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The Citizen, 2010-02-25, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010.Editorials Opinions Editor & Publisher, Keith Roulston Reporter, Shawn LoughlinAdvertising, Ken Warwick & Lori Patterson The CitizenP.O. Box 429,BLYTH, Ont.N0M 1H0 Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152,BRUSSELS, Ont.N0G 1H0 Phone 887-9114 E-mail norhuron@scsinternet.com Website www.northhuron.on.ca Looking Back Through the Years CCNA Member Member of the Ontario Press Council The Citizen is published 50 times a year in Brussels,Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc.Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $34.00/year ($32.38 + $1.62 G.S.T.) in Canada;$105.00/year in U.S.A.and $175/year in other foreign countries.Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error,only that portion of the advertisement will be credited. Advertising Deadlines: Monday, 2 p.m. - Brussels; Monday, 4 p.m. - Blyth. PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40050141 PAP REGISTRATION NO. 09244 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO CIRCULATION DEPT. PO BOX 152 BRUSSELS ON N0G 1H0 email: norhuron@scsinternet.com Feb. 25, 1948 St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Blyth held its annual meeting and announced that the financial year of 1947 had been kind to the church. At the end of the fiscal year, the church had a bank balance of over $200 due to generous gifts to the church from the estates of the late Mrs. Young and Mrs. Ashdown. A dinner was held at the end of the annual meeting an a quilting party was to be held later that week at the home of Mrs. Herrington. Blyth’s new fire alarm system received its first test. Citizens were said to be startled by the wailing of the new alarm, which sat atop the newly-completed fire hall building. In addition to the residents within the town, the wail was said to have been heard by area farmers, employees at the telephone exchange and several canine members of the community who were howling along with the wail of the siren. A copy of the book “Windy Corners” was taken from Vodden’s Bake Shop. The book, which was sitting on the counter in the shop, belonged to the library. The Blyth Legion initiated two new members and authorized the purchase of new uniforms for the girls softball team, which was being sponsored by the Legion. A hen, belonging to E.J. Cartwright produced a record- breaking egg measuring eight and one-eighth inches long and six and one-quarter inches in circumference. Unfortunately, however, the egg, just as it was being prepared for travel to the Blyth Standard office “came into grief. Ted dropped it on the kitchen table and it was damaged beyond repair.” Feb. 29, 1968 The Brussels PeeWee hockey team eliminated Paisley and captured the WOAA PeeWee E Championship. Brussels won the first two games in the best-of-five series by scores of 10-4 and 10-1, winning the final game by a slightly closer score of 9- 3. Two Brussels girls performed well at the Huron County Royal Canadian Legion speaking contest, which was held in Wingham. Dorothy Elliott won the senior division, while Linda Wilson was the junior secondary school winner. Both of the girls attended Wingham Secondary School. They would go on to compete at the zone competition, which was held in March at the Brussels Legion. Feb. 21, 1990 Firefighters battled to extinguish a car which was engulfed in flames near Walton. The car, however, was unable to be salvaged. East Wawanosh was in the middle of a building boom that saw expansion and development throughout the township that generated a total revenue of over $7,000 in permits from 1989. Residential permits added up to over $1.3 million with 14 new homes being built and seven additions being built. Blyth council approved a motion that saw the council’s meeting schedule go from one meeting per month to two. The initiative was introduced by councillor Dave Lee who said he felt that too many things in the past year had been decided at special council meetings where the public hadn’t been notified and were unable to attend. The renovations to the Radford baseball diamond were up in the air while Blyth council awaited a reply from the parties involved with the renovation. The Citizen celebrated Heritage Week by publishing a puzzle called The Great Heritage Caper. Clues were listed from one to 25 alongside a list of 25 local businesses and residents were encouraged to attempt to complete the caper for a prize announcement to be held in March. Rehearsals began for The Mail Order Bride, which was set for an extensive tour of Alberta and British Columbia, which would take place throughout March. The play first appeared at the Blyth Festival in 1989 and then went on a tour of Ontario soon after. Feb. 23, 2000 The Avon Maitland District School Board officially decided to close six area schools, including Walton Public, Seaforth Public and Vanastra Community Schools in addition to Seaforth District High School. In addition to the multiple closures, boundary adjustments were made too, which would adjust the dispersement of area students greatly. Walton’s Neil McGavin was named the new president of the Ontario Plowmen’s Association. McGavin was elected in Guelph over the past weekend. A cat named Snoop, weighing in at 42.2 lbs., was submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records as potentially the fattest cat in the world. Snoop, belonging to Gerald and Berva Watson of Huron Haven, just north of Goderich, was submitted with hopes of being named the world’s biggest. Through the couple’s own research, they had found the previous fattest cat weighed over 46 lbs. and was from Australia, but had died 1986, leaving the door open for a possible Huron County successor. