephone which will make way for unbe- Iievable innovations in the future. When Alexander Graham Bell strug- gled with his idea of transmitting sound it was to the utter amazement of his family and friends. Even he did not realize the seope of the plan. Little did he know that he was opening the door to the most satis- fying means of communication known to man. Because we are human, we do not know ourselves how rewarding it is or how de- pendant we are on it. Even when we need a doctor in a hurry or have some earth- shaking news which will not wait, we fail to appreciate the wonders of a telephone. And because we are human, we are anticipating the cut -over to dial for selfish reasons. We want the prestige that comes with expansion and improvement, We like the convenience of a dial phone that will do away with many of the slower proces- ses that caused momentary delay and heated -tempers. But as always, with change comes new problems. The people of Zurich and Hensall will know shortly the trials and tribulations of having no one but 'themselves to blame for wrong numbers and delays. The wrong flick of a finger or the loss of a telephone book will have no influence on the dial telephone, It will do no good to scream insults at a piece of machinery. Come this week -end, we will be on our own. It will no longer be possible to leave a message with the operator that we can be reached at another number. We won't be able to ask the time if our watch has stopped. We will not have the service o£ , a local switch board to find out what time the bank closes or when the parade starts. It will become more difficult to discover where the fire is or who was involved in an accident, You just don't get answers from a dial -tone. But the switch -over will go down as progress for these communities. It will be a giant step forward into this automated world that is racing to an uncertain goal. We must keep pace or be lost and trampled in the crowd. It is just one more milestone in the journey of life and we will never pass that way again. Forget Flanders Field Forever? Yesterday was Remembrance Day. It was declared a holiday from the labors of the workaday world and intended as a time for recollection. Undoubtedly, it was misused by thousands of Canadians and is the reason for the cry, "Abolish Armistice Day". "The war is over, the fighting is done. The world continues to spin and we must look ahead, not back," they say. Tell that to the families of those who lost loved ones so that we might be free. Suggest it to the shell of a once -whole man who suffered the agony of war. Say it to people who are grateful for the supreme sacrifice paid by Hien and boys so that we might reap the rewards. The familiar words of the poem, "In Flanders Fields", present a vivid picture of the cost of war. Imagine the young soldier cut down in the spring of life and buried beneath a plain white cross in a mass burial plot. Think of the frightened aloneness he must have felt before the sting of the bullet and the bitter anger he knew as he lay dying. Now say we should forget. Would you ' take away Christmas be- cause there are those who scorn Christ? Would you deny Victoria Day because there are some who deny the sovernity of the Queen? Would you abolish Thanksgiving Day because thousands are too filled with self-pity to realize that they have blessings for which to be grateful? Would there have been an Easter this year if there had been no Armistice Day? So long as there is a day in the year to commemorate the war dead, some meas- ure of good will come out of it. Even though many will never place a memorial wreath or bow their heads in a moment Of silent prayer, some grain of benefit will he sown. It is impossible to insure that a holiday will be kept for the purpose intended. You cannot be sure when you give a son the family car that he will not kill himself, but can be certain that he will never learn the responsibilities of driving if he is de- nied the use of a car. Even the worst of us are forced to give a fleeting thought to the underlying reasons for Remembrance Day -.