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The Citizen, 2018-07-26, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2018. PAGE 5. Other Views There are so many stories to tell They say you can never go home again, but we humans keep trying anyway — with mixed results. I'm not big on reunions but recently my hometown of Lucknow held a homecoming that included a reunion at my old high school — Lucknow District High School (LDHS). Lucknow schedules homecomings every 10 years but I've generally skipped them. Not being a great conversationalist, I always worried how to keep the discussion going once you say "Hi, how are you? What have you been up to?" But this time my boyhood best friend had contacted me to say he was attending and I knew my sister and brother would be there so I marked the date on my calendar. By coincidence, the school reunion came almost exactly 50 years after the final class was held at LDHS. I had been part of the last Grade 13 class at the school in 1966 but the school had remained open for students up to Grade 12 for another two years while an addition was built onto F.E. Madill Secondary School in Wingham to accommodate the students from Lucknow and area. Then, after fire destroyed the old Lucknow Public School, the high school building (which was only 15 years old) was converted for elementary students. That history is so long ago that few people remember it. In fact, the homecoming committee advertised the reunion as being for former students of Lucknow Public School and didn't even mention the high school. As I parked outside I envisioned being surrounded by several generations of those who had graduated from the elementary school since LDHS had closed. It turned out to be just the opposite. The Boomers dominated and only the odd younger former student braved the sea of grey hair and Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk pear-shaped figures. Thankfully they handed out name tags because most of us have changed enough over five decades that we weren't easily recognizeable — even though I had tried to refresh my memory before going by spending an hour going through my old yearbooks. Those who'd stayed in the area, or those who regularly attended events like the school reunion, had the advantage of having seen people gradually age a few weeks, months or years at a time. For those of us who hadn't kept in touch it was more like a "before" and "after" picture, with nothing in between. It was only when I got home that it struck me that when I had last seen many of these people they had been on the edge of adulthood. Many of them didn't even know what they wanted to do with their lives, let alone what lay ahead. Now, at the reunion, I was seeing them when they were retired, or at least nearing retirement. The productive years of their lives were a mystery to me, even if I did spend a few minutes listening to a version of their lives that rivaled a Twitter message in its brevity. Each and every one of those people had a story. They'd gone on to university or they'd taken an apprenticeship or they'd joined their family farm or business. They'd found a spouse — or not. They'd had kids — or not. There had been good times and hard times. Perhaps they'd lost a spouse, either through marriage breakdown or premature death (and a shocking number of the people I went to high school with have passed on, some many years ago.) They had seen their children go on to make them proud, though some also probably brought them heartache, hopefully temporarily before they got their lives straightened away. Some will have lost jobs or businesses and worried about the future. Some will have had illnesses that made them fear for their futures. I've spent my life telling stories — either invented stories for the stage or real life stories for this newspaper or The Rural Voice. Generally we tell the stories of people who are doing something different and fascinating or have achieved something. Whether it's in journalism or books, plays and movies, we tend to think that some people have interesting stories to tell while the vast majority of people don't. But as I thought about those former schoolmates whose smooth expectant faces had shone out from the pages of my old yearbooks and whose world -worn bodies had come to the reunion, I began to think it's a failure on the part of us storytellers who see some stories as worthwhile telling while others aren't. Even those with the most outwardly uninteresting stories — those who perhaps never married, never had kids and who worked at monotonous jobs — still had stories to tell that deserved more than a five-minute conversation at a reunion. Every former student from every school and college, every resident of your community and every reader of this newspaper has a fascinating life -story to tell. We just need to take the time to hear the story they might not think is worth telling. We need not wait until their funeral to hear how interesting these people are. Let Garth Brooks' words ring true Over the past several days, one topic of conversation has been dominating my discussions with people: the upcoming municipal election. Unlike previous elections, where the discussions were about the people running or what council may end up looking like, these discussions have been along the lines of, "Who can we possibly get to run?" And when I say we, I mean we as in the voters of the East Wawanosh and Blyth Wards of North Huron and the voters of Morris- Turnberry. (I include myself with the voters of Morris-Turnberry because whatever decision they make will undoubtedly influence my Tuesday evenings.) Morris-Turnberry is in better shape than North Huron because, with four council members and one reeve candidate, they are only one nomination off of a full council. North Huron, however, has an election for reeve and, an election for the Wingham Ward, but nothing for its other two wards, which is troubling to say the least. I've heard the complaints about running for council, everything from "You can't change anything" to "It's all about Wingham" and I'm not going to sugarcoat anything: there is a lot you can't change and a lot of discussions that do happen are about Wingham. I understand why people may not want to run but we need someone to run. Like I said, it's true there are many things you won't be able to change, but you can make a difference. You can help shape important parts of the municipality that will guide the community as it develops in the future. