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The Huron Expositor, 1983-05-11, Page 2/iuron �i�: fxposior Since 1860, Serving the Community first Incorporating Brussels Post founded 1872 12 Main St. 527-0240 Published at SEAFORTH, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning Susan White, Managing,Edltor C.D. "Doug" Worrell, Advertising Manager Jocelyn A. Shrler, Publisher Op in on r Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Community Newspaper Association and Audit Bureau of Circulation A member of the Ontario Press Council Subscription rates: Canada $17.75 a year (in advance) outside Canada $50. a year (in advance) Single Copies - 50 cents each nia SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1983 Second class mail registration number 0696 - A lesson fr�m here Seaforth is lucky to have an active horticultural society. The group has an annual plant sale, gets trees for members at low cost, looks after Main St. planting and generally does a lot to keep the town looking clean and green. The Town too has started a nursery to bring along its own trees and to replant the many, many mature trees that have been cut down on Seaforth. streets. The resurgence of tree -planting in Seaforth is a positive, optimistic note that isn't necessarily being echoed other places in the country. The good citizens of London, who probably value the big old trees that line their streets as much as Seaforthites do, were warned they may lose the Forest City label unless more is done there to replant trees. Maples planted at the turn of the century are nearing the end of their lifespan. They were originally planted because early settlers had cleared all vegetation, giving the city a decidedly shell-shocked look. Anyone who's seen early photos of Seaforth streets knows much the same progression happened here. And the big old trees that lines Goderich St., for example, 20 years ago are gone. But thanks to local people who care, about such things, replacements have been planted and they're coming along. On a much larger scale, the Scier(ce Council of Canada warns that the country's forest industry is thr atetied because of a failure to replant. Each year 8,000 square kilometres of anadian forest are cut but only about 2,000 are replanted or 'seeded. It's an emergency, the counci says, and without a big increase In spending on reforestation, the incl stry will stagnate and many jobs will be lost. Adding insult to injury,' the unci) warns that Canada is critically short of professional foresters. We have one active forest manager for every 3,800 square kilometres of trees, compared with one for every 150 square kilometres in the U.S. _ The fqrest industry and government need to take the long term view and invest/ more in making sure Canada has trees to harvest in the next century. Government and the forest industry could learn a lesson from towns like Seaforth, and groups like our horticultural society. -S.W. Members welcome Believe it or not. it's been eight years since the Blyth Festival presented its first play on the stage of Blyth .Memorial Hall. Only through the loyal support of the people of our region. the hard workers at the Festival, the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council have we been able to be financially successful and we would like to continue to grow and stay in the "black". Mav is our annual fund-raising campaign month, It is also the month we start to think of summertime. sunshine, and the warm. radiant glow of a mid summer's day... these things will soon be upon us and with them will conic that celebrational sense of the opening, of Blyth Festival '83 on June 24. We are so fortunate to have a successful theatre that is making headlines across the country, right at our fingertips to enjoy. .land Amos has another exciting season planned for us with an excellent cross-section of topical themes. You can get a head start on getting the best scats by subscribing early through our handy voucher packages which are on sale until June 18 al only $20 for four vouchers that can then be exchanged for Sportsmanship? tickets anytime. This ,is a. saving .of, $8 by purchasing early. Please join us in -continuing to make the Blyth Festival a success by purchasing a general membership at $10; a supporting membership at $25; an asso 'ate member- ship at $50; a Patron at $1 r more. Tax deductible receipts are is ed for all donations 510 and over. I'm sure you have noticed by this point of my "plea" that 1 refer to our theatre as the Blyth Festival. Why not the Blyth Summer Festival? Because we are active in the fall, winter and spring as well. Our program of music. theatre and children's performances featuring renowned names: the art gallery and the dedicated 80 -member choir the Blyth Festival Singers that pulls members from as far as Huron Park and Listowel, all keep Memorial Hall busy year-round. We extend a special invitation for you to share in the excitement of live Canadian theatre. We know your afternoon or evening will be