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Times-Advocate, 1978-07-20, Page 4Times-Advocate, 4uly2O, 1978 Opportunities are there More than It’s been a trying year for Huron County secondary school students, but judging from the number of Ontario scholars and graduates named at SHDHS last week, most overcame whatever adversity they may have en countered. As most school officials noted at the time of the teachers’ strike, the better students would not be affected, and their observation appears correct, The nine Ontario scholars achieved 80 percent or more in the grade 13 sub- ‘getting jects, reflecting a most commendable amount of diligence and scholastic achievement on their part. Many other students in the other four grades also accomplished records of the same nature. While many people lament the fact we appear to live in an age when “get ting by” is the acceptable standard, it is encouraging to see that many area students do not subscribe to that theory, and for that they are to be con gratulated. While people continue to buy lottery tickets in that one-in-a-million (or are the odds even worse than that?) chance of striking it rich, a couple of schemes have been outlined recently that may pay greater dividends, although the initial outlay may be greater as well. It may come as a surprise to some downtrodden area farmers, but one of the ways suggested to build up a for tune is to get into the cattle business. The advice comes from no less an ex pert than George Morris, past presi dent of the Association producer. Speaking London, he told his youthful audience that with some “self-confidence” and a loan from a friendly financial institu tion they could be quickly on their way to a fortune. Here’s his suggeston: buy 100 young heifers this summer and put them out to pasture. In the fall, keep the top 50 and sell the other 50. The money should pay off your investment and cover all costs but labor, which is Canadian Cattleman's and a former beef at a 4-H conference in yours anyway. Breed the heifers. In the summer of 1980, as the beef cycle and prices peak, the 50 cows and their calves should be worth $1,000 a pair, and a nest egg of $50,000 is nothing to laugh at. The other scheme may require more research and work, but part of the latter has already been undertaken by your tax dollars. The ministry of tourism and industry has the facts and figures showing that Canadian demand for solar collectors will probably rise to $20 million anually by 1982 from current market demand of $3.4 million. “The challenge of a lucrative market is there for Ontario business people,” says minister John Rhodes. He quickly adds that figures may even underestimate potential. People interested capitalizing on this market can get a copy of the survey from the Govern ment of Ontario Bookstore, 880 Bay St., Toronto. So, don’t delay . . . there are dollars out there for those who have the initiative and confidence. But don’t forget to advertise. We’d like a piece of the action as well’ R. the the in Good old days? When was the last time you read anything good about the world we live in today? Judging by the conventional wisdom of our times, this must be the worst of all possible worlds. The family is breaking up; the deserts are spreading; our fish have been poison ed; violence is increasing; welfare is destroying the work ethic. . . And the future — again according to conventional wisdom ~ looks even worse. We are threatened by too many people, too few resources, too many bombs, too little ozone, too much car bon dioxide, not enough food, an accelerating rate of change and a slowness to adapt. Having become the best-informed society in history about these hazards, we have also become, in the words of University of Detroit Professor Margaret Maxey “the most fore-warned, anxiety-prone, exhorted, and guilt-ridden of cultures.” Little wonder many people yearn for “the good old days,” when life was simpler and easier. What hogwash! Without denying that today’s world has problems and that yesterday’s had some values we seem to have lost, does anyone really want to go back to those “good old days”? When average life expectancy was 45 years? When you could count on at least one child in each family not sur viving to its fifth birthday? When kitchen wastes, ashes, household gar bage, and toilet dregs were dumped in gutters and on sidewalks? Bwf Eunice, you can't stay up there TH A T long — the kids don't go back to school till fall!" BATT’N AROUND An editorial in a neighboring weekly newspaper has drawn attention to the fact the members of parliament recently wound up their deliberations and commenced a four-month holiday. While granting the MPs the need for a holiday and a chance to get back and listen to the residents of their con stituencies. the writer suggests that four months is a long time to leave the nation’s problems to the civil service at a time when the nation faces the gravest issues since July 1,1867. Some of those problems include an alarming increase in the rate of infla tion, skyrocketing food costs, un employment and national unity. While we would agree that there are few businessmen who could afford to be out of touch with their duties* for four months, the holiday being enjoyed by the MPs may not be all that bad. . After all, most of the problems being encountered in Canada were in fact inq creasing when they were in Ottawa, so perhaps they’ll start to decrease when the politicians are out of the way. In fact, it may be suggested that —L O. -----i.........................