-or any holiday. Children come to know the preci- ous legacy they will someday inherit. And each year, the true spirit of the holiday is expressed by thousands who visit a mem- orial cenotaph giving .visible witness of their gratitude. Let us never reduce this nation to de- liberate indifference and unfeeling right- eousness. Let us ever pay tribute to the heroic few who fought and died for the unequalled status we enjoy today. It could have been otherwise. from Then In the first 20 years of tele- phone service in Canada, the standard telephone was simply a board attached to the wall. Three boxes were mounted on it, one above another. The box in the middle contained the transmitter, and the mouthpiece was just a hole in the box. The receiver resembled the modern wall or desk telephone receiver in appearance. In the bottom box was the battery which sup- plied the "talking current" and the box on top housed the mag- neto generator which supplied the current for ringing. This was the era of the magneto or "crank" telephone system. Call by number was unknown until 1884, and in the early ex- changes the boys who were em- ployed as operators needed long memories. When a sub- scriber cranked his ringing generator, a small shutter asso- ciated with his line on the switchboard came down with a noise like a chunk of lead fall- ing on the floor. The operator plugged in on the caller's line and said, "Well?" The caller of those days simply said, "I want to talk to John Jones," and the operator was supposed to know from memory the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all subscribers in as To Now! his community. Canada's first multiple switch- board was installed in Toronto in 1884. By means of this switchboard, which gets its name from the fact that each subscriber line terminating at the switchboard is duplicated or "multiplied" at intervals along the board, each operator could reach the lines of all sub- scribers in the exchange area without trunking to another operator. By the turn of the century, long distance service had so improved that subscribers equipped with the new long dis- tance transmitter could tele- phone anywhere in Ontario or Quebec and to principal cities in the United States within a range of 1,000 miles. Then, with the new century, came a new era in telephony. The common battery system was in- troduced. It was discovered that, by centralizing the batteries in the exchange instead of housing them in each set, the company could introduce smaller a n d neater telephones which oper- ated more efficiently with no batteries to run down. Instead of turning the crank to signal the operator, the call- er merely lifted the receiver. This caused a small lamp to glow on the switchboard. The operator — by this time girls were almost universally em- ployed—then plugged in her set on his line and said, "Num- ber". As local service improved technically, so did the range of transmission forlong distance. By 1920 people could telephone anywhere in the United States or Canada. The dial era was then on the horizon. Actually, dial tele- phones had been conceived much earlier and several sys- tems had been tried out, but as a definite period in telephone development the dial system really began to be introduced widely in Canada in the early 1920s. Since 1924, the dial system has been gradually replacing the manual system in most large cities, and by 1933 small dial systems had been devel- oped for rural communities. Improvement followed im- provement, both in transmission and in equipment. The hand telephone was introduced in 1927, and later the modern com- bined set embodying in the base of the telephone itself all the equipment that formerly was contained in a separate bell - ZURICH Citizens NEWS PRINTED BY SOUTH HURON PUBLISHERS LIMITED, ZURICH MRS, SHIRLEY KELLER, Editor HERB TURKHEIM, Publisher J. E, HUNT, Plant Superintendent Authorized as Second Class Mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa and for the payment of postage in cash • Member: Canadian Weekly Newspapers Association Member Ontario Weekly Newspapers Association Member: Canadian Community Newspapers Representatives Subscription Rates: $3,00 per year in advance, in Canada; $4,00 in United Mates I aind and Foreign; single copies 7 cents, From My Window By Shirley Keller Time waits for no man, I know, but the way the days are going by lately, I have begun to wonder if Father Time is get- ting a little forgetful. It cer- tainly wouldn't be unusual, at his age, if he were becoming a bit absentminded. This seems to me to be the only logical explanation for the made pace of the clocks in this world. It is possible that the main spring of time has been wound up Joo.tight or too often with the result that every time- piece in the land is moving too fast. 1 can remember as a child that time was endless. It seem- ed to be an eternity from break- fast to bedtime and there was plenty of time to do all the things I had planned ... plus a few more. A week was like a month and every month seemed. like a year. Then I grew up a bit. Time grew a little cock-eyed even then. School hours were long and playtime was short. When I got into high school, the days went by quick enough, but the years went by too slowly. I had to wait forever to be