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs. We are not responsible for unsolicited newsscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright & Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise. Playing the political game Given the current depressed state of agriculture, the tone at the annual Members of Parliament meeting sponsored by the Huron County Federation of Agriculture last Saturday was remarkably quiet. Perhaps farm leaders have come to realize they might as well be shouting into the wind as to try to get help from their local politicians. The politicians, meanwhile, go through the motions of listening, and promising to do what they can. The reality, of course, is that many of the problems facing farmers are beyond the ability of provincial, or even federal, governments to find solutions. Farmers who depend on international trade have been walloped by the increase in value of the Canadian dollar in recent years, making their products less competitive in international markets. Diseases like BSE and H1N1 have provided excuses for countries to cut off Canadian meat imports. The U.S. has cleverly come up with mandatory country of origin labeling that creates so much red tape for packers, it’s just easier for them to have nothing to do with Canadian cattle or pigs. The trade agreements we have signed in recent decades have made it impossible to find solutions for hogs and cattle today such as supply management, unlike the 1960s when controlling our own borders created a situation where milk and poultry producers could actually configure the marketplace to make sure they got their cost of production. What’s more, these agreements are a perfect excuse for governments to say they can’t provide the kind of funding farmers say they need because it would contravene international agreements. So they end up with things like programs farmers can pay into that, in times of need, will give them payments up to a portion of average price for the last five years. But if there’s been no profit in the last five years, it doesn’t do much good to get less than the price you need to pay your bills. Certainly in this age of globalization, there are a lot of things government can’t do to fix the situation in agriculture, but they can do more than they’re doing. When you see how governments can act to save the auto industry, the lack of action in agriculture looks like willful neglect. Ontario farm leaders have come up with a risk management plan they say will soften the worst of the fluctuations in the prices farmers must live with. When you see that Huron County has lost 16 per cent of its pork producers since 2008, the desperation of the situation is evident. These figures, multiplied as they are across the country, show that something must be done. If it was another industry one gets the feeling that the federal and provincial governments would have leapt to support this risk management plan. — KR It’s their glory, their agony For nearly two weeks Canadians’ emotions have soared and crashed with the success of our athletes at Vancouver’s Winter Olympic Games. We can get excited and thrilled to be winners or depressed at losing, but the reality is in the long run, it’s really the athletes who win or lose. These athletes who become heroes or goats are unknown to most of us for the four years between Olympics. They go through the excruciating training that it takes to be a world class athlete with none of us watching them. They travel the world competing with, and often winning, against the same people they’ll compete against at the Olympics. Nobody notices when they win those competitions, but we do if they don’t win at the Olympics. The Olympics are incredibly cruel to athletes. Four years of training and practice, of recovering from injuries, of wins that happen when the nation isn’t looking, can all be lost in the hundredths of a second that mean the difference between winning and not getting a medal. One slip, and you have to wait four years before having the change to redeem yourself — and of course then you might be past your prime. These athletes are amazing creatures. The medals they win, they share with all of us. The heartbreak they endure, they endure alone. We should admire them for their wonderful example of dreams, endurance and grace in defeat. — KR