pleasureably spent. Wouldn;t you like to become involved as a new member (or if you've been a member, wouldn't you like to renew your member- ship)? Back a winner. Call the box office for more information at 523-9300 or myself at 523.4331. I hasc never written a letter of this type before but I have found out something that 'has realb upset mc. A w hilt back I said to my son Paul" Are you going to play men's baseball this year?" He said "No. I would never be picked." I let this drop as Paul has never been greatly sports -inclined. But since then 1 have heard some disturbing facts. (correct me if I have been informed w rong.' ' 1 Several of our young men especially 'ii to 20 -year-olds had never been "picked" so arc on no team. I had aln as s thought everyone who showed a desire to play hall had their chance to play. How arc we to teach our young men sportsmanship if they arc not allowed to participate in our town sport men's softball" I don't consider int sportsmanship - if all arc not allow cd to participate. So if you arc good. 577717 are pick cd and if not good too bad Is his srortntanship^. 1 don't think so. It is not haw you play the game but that ,nu played and do sour hest - this is sportsmanship Helen Stewart Elizabeth Herman, President Board of Directors Blyth Centre for the Arts Walking tall GRADE THREE STUDENTS of Idella Wilson at the Brussels public school are gettin up in the world. McDonald Lumber has assisted In Providing stilts for the klds. School. custodian, George Cousins, has been kept "hopping" assembling the stilts. The new fad at the school, Ken Scott principal said, has really caught on. A kid at heart. Mr. Scott admitted he was successful on his third try In getting up on the stilts. Besides a great recess and noon hour activity for students, stilts teach them cg, -ordination and balancing. The stilted activity has spread from the grade three class to other students at the school. (Photos by Wassink) Canoeing the Maitland, in mid -McKillop The -kid, age 5. is the proud owner of a IS -foot canoe. "1 knew she won something, but I wasn't clear just what," said a friend from London vhose comments when we meet once a year or so show she reads the paper cover to cover. It was the canoe, about a month ago, thanks to Seaforth Optimists and their justly famous canoe race. When we got the call announcing her win on a Sunday night, her first response was a tentdtive "do 1 have to go in it?" But by an hour or so the usual balance of power in our household had been restored and she was firmly telling her dad and 1: "I might let you guys use it." Her babysitter's husband set her straight on that. "You'll have to let your parents use it. You need them to carry it for you." Her face fell. But facts is facts and canoeing is fast Thanks for the story Through our press clipping service, we received a copy of a story 'Nurse plays important role in home care', which appeared in your issue of April 6, 1983. We appreciate the support given by your publication to the work we do on )fehalf of about 6.300 pfrfsically handicapped children and young adttfts in Ontario. We have provided service since 1922 and are now the oldest and largest charity of its kind in Canada. i am enclosing a pamphlet describing the services offered by The Easter Seal Society. Yop may wish to keep this on file for reference. Thank you again for the coverage. Norman D. Lawson Information Officer 2i mcAhling o©y -ZMgaGn S%Gia@ becoming the spring equivalent of cross country skiing at our place. Something the whole family can do together, and without the need for any costly and time-consuming travel first. Thanks to all, the rails this. year „(and I know, Cin the only one in the, county Saying this) the, various _tributaries of the Maitland in mid -McKillop where we live allow for some pretty snappy canoeing. A recent three-hour jaunt from east of Winthrop to Grieve's bridge •was pretty i exciting for the three of us, the dog and a small friend of the canoe's owner. (You realize we are talking pre -beginner here. None of us are of canoe race calibre. We know which end of the paddle goes in the water. Just.) . .We saw a eouple of ducks, a snake, several hardy fishermen; somelovely scenery •cod got a. whole new perspective on the lay of -the land...front the river rather than the road ..in our own neighbourhood. The girls learned a lot. From the paddlers' cautions to each other about rough water ahead they picked up some new terms. "is this white water or green water?" they asked constantly. "Green water? Wheeew. We made it." 1 learned too. Learning to canoe with your husband is akin to having him teach you to drive, not .a great idea. Instead of polite comments like "a little more to the right, please" you get anguished yells of "why the heck did you paddle on that side, you dummy?" But with every Weekend'spractise we get a little more confident. 