—i holiday a number of civil servants so the people of this nation can set about the task of improving the economy by the tried and proven concepts of free enterprise. If the “overhead” in Ottawa was reduced or eliminated entirely for that four-month period, people could use the resulting savings in tax dollars to augment their buying power, which in turn would create more jobs. Or, they could use the money to enjoy a couple of weeks’ holiday themselves. The national unity issue may also cool down considerably if Prime Minister Trudeau and Quebec Premier Rene Levesque are on holidays and not spending their time attempting to beat each other in their constant one-up- May do better without them ZX- When the major insecticide used on almost everything was lead arsenate, and the most common red food coloring was lead chromate — both deadly poisons? When the main killer diseases „ were not forms of cancer, heart each of the MPs should take home on breakdown or nerve decay, but influen za, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diphtheria and whooping cough? When women and children were used as beasts of burden in mines and in dustries, and education was available only to the elite? That’s all within the last century, documented in Otto Betteman’s book, The Gold Old Days — They were Terri ble. Or would you rather go further back in search of Eden, to times when feudal lords could arbitrarily ship any man off to war, or could claim prior sexual rights to his wife and daughters? Perhaps back to an age un trammelled by technology, when humans cowered in caves or tents, shivering against cold, injury, animals, ignorance, disease and malevolent gods? No, we may not yet have the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and much more than material progress will be needed to achieve it. But let’s not flagelldte ourselves into thinking this is Hell, either. The many hazards that pre-occupy us now do so only because, for the first time in history, we have the luxury of recognizing them. At any previous time, they would have been submerged in the greater hazards of daily survival. manship battle. Come to think of it, perhaps many of the other problems would be substan tially reduced if the politicians and the civil service took longer holidays’ * •* * People who watch the proceedings of the House of Commons on their televi sion screens periodically are often moved almost to the point of tears by the childish antics they witness. Hopefully, it is one program that will not be subjected to the usual practice of summer re-runs. Once is certainly enough, and in many instances, once too often. However, things are just as bad south of the border as indicated in this little bit of information about a vote taken in the United States Senate. The issue on which the vote was taken was - as follows: “A motion to table a motion to recon sider a vote to table an appeal on a rul- ■ Ing that a point of order was not in ■order against a motion to table another point of order against a motion to bring to a vote the motion to call up a resolu tion that would initiate a rule change.” • If you can figure that one out, move to the head of the class ... or better still, put your name on the next ballot. * * * And to continue this whole raucous affair one step further, we’re intrigued by one man whose name will be on a ballot. He’s Lowell Darling, who is run ning for governor of California and ob viously a man who can carry off a good practical joke. Among Darling’s campaign promises is one to lacquer the San Andreas fault, and to issue new lungs to any Los Angelinos who may need them. He is strongly against the entire space program. “Let them come to us” is his attitude, although he admits that if the 5. _ - voters demand it, he is ready to put the first man on the sun. Some of his vote-getting plans show imagination. He hopes to take a swing through Mexico to sew up the potential illegal alien vote and has also invented the “terminal ballot” by which people who expect to be dead by election time can cast their votes earlier. He is also counting heavily on a plan to get all the voters drunk on election day so that they will leave their glasses at home. His name will be immediately under that of Governor Brown, the favorite, so Darling claims he will “sweep in on a groundswell of near sighted voters”. * * * To conclude this column, which has been intended solely as light summer reading, we offer the following profound utterances: * From a speech by David Orlikow, MP, reported in Hansard: “The burden of unemployment is felt most by those who are unemployed”, * From the local newspaper in Mount Clements, Mich.: “Actually, McComb and Oakland Counties are the two fastest growing areas in Michigan,” said the presiding judge, “and when you have population growth, you have an increase in pop ulation.” * Finally, the British Royal Commis sion in Income and Distribution of Wealth came to this conclusion: “The groups most at risk of experiencing lower incomes are family units con taining elderly persons and families with three or more