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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1983-10-19, Page 2•a}n 1' t ^., sliter Yb6b,$.rvinr fniCahtmuhlty skid t lj r IPPOrPeritiffiaBriltitiPOSt tgtindad187%. Man 5t, _ 527 11240 Publlshadat'SEAFORTH, ONYARIO aver; Wedn►adaymorning, '81,1siltWBit10Matitping,Editor P it*IYn A. Staler, Publisher ,.'• � .; MW ilber Crbtldlln Community NrwSpap'r Asian • Ontario Corn:nurlltyNawapiprrAssociation and • Midif;Burau01Clrodlatlog ab A membrrgl';the ,Ontario erns' Cgpnoll Subscription niter Canada$18,75 a year '(In advance) Outslde Canada $55.00 a year (In advance) Single Copies - 60 cents each Rsdtle*'. SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, 'WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1983 Second class mall regIstratlon-Number 0686 Market may die Back in August 1980 when Seaforth's first farmers' market was held, after a lot of consideration and work by the recreation committee, The Expositor interviewed -vendors and the general public. Everyone was enthusiastic about the venture, attended that first sunny Saturday, ‘by 400 or 500 people. "Once in a long while, a time, a place, people and an event come together In a way that's really Successful," we said in an editorial then. "Saturday's farmers' market...at Victoria Park was that sort of experience." Three years later, the recreation committee is reassessing the summer markets, because of declining attendance and interest. That's understandable,.because a fair bit of expense and work goes into the monthly events. It's hard\to know exactly What's wrong, but rec director Bryan Peter told council in his monthly report that he's seeking feedback from vendors. If those The Expositor talked to this week are typical, they don't want to see the market die. While crowds have dropped off, thay're still selling goods, they like the market and they feel it has a future. We do too. Probably we have to make changes; perhap she tinkering is needed. Vendorswe interviewed have some s ggestions; likely members 'of'the public have more. It's a shame to drop what could be an adds Seaforth attraction, although if interest doesn't warrant the work and money Involved, that's what'll happen. • To help the rec committee decide, let's hear your ideas on the farmers' market. We'll throw one brainstorm out, just for fun. Would almost every crafter or bake? with things to sell and every organization in town. with funds to raise agree to participate in just one giant farmers' market next spring? The market Could run along both sides of Gouinlock St..and into Victoria Park. The BIA could Join the event and encourage sidewalk sales downtown the same day. We'd list the farmers' market in all the tourist brochures this county has to offer and send publicity and ads to all the area's media. We might just surprise ourselves with success. If it bombed we'd have the satisfaction of knowing we'd given it our best shot,, - S.W. Let's try walking The problem with driving a car is finding a' place to park it when you, arrive at your destination. In big cities like Toronto thousands of commuters pay big bucks to park their cars during their working hours. Massive buildings are erected just to store cars and still a parking spot can be hard to find. So, many commuters take the train or transit system or even walk and leave their cars and their headaches behind. In Seaforth, the problem exists on a smaller scale. A limited number of parking spots on Main St. has town council musing over the possibility of additional parking off Main St.. But, the real problem is that no one wants to walk any further than they have to. Recently, discussion has centred around parking behind the town hall. With the poiice station's move to the back of the building, town hall workers aqd drop in visitors have to share the limited parking space. Angle parking has been suggested to fit in more cars and name plates could ensure that everyone has his own spot - others could be towed away. The owners of the Commercial Hotel have graciously helped solve this problem by allowing use'of part of the hotel's parking lot. - While a lack of downtown parking has been discussed for years, ample parking exists under the trees of Victoria Park, only a short walk away. And, with a 20 minute walk, many of us who work downtown could travel from home to work. Let's face it, most people could walk from one aide of town to the other in 20 minutes - Seaforth does not take up that much space. Next time you jump behind the wheel, stop and think about saving some gas and some aggravation and instead walk to work, the post office or. the store. You might even enjoy yourself. - S.H. UO th oclil OGS Medds say thanks for support Foundation says thank -you We would like to thank ail the people for the tremendous moral support we have received the last six months during this bizarre ordeal. Also we want to thank Paul Ross, our lawyer and Roman Dzus, head of The Huron Planning Board for telling it as it is. We would like to thank The Huron Expositor for the great publicity. We are flattered that of all the cases the planning board has heard this year we were the only ones to get such good coverage. Also thank you to those people who objected because if nothing else they showed us who our real friends are. The saddest part of this whole affair is the way narrow-minded people, having nothing but frivalous objections, abuse the law by saying that's our right. With that right goes the responsibility to consider the other side. in this particular case had the objectors listened to the people hired and elected by everyone, e.g. the town council, the planning board and the Huron County planning board to make these decisions, there wouldn't have been any abuse on the legal aspect of rights. if we are not going to allow these people to do their jobs why hire them? 1 agree on the O.M.B. if necessary, but unless someone's rights are really being jeopardized by local elected officials i think personally it is an abuse of our legal system if used for any other reasons. Sharon Medd One of the best things about fall Is the great plies of leaves that are perfect ammunition for a leaf fight. Students from St. James Separate $9heolenjoyed arorrp in the leaves during their lunch hour Friday. Adam White, Derek and Tommy Hunt, Donny and Teddy Sills, Brendan Blyth, Janet Vandenhoven and Kelly • McCowan were some of the students participating. (Photo by I-lundertmark) People who work badly i always read government advertisements. After all, I'm helping to pay for them. And those big bold announcements of yet another program to buy us with our own money make a nice change from the oil company's ad saying their concern about the environment is what makes their product cost more. Or a soft sell ad from a big conglomerate like Canadian Pacific featuring Mary Jones in accounting and Anne Srpith, the chemist. They're riot a big conglomerate, they're just folks. And you never know, I told myself while 1 studied the fine print in a big ad from Canada Works, there might be something in It for me, my unemployed friends or the company .i work for. Canada