1 wear earplugs on the river's tricky stretches. The owner of the cant,. and 1 let the mane in the bow, er...stern,... the back 'of the bdat, go canoeing by himself .when it's cold and too rough for green water fans. The only thing that bothers us now is the half hour's attaching and uxgattaching from the roof of the car that we go through before and after we take that 10 minute drive down the road to the river. Why the press is its own worst enemy If democracy is to be safeguarded, we have been told endless times, one of the precious freedoms that must be protected is the freedom of the press. Unfortunately, it may be that the greatest danger to democracy and to freedom of the press is the press itself. No one argues more for freedom of the press than the press. Bring up the subject of censorship and members of the press see their freedom threatened. Bring in govern- ment proposals to limit the growth of chain ownership of newspapers and some people in the media see a danger to freedom of the press. Leave the chains alone to expand, and some other people in the media say freedom of the press is threatened. And Id any politician in power complain about the way the media has covered a story and the press treats us to visions of jack-botted shock troops closing down the presses in some totalitarian country. Yet the real dao ' r to free expression in the media is that the respect people have for the media may become so low that nobody believes what they read in the paper or see b�9 a@B4G� Rcv0o4ow on television anymore. Already the credibi- lity of the news media, according to surveys, is just slightly better than the credibility of politicians. And some members of the media seem to be doing their darndest to earn even less respect for their profession. BOOS Recently there was the case of the Montreal newspaper which gave blazing headlines to the fact that Joe Clark was booed in Toronto when he spoke French. The clear implication in this French -language paper was that the Conservatives in Toronto were all racists and bigots. Maybe some were, but the booing was heard only when Joe Clark spoke French, not when David Crombie or Brian Mulroney spoke French. Perhaps there was some other cause than anti -French sentiment behind the booing. But the report in the Montreal newspaper was not a case of fine journalism but a political act, interpreting an incident in a very personal way that could change the view of the people of the whole province. There is also the case of the "budget leak", where the television camera picked up pages being flipped by Mark Lalonde the day before he was to present the budget. The television crew and their station both claim that there was no attempt made to get a peak at the budget and that may have been true initially. But the credibility of that argument is shot to pieces by the fact that the station was not content to just use the video tape it had but instead stop photographed the pages, photocopied them and distributed them to the leader of the opposition. UPROAR The resulting uproar and demands for the resignation of Lalonde may have brought gladness to the hearts of Eric Neilson and all, who hate Lalonde and the Liberals and would like -to see them out of office, but it didh't win a lot of respect for the media. These are just two of hundreds of cases a year that eat away at the trust the public has for the media, and it's too bad because, cliches aside, we do depend on journalists to save democracy. Without being well-inform- ed we cannot make the decisions we must make to make democracy work. If we don't have the facts, how can we decide, for instance, the right or wrong of Reagan policies in Central American or the correct course to have our government take in the confrontation with the Soviets over the nudear arms race. The danger is, that in its irresponsibility, the media may, like the boy who cried wolf, not be believed when it really is needed. How Hellyer destroyed the armed forces One of the greatest pieces of miscasting (and there have been many) in that longrunning melodrama called The Liberals Ride Again - And Again - And Again, with the naming of one Paul Hellyer as Minister of Defence, back in the Pearson days. Hellyer's qualifications were awesome: ambition; an abysmal lack of knowledge of things military; a total insensitivity toward anything not affecting his own career and ambition. Spring- is the poets' special time Spring is a time 11 sunshine and rain. budding trees and flow yrs. the songs of birds and the smell of warming earth - a time for poems and philosophers to excel. Henn Wadsworth Longfellow wrote '1 npvn wtdo the portals of the spring. In welcome the procession of the flowers, With their gas banners. and the birds that sing Theo song of songs front their aerial towers •sn unkm.o n author philosophied Ni ,, t mind yesterday. life is today' Nest', mind vcsterdas, lav it away' Ncser mind anything civet and done Here is a new moment. lit with new sun Cama (,'11i mdgs iotsd • Maid, brings hrect s loud and shrill. Stir, the dancing daffodil Someone els,, nnteri • A nice thing at'^nt spring is that it always says it with flowers Perhaps that was