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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1983-02-23, Page 2?iiii 3iUrOfl «xpositoi' Since 1860, Serving Me Community lint Incorporating ,kBrussels Post founded 1872 12 Main St. '527-0240 Publlshed.at SEAFORTH, ONTARIO every Wednesday afternoon by Signal -Star Publishing Limited Jocelyn A. Shrier, Publisher Susan White, Editor H.W. (Herb) Turkheim, Advertising Manager Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Community Newspaper Association and Audit Bureau of Circulation A member of the Ontario Press Council Subscription rates: Canada 517.75 a year (In advance) outside Canada $50. a year (in advance) Single Copies- 50 cents each SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, FEBRUARY 23, 1983 Second class mail registration number 0696 The counties It's safe to say that the people of Huron and the people of Perth are equally satisfied with their ,county forms of government. Both Huron and Perth county councils are respected as offering economical, no-frills style services to their taxpayers. Both have in recent years dropped deputy reeves (except In the case of the biggest municipalities) from county council, a cost cutting measure that has also added to the efficiency of the county systems. We're sure too that residents of both counties were interested In reports on page 5 of last week's Expositor which detailed the -pay received In 1982 bOhe elected members of each county council.. While the Perth total was lower, individual Perth reeves received higher amounts, ranging from $5,000 to $8,000 than did those in Huron, where the 'highest paid reeve received $5,456.33. Off the cuff we're inclined to consider the two counties as being a lot alike. As far as countycouncil goes however, they're not. Perth has about half as many county councillors as does Hugon. The city of Stratford and town of St. Marys are separate entities, and Huron county council governs a bigger rural area and a far greater number of municipalities than does Huron. Perth county council, with two full meetings a month, gets together twice as often as does Huron county council. For those reasons, and because the accounting systems are set up differently it is difficult, and probably dangerous, to compare the amounts earned by the members of the two bodies. We wonder just a bit though at the fact that Huron's warden in 1982 earned a total of $29,467, while Perth's was paid just $12,676. These days being warden is a full time job - plus. Thinking taxpayers who see these dedicated individuals out on the road night after night representing their counties won't begrudge them a cent. And there's no reason to be personally critical of any of the individuals who've held ,either county's highest office. The expenses of a Huron warden, with perhaps twice as many municipalities to cover, are bound to be higher than his Perth counterpart's. But in future, just because the counties border each other, it might help each county council's credibility with the public, if an explanation was made of how hard our wardens work to earn every penny. - S.W.. A penny saved? OpOnfion The recent gas war in many municipalities throughout southwestern Ontario saw customers line-up at the pumps to fill -up with Inexpensive gasoline. It is hard to understand why people with tanks hastily loaded onto \tJ e back of pickup trucks and wagons travelled to the pumps, and then waited for hours on end to fill up. Throwing caution to the wind, many used containers which were not safe. The tanks should have been bolted down and grounded to the truck frame. Safety aside, a simple telephone call to a supplier would have told anyone they could have gasoline delivered for one to three cents per litre more than the pump price. Considering the time spent travelling to and from town, waiting at the pumps and the time spent to fill a 200 gallon tank, a farmer would have saved money. Some could also have considered problems they will incur in the next few months with rust. In a few cases, tanks which sat in drive -sheds or high on platforms for the past 10, 15 or 20 years, were moved, loaded on a truck and given a bumpy ride on a sideroad. Any rust collected on the insides of the tank will have been jarred loose. The end result will be clogged fuel filters in automobiles and tractors, and 'a worthles tank of gas. Coloured fuel has nothing on rusty fuel. We heard stories about those who went out of their way to save (??) money. In a neighbouring town, a farmer took his honey wagon to a nearby creamery and asked to have the inside of the tank, steam cleaned so that he could transport gas, not honey. Another customer, the story goes, upon arriving home with his 200 gallons of cheap gas, realized his tractor and loader could not lift the enormous weight from the back of his pickup truck. He had the bright idea of attaching a chain to the tank and slowly pulling the tank off the truck. He would use the loader to gently "drop" the tank to the'ground. The tank was dragged off the truck, but the loader could not support the weight, causing the tank to crash to the ground, splinting the tank in half. The end result? 