children. The un employed and the disabled also have a high incidence of lower incomes”. Now, who says people don’t need holiday to get away from it all? a Dispensed by Smiley Junket of middle-age has-beens "CANCER CAN BE BEATEN" WITH "YOUR" HELP Times Established 1873 Advotate Eitebhshed I 881 imes - Advocate SERVING CANADA’S BEST FARMLAND C.W.N.A., O.W.N.A. CLASS 'A' and ABC Published by J. W. Eedy Publications Limited LORNEfcEDY, PUBLISHER Editor —- Bill Batten Assistant Editor — Ros* Haugh Advertising Manager — Jim Beckett Composition Manager <— Harry DeVries Business Manager —- Dick Jongkihd Phone 255-1321 (*CNA SUBSC............. Amalgamated 1924 Published Each Thursday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Clan Mail Registration Number 0386 Paid in Advance Circulation September 30, 1975 5,409 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $1 LOO Pet Year; USA $22.i mui JhMOW AWARD .oof M By the time this appears in print, I’ll probably be flogging around Europe, irritable, exhausted and disgruntled, muttering, “What am J doing here, bucketing around on a bus, gawking at cathedrals, and listening to the yammering of a horde of people of whose language I know eight words on a good day?” And I’ll go on. I know it. “What am I doing blowing half of my life’s savings junketing around with a bunch of other middle-aged has-beens, when I could be back home right now, playing golf with, a bunch of middle-aged has- beens? “I must be out of my mind, paying $24.00 for two hamburgs and a bottle of wine, when I could be out at Foster’s picking my own strawberries and going home to a great chicken dinner that costs about $2.00. with tiny new boiled potatoes, green onions, new carrots and fresh green beans. “I could be sitting in my own back yard right now, looking at the Lear-like oaks, sniffing my neighbours’ flowers, contemplating a late-afternoon swim, and sucking occasionally oh a cold ale, instead of sitting in this ruddy bus, looking at the other turkeys who took this trip, inhaling the fumes of gas oline, contemplating the folly of trips to Europe, and knowing I’m going to pay $1.25 for a Coke at our next stop, if we ever stop. “We didn’t go anywhere near Lille, so I couldn’t look up Andree, but she’s probably a fat old lady now, with a moustache. She was tending in that direction back then. And we didn’t even go near Antwerp, so I missed seeing Tita. 1 wonder if she thought I’d stood her up that night Friday the 13th of Oc tober, when I didn’t show up? She’d ’ have no way of knowing I’d been shot down that afternoon. Nice kid, and she said her old man had lots of money. “I wonder if young Wilson, next door, is keeping the lawn cut. Thank the lord we had no cat to be fed this time. I wonder if Kim got a job. I wonder how The Boys are. “That was some du we stayed in last night, The mattress was so lumpy‘I had to sleep on the floor, and the Old Lady didn’t get a wink, she was so excited at those young Italians whistling at her and pinching her bum. She made me take pictures of the bruises, to show the girls back home. “It wasn’t so bad, though, as the night we crossed the North Sea to Holland in that converted barge they called a cruise ship. She must’ve lost ten pbunds that night. They should have called it a crew’s ship. They were the only ones who weren’t tossing their tripes with every roll. “The Old Girl’s been pretty decent though. She hasn’t said more than four times a day, 'My God, I’ll be glad when this is over,’ And she insisted I’m not the most miserable man on the trip. She says I’m about one jump ahead of that mean old sod from Cleveland. “About the only time she gets snarky is when I try my trilingualism out. I say to some young German blonde, 'Vie fil uhr ist es, bitte?’ The blonde laughs heartily, even though I’ve only asked her for the time of day, because of my accent, but my wife thinks I’ve , cracked a dirty joke or something, “Thank goodness we have our tickets home paid for.( I’m going to seek out and kiss Trudeau on both cheeks when I get home, even if it makes me throw up. Canadian inflation is peanuts com pared to what they have over here. Buck and a half for a cup of coffee. Sold my watch in Viehna after they gave me my bill at the bier gar ten. Sold my other pair of shoes this morning to an Italian entrepreneur after I’d taken a taxi ride to a fountain to throw some . coins in it. Next item to go on the block is my wife’s travelling-iron. It weighed three pounds when we started out, and now weighs fourteen. “That tour guide is a dandy. He’ll be a millionaire when he’s thirty. In every city, he recommends a restaurant run by a cousin, at which the prices are way below average and the food way above. Whereas the reverse is true. They all serve the same Something — stew and want an arm and a leg. “What am I doing here, on my way to another .scabrous cathedral when I could be home out bass fishing with Dalt Hudson or on the Bruce Peninsula fishing speckled trout or wandering through the trees on the back nine of the golf course? “Or just sleeping in, if I felt like it, instead of having to hurtle out of the sack at six to join that sickeningly cheerful tour group at seven and climb on that bloody bus to charge another 800 miles down some foreign road? “Never again, boy, never again, Next time I want to visit