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's a way to get rich or that it will always be exciting, but it is an important, necessary function that helps to make sure the community doesn't grow according to the whims of a few different people. As a matter of fact, if it were up to me, there would be term limits in place for council. I realize I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here, bemoaning the fact that we don't have anyone running while at the same time saying we should limit who can and can't run. There is no "but" there, no "however,",that's just me acknowledging that I'm asking for my cake and eating it too. Cake, however, isn't likely the best example here. Cake is decadent, cake is optional. This is more like I'm asking for my bread and water and devouring it like a man lost in the desert. The two notions are connected and they can both be true. For this election we need good people who can lead these municipalities into the future. After that, we need to put in place some measure of control to make sure the same people aren't directing the municipality for years upon years. I'm not talking single -term rules or anything like that, but I think, if you can't accomplish what you set out to do in two terms (nearly a decade), maybe it's time to step aside and let someone else take your place. I say that as someone whose time at The Citizen is just past eight years, having started before the second -to -last municipal election. Back to this election: it doesn't have to be a life-long commitment. As a matter of fact, if you ask me, it shouldn't be. Put your name out there, talk to some people, create a platform and run and try, in the first four-year term, to make a difference. As long as you try, that's what matters. Accomplish what you set out to do in four or eight years and then leave. Let someone else take over. Make sure you talk to people, and encourage them to be a part of it, but don't stay on council with the intent of finishing something that you've already spent eight years on because, trust me on this, it's probably not going to happen. When you have that lens, that you can stop being a councillor when you feel you've made the community better, the job may not seem as onerous and ominous as it can when you look at people who have been involved in politics for decades. I think that's one thing that may stop people from putting their name forward. They hear the stories about people who have been councillors for most of their adult lives, the ones who can't leave because they still feel they have work to do, and they get scared that they are going to be roped into this often thanldess position for the rest of their lives. In a healthy system, that wouldn't be a problem. Participation would be encouraged and we would have a healthy turnover of council members encouraging new ideas to be brought to the table. Anyway, I'm getting a bit off -topic here. Blyth, East Wawanosh and Morris-Turnberry need some good folks to step forward. And to answer your question (or statement, if you're feeling brash), Shawn and I can't run in the election. Trust me, we have ideas about how to run North Huron, but the simple fact is you need to trust your journalists and there's no way to trust a politician who is literally writing his own press. So run. No matter how bad you think you might be, you're better than an empty chair. As promised, politics, like life, "is not tried it is merely survived if you're standing outside the fire" Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense The facts of life Explaining "the facts of life" to someone has always been a staple in the law enforcement vernacular. It usually comes into play during a discussion with someone accused of committing a crime when police officers are done negotiating. If a man's accused of killing someone, let's say, and a detective is interrogating him and the accused is being cagey — not co-operating or answering questions directly — the officer may opt to "explain the facts of life" to the man, laying out the department's evidence and the reality of the situation and the fact that the man, if found guilty by trial, could spend the rest of his life in prison. That is, unlesss, the accused accepts a deal and makes life easier on investigating police, lawyers, the courts, etc. The term is also used in the world of politics. My view of elections — and the reason things change so little from President to President or Prime Minister to Prime Minister — is that election promises are easy to make when you're not in office. But then, as has become a regular refrain from voters, election promises fall by the wayside. This is why so often people vote for the same party or for the person to whom they can most relate. You can't trust a platform or a promise (or a politician, really) they'll say. I have always envisioned this reality check on a leader's first day coming in the form of a large dossier being thumped down on the desk of the new leader right after being sworn in. In this dossier are the facts of life — full of information not for public consumption that truly explains the nation's position on things like finances, taxes, trade, etc. Taxes can't be cut like you promised because of this, or that program can't be cut because of that. It's for these reasons, I've always assumed, that the previous government, whomever it may be, wasn't as bad as I thought it was and why the new government, whomever it may be, isn't as revolutionary as I thought it'd be. Take, for example, former U.S. President Barack Obama's election pledge for change. He promised a whole new approach to government. And while it was refreshing for many to have a young, black president who was the envy of many around the world, very little actually changed for a variety of reasons, and what did change was quickly dismantled by incoming President Donald Trump. Two current leaders, however, are flying in the face of how I always thought politics worked. Both the aforementioned Trump and Premier Doug Ford have made sweeping changes since coming into office. It appears the big "facts of life" dossier mustn't have made it past the mailroom in these regimes. They've both made changes that have resulted in many residents looking to their partners and say, "surely he can't do that?" or "there's no way he could cancel that, could he?" They've simply gone ahead and done it. South of the border, Trump is drastically changing his country's tune on immigration with his travel ban and "The Wall", while here in Ontario, Ford is cutting and slashing. Thus far, unfortunately, many of these decisions have left our local MPP Lisa Thompson as the scapegoat (though a willing one), whether it's turning their backs on further First Nations education or the controversial decision to revert to a 20 -year-old sexual education curriculum for the coming school year. Whether it's Trump or Ford, these leaders are redefining their ability to change the course of history and breaking free of their shackles of government. For them, for better or worse, the facts of life don't seem to apply.