what Mary Dawson Hughes was thinking of when she wrote un End2. I would like to send you the essence 01 myriad sunkissed flowers. Or the lilting song. as it flows along. Of a brook through fairy bowers." From The Good World by Edgar A Guest comes "The lord must have liked us. I say when I see The bloom of the rose and the green of the tree file flash of the wing of a bird flitting by, 1 he gold of WC grain and the blue of the sky. The clover helow and the tall pines above. Oh there's something about us the good Lord must love." Robert I nveman wrote in the Rain Song: It isn't raining ramp to me. $uscg and opk@ If s raining daffodils; In every dimpling drop I see Wildflowers on the hills. A cloud of gray engulfs the day And overwhelms the town: 1t isn't raining rain to me, It's raining roses down. It isn't raining rain to me. But fields of clover bloom. Where any buccaneering bee May find a bed and room. A health, then, to the happy, A fig to him who frets: It isn't raining ram to me. It's raining violets." Ruby Archer asked: "Know you how roses came to grace the world? A feather from an angel's pinion fell. A sunbeam caught and kissed 11 as it whirled, And left it blushing on the world to dwell." by D61111 $real@y A political opportunist from the word go, he 1 leapt at the chance to be Defence Mi ister, as a step toward his next ambition, Minikter of Finance, and an easy shuffle from theta, with a little nudging, politicial knifing, and -treading on tender toes, into the Big Job. But Minister f Defence, in peace -time, is a rather tame, backwater spot. Hellyer had to do something to force himself into the limelight. He, or one of his ill-advised advisors, came up with a gimmick bound to gather headlines. It wasn't quite as dramatic as Moses parting the Red Sea, but his scheme, and scheme it was, propelled the political climber onto the front pages_ Hellyer's plan was simple, as simpleton's plans often area. It was to destory the morale of the fighting forces by rolling navy, army and air force into a glutinous ball, stuffing it into a plastic -green -bag -colored uniform, and declaring from the housetops that Canada was the first country in the world to unify its armed forces. It wasn't promoted as destruction, of course. The PR machine ran smoothly. The plot would increase efficiency, save money, improve communications, create instant pie in the sky, and stop servicemen's noses running. When Hellyer went to work on Canada's proud armed forces, an axe in one hand and a sledgehammer in the other, almost single-handedly he accomplished what Ger- mans had not managed in two world wars - send those forces -reeling into disarray, dismay and despondency, from which they have never recovered. Exprit de corps was turned into dispirited corpse. Tradition was swept into the scuppers. Proud regimental names were trampled under -foot. Color and gallantry and high standards and self-sacrifice were put into the mincer, and came out as the dull -green Canadian Armed Forces. What is even more astounding is that the armed forces put up with it. If such a thing were attempted in Britain, the fleet would mutiny. the army would rebel, and the air force would drop a couple on Whitehall. Can you imagine the enormous foofawraw in the U.S, if some political upstart tried to pull such a deal? the resultant clamor would resound form the Very heeirens. A few, a very few senior officers in Canada's forces, mostly naval men, fought back. They were promptly purged. Not garotted, or shot. Simply retired early. Sincer Hellyer's hatchet job, the Canadian forces have gone steadily, and not slowly, downhill. When he began, we had one of the four or five best navies in the world, about the third largest airforce, and an army that had fought with the best of them and stood their ground. By the time he had finished, we had a homogenous but anonymous thing that was neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring. About ninety per cent were either officers or NCO's. There was nobody left to fight. The ships weren't fit to put to sea. The aircrft became quickly obsolete. The tanks you couldn't even sell to Lower Slobovia. Canada's NATO forces became a laugh- ing -stock. Canada became known as a country that wanted a first-class ride for a third-class ticket. And' Pierre Trudeau, who maned to avoi any conflict except with his wife and Tories, didn't give a diddle. Hellyer's rocket fizzled, of course, be- cause there wasn't enough powder to keep it aloft. He ran for the Liberal leadership, was creamed. He started a party of his own, which vanished into thin air. He turned his coat, went to the Tories, ran for leader and was creamed again. No regret for that. But the stench he created lingers after him; the damage he did is almost irreversible. i can hardly wait to get my hands on a book by Admiral Brock, telling it like it is. And L'Ii shoot a copy to my brother, the Colonel, Distinguished Flying Cross, who left this country in disgust after serving it for years, in combat and afterwards. t