sixteen. Then overnight, I was twen- ty-one. From that moment, time hurried by so fast that I started to forget my birthdays. Now, one week shoots by with the speed of lightning and the months are barely here before they are gone. I have hardly paid for the kids summer togs when I am forced to buy winter ones. The windows are just cleaned and they are smudged again. Some- times, the dishes aren't even done before it is time to make supper. The entire human race is in a tailspin. The rush is on everywhere: People are tear- ing around in ever-increasing circles in a dizzy rat -race to get some place that is changed by the time they get there. There is no such thing as arriving, only going. Just an hour or so on any highway will prove it to you if don't believe me. Sunday is the best clay for traffic observation. The drivers sit low behind the wheel for maximum pressure on the accelerator. A trip to grandma's house of to the next village becomes a life and death matter. The idea seems to be to risk death rather than lose a precious moment. More time is saved on the road than any- where else known to man, and much of it is permanently con- served. There, with bared teeth forming a wicked smile, the average person is changed to a speed demon dedicated to clock - stopping and time -robbing. To the Hien and women pressed for time, driving a car is one way to get even. If there are still 24 hours in a day, it is a sure bet they are shorter. If the hours aren't shorter, the minutes are defin- itely faster. It has to be. Why else would it be that we do less, see less, hear less, live less, love less and care less than our forefathers? I figure that Father Time must be at least a million years old. We retire a pian at 65. Maybe Father Time should be pensioned off after so many years of faithful service. Per- haps a younger man would get time back on an even keel so that we could catch our breath. If this keeps up we will all die from sheer exhaustion. Is there any point in pro- longing the observance of that middle-aged ` and melancholy occasion known as Remem- brance Day? It means nothing to about 80 per cent of the several mil- lion immigrants to Canada since World War II. How would feel about Remembrance Day if you were a former German tank. commander, or an Italian ex - infantryman? Both the world wars of this century are ancient history to school children, and the old cliches of the day—"sacrifice", "laid down their lives", "fought for freedom"—leave them sol- emn but uncomprehending. And last, but not least, it in- terferes with business. Mer- chants will tell you, with tears as big as turnips in their eyes, that they'll go broke if they have to close upon November 11. Manufacturers will assure you that the one -day interrup- tion of production will force them to the wall. In view of all this, is there any sense in hanging on to this special day? Why not cut it down to a one-hour coffee break on November 11? With in a couple of years, this could be. further reduced to a two -min- utes silence. And within a de- cade, the whole archaic busi- ness of remembering a few mil- lion dead men could be dis- carded. Is there any meaning in it any more? I don't know how youfeel, but my answer is a resounding, reactionary Yes! It is based not on facts, but on emotion. I'm a sucker for Remem- brance Day. There's something to mist the eyes in the jaunty gallantry of the old vets as they try to match the swing they marched to 46 years ago, here a stiff Ieg swinging, there, a pinned -up sleeve. And there's something almost equally touching in the vets of World War II. • They straighten their backs, pull in their pots, ignore their kids waving at them from the sidewalk, and for a few brief moments toss away 20 -odd years and become tough Canadian troops, striding toward their destiny. During the two -minutes' sil- ence at the Cenotaph, I remem- ber: I remember the two lads, a Canadian and a New Zealand- er, with whom I shared a tent in Normandy. Both shot down within three days. I remember rrankie, English, volved. 