200 gallons of "cheap" gas seeped. into the ground. And then there was the story about the man who loaded a tank on a. wagon, travelled 10 miles for cheap gas, waited two hours and decided he had waited long enough. While he was on the way home without his gas, an O.P.P. officer stopped him and proceeded to write a traffic violation For improper transportation of a hazardous material, After he wasted most of a morning, the farmer got some consolation and saved a $28 fine when he explained to the officer the tank was empty. The moral of the story is, the next time there is a gas war, use common sense before taking drastic measures. You will probably save money. R.W. by C ladwc4, 4©wnoh@nd A green Christmas in this part of the country is unusual but not unheard of. However, seeing a snowman being protected by an unbrella on Christmas Day is enough to make anyone do a double take. The makeshift umbrella looked like a cardboard box or a clothes basket turned upside down. I wonder whether it helped the old boy to survive the rain that fell all day and turned the green Christmas into a rather muddy one, It was only the first of many surprises that the winter of 82/83 has dished out. Last year everyone asked, "Can you believe this winter?" The snow kept piling up. covering cars, sheds and porches, and people wondered when it would stop. Now famous "stream- ers" swept off Lake Huron -dumping their loads on the "lee of Lake Huron" or the "banana belt" as some of us cynically call Western Ontario. ,This year people are still asking, "Can you believe this winter?" But the reasons are different. A sifting of snow is the most we've received. Skis t, seldomleave the garage, toboggans stand in corners and snowmobiles hardly run long enough to get warmed up. Besides the fun missed by winter sports' enthusiasts, lack of snow has caused problems for people who make their living from seasonal sports. Some of us, who are less energetic in the winter, have guilt feelings. We're torn between empathy for our fellowman and our personal enjoyment of this "easy" winter. The unusual conditions have not been confined to Canada. In E trope, professional skiers had difficulty finding enough snow for their World Cup competition. • But, the most surprised eeople this winter were probably the Californians who woke up to snow one morning. Typically, the kids didn't mind. Back in WesternOntario, meteorologists have spotted systems headed our way. We've held our breath thinking, "Now we're gonna get itl" Storms have come close, but surprisingly they've stopped before they've reached our area and or they've taken detours. t ne ground hog didn't see his shadow, and a few robins have come back. Could we be surprised by an early spring this year? Maybe, but March can be a tricky month. Some of us are still expecting a wintry surprise package before IS over. Polar Daize dipper Spare the rod and spoil the child? With parents screaming "Back to the Basics", teachers trying to remember what the basics are, and Ministries of Education never letting the left hand know what the right hand is trying to do, it'I almost inevitable that the subject of corporal punishment in the schools is revived. It's a perennial, and it's always good for a headline, whether you are for or against. It's almost as popular as capital punish- ment for criminals. And you have no idea, gentle reader, how many people, including students, are in favor of that. I'm quite sure that a referendum would show a majority of Canadians would vote to restore that particular form of official murder. But while criminals make up a compara- tively small segment of oI r society, rotten kids are always there in great numbers. And there's always someone who wants to pound them, vicariously, through the school system. Usually, the business of beating kids is seen in black or white. Or black and blue. On the one hand, you have the fundamentalists, who go back to the Old Testament, "Spare the fod and spoil the child." These people forget that several of the disciples were fishermen, and that what this particular one meant was, "lf you don't let the kid use your spare rod once in a while, he'll grow up to be a lousy angler." I don't remember Jesus ever saying 5usca @awd 5pOig* b� ©QO0}simooG y anything about pounding kids, but 1 may be wrong. On the other side of the schtick are the other crazies: psychologists and such, who think a kid who is thumpbd will be warped for life; mothers who read articles. by psychologists; and former child -beaters who are now vice -principals. And in between, as usual, are all the confused, decent and sensible people like you and me, who have given our kids the odd belt, and felt rotten about it. Both the extreme camps, of course, are full of crap, In the first group, we have people who were whipped unmercifully when they were kids, and now, by some weird type of logic, insist it was good for them. And in the second group are all the other people who were whipped unmercifully when they were kids and are trying to prove that that is what has made them queer ever since. A plaque on both their houses. Most of us olders were whipped, now and again, but not unmercifully, and we deserved every stroke