Works, last week bought big space in all the nation's biggest daily newspapers to tell us about a program that has something for almost everybody. Ordinary folks who need jobs will get jobs. Companies who hire them will be eligible for wage subsidies, grants, all sorts of goodies. You know how it goes. &Dinned wg .o Day by 5gcmNOilt4 The catch, people who've been unemploy- ed for awhile will tell. you, is that exactly who qualifies for programs like this is quite rigidly defined. You've got to have been out of work solong. or to never have worked *ace you left school. to be disabled. or not to be disabled. You get the idea. Well. I'm reading along about who'll benefit from Canada Works' latest, mentally checking off a project or a person 1 know that might qualify. when I'm stopped dead in my tracks. Repeated reading. Yup, that's what it says. "Hey," i call the better half, "listen to this." "Canada Works will provide immediate term employment to (a long list of labels for people and)...people who work badly." i.,, -K 1:. �1. ..I meed jobs Now we've got job creation programs for people who work badly. Ok. After hoots and hollers the two of us discuss the implica- tions. Heck I know a, long 'lis't of people' who work badly.. Some days, like Monday mornings, or Tuesdays after a long weekend, i head the list myself. WHO QUAUFIES? Along with ourselves, we consider those we.think would qualify. Lots of people who work badly are still employed, but would those not so fortunate be willing to identify themselves at a Canada Employment Centre? As in, "hi, I'm Susan White and i work badly. It says right here that 1 qualify for this new job program. What've you got for me?" Of course deciding who works badly is a pretty personal thing. If theob applicant won't admit to this skill, will the job creation people put him or her through batteries of tests? The failures and those whose • first cjuestions at job interviews are "how much are you paying?" and "can i have two weeks off at Christmas?" get the jobs. :.r' •- Being abte to work badly might become the nation's most sought after characteristic. Perhaps it already is, when yon look at the pe ormaxgce pf Jnapy, of put je iers. Arid,gf the•scorep of bj9lie0eS awn' ' ones in government, an •!ad agen ; newspaper ad departments, and the gullible like me' who let that line in the Canada 'Works ad go by. it was all a mistake, a tiny little paragraph in the next day's daily announces. The ad was supposed to promise jobs for "people who need work badly." We in the newspaper business know how easily a typographical error like that can happen. That s no excuse but i can't be too hard on anybody. We all work badly once in awhile, - Don't use the word "racist" lightly A federal cabinet minister did it the other day. Howard Cossell 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 (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 that 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 called a white baseball player a monkey a few weeks earlier but nobody noticed. PEASANT? The federal cabinet minister was speaking to the Ukranian-Canadian Committee and made the mistake, not in what he said The Board of the Van Egmond Foundation has asked me to indicate our sincere gratitude to the community for its generous and encouraging support during our recent Ciderfest celebrations. Without the involve- ment of public-spirited citizens from throughout the district, festivals such as Ciderfest 'would not be possible. May we further endorse the concept of a "Community" celebration as expressed in a recent editorial. We would welcome the opportunity to sit down with others of a like mind to explore the possibilities. Pala there's no better time than the present (o do its How about calling a meeting? I'll b glad to offer my time to participate active . Sincere Paul Carroll Chairman Van Egmond Foundation Thanks from Sister Town i wou4d like to personally thank everyone in Seaforth for showing us such a wonderful time while we have been in your fair city. This past week, 14 of us enjoyed your friendship, hospitality and many smiles, as you really opened up your doors to make us welcome. Many thanks to all of you - from all of us. Ron Dunbar West Branch, Michigan Sister City of Seaforth, int. a@bond oto SGC n®0, himself, but in who he quoted. He quoted the late Sr, Clifford Sifton, the Canadian interior minister who opened up the Canadian west for settlement nearly a century„dgo as describing the immigrants from central Europe as a "stalward peasant in a sheep -skin coat, born on the soil. whose fathers have been farmers for 10 genera- tions, 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. in England was about blacks and East Indians. The Ukranian association protested. Ramon Hnatyshyn, a Conservative M.P. raised the matter in Parliament and 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. he wouldn't mind. • 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 derogatory term for people from central Europe, he wag demeaning all Ukranians. OVERREACTION 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 McCarthy. With the best of intentions, leaders of various racial and ethnic caps are threatening to ruin careers and businesses for what they think is tit good cause. The term racist is being thrown around in the same kind of indiscrilriinant 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 retneinber 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. Canadians are in a bloomy mood these clays Canadians are in a bad mood these days. Not bad in the sense of angry or ugly. Bad in the sense of gloomy, depressed. And not without reason. • After riding a post-war boom. with industry thriving, new money coming in, sew 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 in 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 ear or both' that thete 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 Ii as 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 ��g©Q @ficl opOc G, by DE Sial@y 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. There 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 snowmobiles. The banks would lend money to anyone who didn't have two 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 T.V. 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 As vs & most _unstable nv investment began industrial coun- tries, a result, cap' 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 pro- duction 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 their role in NATO. it snowballed. inflation became more than a topic of conversation; 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, sparked by the fact that so many immigrants 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, while 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 over valuable farmland with asphalt and concrete. t 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 head- ing for greener, and warmer pastures. University students, toiling over their books, grew ever more bitter as they 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 ain't likked yet. And spring will be here. Probably by the first of June. ,l-