18. He had a baby face, a big grin and a run of bad luck. One day he dropped a 500 -pound bomb , purely by accident, in a neighboring army camp, and the troops were rather hostile to airmen for a few weeks. An- other time he was sent to Eng- land on the beer run. Flying back ,across the chcannel, he spotted two German fighters to attack him, jettisoned his extra tanks and prepared to de- fend himself. The extra tanks, full of beer, went into the drink. The German fighters turned out to be two oil speck on his windscreen. And he was nearly lynched when he arrived and told his story. His luck ran out one day. Hit by flak, he bailed out and his parachute failed to open. I remember the dreary No- vember day six of us carried a coffin up a bleak hillside to a stony cemetery in North Wales. It contained what they'd been able to scrape up of Paddy Burns, Australian, aged 20, after he flew into a hill. And I remember half a hun- dred others: roaring boys, laughing boys, timid boys, gay boys, and boys scared stiff. And when the Last Post plays their sweet requiem in the still autumn air, I'll be there, my face all crumpled and a lump as big as a boiled egg in my throat. Scrap Remembrance D a y ? Not as long as I can still cry, and there's free beer at the Legion Hall after. the parade. 0 Time Extended Toronto — Deadline for sub- mission of applications under the Federal -Provincial Centen- nial Grants program has been extended to August, 1965. The new date was announced by Hon. Maurice Lamontagne, secretary of state and minister responsible for Centennial af- fairs, and Hon. James Auld, On- tario's minister of Tourism and Information and chairman of the Provincial Centennial coin- mittee. It is expected a further amendment will be added re- quiring municipalities to advise the secretary of the advisory committee in writing before March 31, 1965, than an appli- cation will be filed. After this date, grants will be based in whole or in part on the popula- tion of the municipality in - A FINAL. FAREWELL With the dawn of the new dial system on November 15, six local telephone operators will close up the switchboard for the last time. Gone will be the little services that were pro- vided by the girls and in their place will be a cold, impersonal buzzing in the ear, The author of the following poetry will be unnamed forever but the message contained will live on in the hearts of every- one who never quite got around to expressing thanks and appre- elation for the repeated assist- ance of those at the Zurich switchboard. EULOGY TO A COUNTRY SWITCHBOARD Good-bye to the good old switchboard, With its trials, its joys, and its tears. Now the dial is installed and its over A job we've had many years, There's Olive and Annie and Grace, And -Helen and Betty and Marge. They're retired and say it's all over, And no more calls free of charge. We have many a story to tell you, About questions and answers we give. We wonder how many a farmer, Will make all his cattle live. Many memories we'd like to remember, And many we'd like to .forget. As like the kind and sweet old lady, Who says, "I didn't get them yet". And then there's the blustery farmer Who has never a kind word indeed. He'll give you a tongue lashing always, And never says thanks for your deed. Many years have gone by and I ponder, Of how we can take and forget, Though kindness and insults we've taken Much happiness fills our hearts yet. Many friends we have made through these years. And simply because we all know, It's hard to believe that stupid operator Doesn't know how everything should go. The moral to this story, Is hard for you to believe: But just put your finger in the right hole, So you will never hear, "Number Please". —Annonymous. ' clwc s SERVEDFINE MODS INING OUR MODERN DINROOM ENJOY THE FINE ATMOSPHERE OF OUR ATTRACTIVE ALPINE ROOM Our Entire Hotel is Equipped with "Hi-Fi" System for your Listening Pleasure WE SPECIALIZE IN STEAKS -CHICKEN - FISH Dominion Hotel PHONE 70 — ZURICH Business and Professional Directory OPTOMETRY J. E. LONGSTAFF OPTOMETRIST SEAFORTH — Phone 791 Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday: 9 a.m. to 12 noon CLINTON — Dial 482-7010 Monday and Wednesday 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Norman Martin OPTOMETRIST Office Hours: 9 -12 A.M. — 1:30-6 P.M. Closed all day Wednesday Phone 235-2433 Exeter LEGAL Bell & Laughton BARRISTERS, SOLICITORS & NOTARY PUBLIC ELMER D. BELL, Q.C. C. V. LAUGHTON, Q.C. Zurich Office Tuesday Afternoon EXETER 235-044Q For Safety EVERY FARMER NEEDS Liability Insurance. For Information Abouf All Insurance — Call BERT KLOPP Phone 93 r 1 or 220 Zurich Representing CO-OPERATORS INSURANCE ASSOCIATION AUCTIONEERS ALVIN WALPER PROVINCIAL LICENSED AUCTIONEER For your sale, large or small courteous and efficient service at all times. "Service that Satisfies" PHONE 119 DASHWOOD. ACCOUNTANTS ROY N. BENTLEY PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT GODERICH P.O. Box 478 Dial 524-9521. J. W. Hatberer Insurance Agency "All Kinds of Insurance" PHONE 266 — ZURICH FUNERAL DIRECTORS WESTLAKE Funeral Home AMBULANCE and PORTABLE OXYGEN SERVICE Phone 89J or 89W ZURICH HURON and ERIE aREBENruReS CANADA TRUST CERTIFICATES 5IA% for 3, 4 and 5 years 5% for 2 years 43/4% for 1 year J. W. HABERER Authorized Representative PHONE 161 ZURICH