of the hairbrush, skelp of the yardstick, and swish of the willow -switch. It didn't warp us physically or psycho- logically. It taught us something about the ,society we would be living in as adults — that there are certain limits, and if you transgress them, you take your licks. My mother used to work over my kid brother and me about every two weeks. whether we neided it or not. She used a fly -swatter, which has a sting like a scorpion, or a yard -stick, which transfers fire to the bum. when we got under the bed and the flyswatter wouldn't reach. It did us no harm whatever, and probably saved her sanity. My dad, like most men leaving the dirty work to the mother, rarely laid a hand on us. But when he did....boy some hand. The same kid brother and I were in the same class in school one year, and once a week, our teacher, Old Mary Walker, would give us a good strapping, along with a few other dilinquents. We thought the world of her and she of us. I've smacked my own kids, occasionally, and the grandboys, but their smoldering anger and mine, never lasted more than 15 minutes, because the smacking was not done in malice, and they knew they were asking for it. Beating kids in school? Many parents would like it done. Many others would have a lawyer on you. There are only two reasons fora teacher to use strap: 1) he or she is a poor teacher; 2) it adds a little drama to the humdrum of the classroom. In fifty years, I've never seen strapping scare anybody or deter anybody. A word to the bleeding hearts. There. are many more insidious ways to warp a child's personality than physical punishment. The real sadists of the classroom, and they are very few nowadays, are those Who use personal harassment, hectoring, and sar- casm. .But I have no time for the bully in the classroom. Teachers who know their stuff and have some strength of. character have few discipline problems. However, lets think for a moment about the sensitive. young woman teacher who asks a lout to do something,. and he says, "Screw you."? So the punk gets a "suspension" for a few days (translation: holiday). And the teacher sits, shattered, among her crumbled ideals. What to do? I'd turf him out of school for a year, and let his parents put up with him. Serve both parties right. Any opinions? Let's have them. What's 'next? A test tube treated race? The arrest of former Nazi Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie focuses attention again on a period in history when men had the ultimate power; the ability to play god with other person's lives. This reminder of the horrors of the Nazi death camps, -Hie hospitals where scientists experimented with human guinea pigs and the other atrocities comes at a time when our , modern society has more power to play God than at any time in history. The comparison should not be made too strongly because obviously we are not seeing the tyranny of the few in North America today that took place in Europe under Hitler. ui Machuria under the Japanese or. more recently, Kampuchea under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge but we are, as never before, making life and death decisions with other peoples' lives. It is not any politican gone berserk who is making these decisions but ordinary human beings. Through the miracles of modern medicine we are faced with new decisions. The case of Karen Annie Quinlan first brought one of these dilemmas to public notice. For the first time we were able to see that modern science had the ability to keep a person alive when they were no longer really byf KG)0 (�li hcm0340fi alive. Humans suddenly we're placed in the awkward position of having to decide what constituted life and when did people have the right to pull the plug on the machines that keep a person "Alive". Today in several cities around the world, clinics are being set up so that more ',test tube babies" can be born. The process calls for ,thoval of eggs from women who can of normally have children and their fertilization in laboratories with sperm from the husband. Once an egg is fertilized and growing it is implanted back into the female again. The process is, of course, costly but the feeling that people should have the right to have their own children is so strong that our society is happy to pay the price. Another costly process along the same line is the special prenatal care units set-up in some large hospitals to help women who arc having trouble carrying a child full term. But at the same time as we are spending tens of thousands of dollars per child to bring children into the world for people who want the happiness of having their own children. no'l adopting. we are spending millions across the country to terminate the lives of thousands of unwanted fetuses. Where once the Lord giveth and taketh away, today modern science does it. And around the corner lies another area with potential for even greater god -like power for man, Scientists have already learned how to manipulate the very essence of life: the molecules that make us what we are. Science fiction movies have lived for years on the ability of the mad scientist to create strange new monsters. Today, the fiction portion of the science fiction has been removed. We have the ability to create whole new forms of life. Wiwi then is uic next step? Can scientists resist the temptation to create a superior human race? Hitler's visions of granduer took him into the field of breed improvement for his master race although his techniques were simply those used by farmers for centuries, breeding the best male to the best female. Scientists have much more sophis- ticated and direct ways of doing the same In recent decades science has .won from society the recognition that if something can be done, it should be. Someday soon, despite our infatuation wittrscience and the power it gives us, we are going to have to stop and ask ourselves just how much of this power is good for us. We can. after all, build cars thatgo 200 miles an hour but we realize that on ordinary street conditions, human beings cannot handle a car going faster than 100 kilometers an hour (and often not even then). In the Biblical story of the tower of Babel, God came down and ended man's love of power by scattering people around the world speaking different languages. That doesn't seem to be a solution these days though it might be preferrable to another possible solution: man falling victim to his own ultimate God -like invention, the atomic bomb. Here's to the heroes who teach us lots I don't know about yours, but my life would be quite a bit less interesting without my heroes and hero- ines. You know. those people we look up to, model our- selves on and look to both for examples of the best ways of getting through our day to day experience, the good and the bad, the troughs and the waves. The dictionary says they are people of noble qualities, great deeds or bravery. Some of them are people I've never met. Some of them are long gone. This summer for exam- ple suddenly realized that confirmed fiction addict though 1 am, 1 was devouring a number of biographies, the life stories of several women who'd lived vital lives and grew old with grace. contrib- uting to their families and the world around them. I hope I was learning from their examples, I know that after I'd read about them and digested their approaches to life, I was looking for some answers and routes that might work in my own. But many of my heroes and heroines, and likely yours, are people whose spheres of operation are much smaller. Ordinary people, some might call them. People like you and me who live here or in other little places and who do the best they can with what they've got, day after day. year after year. Some of them are the people who make things happen. But some -of them're behind the scenes, self-effac- ing. modest people who work • hard, keep their noses clean and best of all as far as I'm RxiNgegowg too day b}y $1l iii V/MG. concerned, are free with compliments and praise but rarely have much that's bad to say about anybody. They're rare these people. in this critical age (or in any age. I guess) but boy, when you find them. get to know them and remember them, because they are gems. You never know when you're going to meet them, which is one of the reasons life is so interesting. And you may not officially consider them your heroes, because you haven't thought much about it. But they are there. influencing you. showing you better ways to accomplish things, or just being darned nice people to be around. There s a sad reason that I've been thinking about heroes this week. One of the people I've learned a lot from and whom 1 consider a superh, example of how to live life with humour. intelli- gence and thoughtfulness died recently. She's left a void. but she's also left memories with a large family, a huge circle of friends and most of the people she came to know in 95 years of Iismg fully. She didn't move the world, but she left an imprint on a lot of minds of an attitude to life and the world around here that's more valuable and certainly more long lasting than a lot of so called earth shaking things. She lived all of her life within 20 miles of Seaforth but her mind was open and interested in what was happening far away, in what happened long ago and what might happen far in the future. She was the sort who would reassure a first time mother. anxious about a two-year-old's thumb suck- ing with the following story. "I came from a big family and when we walked to school. oh I must have been five or six. I'd get one of my brothers to carry my books so 1'd have my hand free to suck my thumb. 1 turned out alright (she was maybe 93 at the time). And (with a twinkle in her eye) 1 broke the habit." That twinkle was often in her eye. Her wit and sense of humour kept her in touch with friends several generations younger as well as those of her own age. Keep in touch she did, with Christmas and birthday cards and letters to a wide variety of people, some of whom she hadn't seen since they were children together years ago.. A very special lady. A self-sufficient. uncomplain• ing lady Who greeted people with warmth and a smile. Those of us who knew her were lucky. And if we can muster even half her cheer and style, we'll be living lives that are very full indeed. indeed. There aren't too many people you can say that about. She is missed.