the sights and sounds of Europe, not to mention the smells (Ah, Venice!), I’ll read a good travel book. “Who talked me into this, anyway? Let’s see. It wasn’t the travel agency. It wasn’t my wife, who has hated every minute of it. Now I remember. It was Frank Powell, a1 colleague, who did the same trip when the Canadian dollar was way up and the English pound was way down. I can hardly wait to get back. I’m going to punch that Powell right on the nose.” In a world where cynicism is getting to be the only pos sible route to mental health, it’s encouraging to find an in stance of blind optimism out standingly rewarded.The suc cess of others is increasingly becoming the only form of optimism for Canadians now that Ottawa has wiped out so many of the incentives for individuals to invest. But I digress. . . You know who an opti mist is, of course. Someone who hasn’t read the morning paper. Look around and you will find that an optimist is generally someone without much experience. But look a little closer at the optimist and you’ll find someone who makes the best of it when he gets the worst of it - and you don’t survive in a new business without I being blessed with a generous dose of optimism during those first lean, hard years, The fact is that many an op timist got rich simply by buy ing out a pessimist (someone who, given the choice be tween two evils, picks both). Well, optimism was about all John Bulloch, fresh from teaching business at a Toron to college, had when he or ganized the Canadian Federa tion of Independent Business seven years ago, Canadians were familiar with Bulloch’s name - previously, he had been founder-president of the Canadian Council for Fair Taxations loosely organized citizens’ group put together to oppose Ottawa’s notori ous White Paper suggestions for tax “reform” - but he certainly didn’t have mean ingful financing (nor, for that matter, prospects of finding funding). What followed was per haps the Canadian success story of our time. Bulloch — and his tiny crew of assis tants consistently attacked the government for poor taxation measures. Bulloch preached that Canada’s eco nomy is weak because there is-too much emphasis on big ness and not enough oppor tunities provided for the lit tle guys who form the back bone of most strong econo mies. The CFIB lashed out at government policies which create too many rules and forms for small business to follow. And, every time he attacked, Bulloch offered an alternative approach. “It is easy to attack,” Bulloch maintains. “To be credible, however., it is necessary to offer a reasonable alternative to whatever you don’t like.” The Federation got results. Tax rates for small business were lowered. Nasty regula tions that forced entrepre neurs to spend too much time filling out government forms were weeded out. Gov ernment guaranteed loans to smaller firms were arranged. Eventually, a federal Minister of Small Business (currently Tony Abbott) was appointed to sendee Bulloch’s constitu ency. And, along the way, a funny thing happened. Bul loch’s flagrant optimism sud denly became reality. The CFIB moved beyond 50,000 members (each of them an individual firm) this month, making it,in per capita terms, the world’s largest voluntary small business organization. So much for optimism. Which only goes to show that what we pessimists regard as optimism is nothing more than realism. “Think small” Is an editorial message from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business^' riown memory lane J.A. and Kit- the Mr. 55 Years Ago The Ladies Aid of Caven Presbyterian Church held a most successful garden party on the lawn of Mr. E.J. Christie on Friday evening last. The grounds and booths were made very attractive with Japanese lanterns and bunting. Vendors, in costume, sold bananas from a pushcart. The gypsy for tune teller was on hand. The Exeter Band enlivened the proceedings with some stirring music. Messrs. T.S. Woods, Stewart, W.W. Taman R.G. Seldon were in chener taking in W.O.B.A. tournament. Seldon was elected vice- president of the association. Mr. E.J. Horney, who has had charge of the Dominion Store in Exeter ever since they opened up here, is leaving next week for Mit chell to take charge of a new branch which the company is opening up in that town. The community games and vesper service held by the young people of James Street Church are growing in interest and attendance. 30 Years Ago Clinton was invaded Monday by 3,500 Orangemen and their families to celebrate the 258th an niversary of the Battle of the Boyne. Thomas Pryde MLA has received word that the contract for resurfacing highway 4, from the south boundary of Huron County north as far as Kippen has been let to Brennan Con struction Company. Exeter Horse Races were rained out Wednesday af ternoon and had to be called off after the first race. Over 400 invitations have been mailed for Winchelsea Old Boys’ and Girls’ Reunion to be held August 2. 20 Years Ago A wedding trip to their new home in Denmark followed the marriage in RCAF Station Chapel, Centralia, on Saturday July 19 of Annabelle Dewar and Mogens Pilgaard Kristensen of the Royal Danish Air Force. The groom has just completed the training program under NATO program. Over 300 attended Huron Federation Agriculture open air service at the United Church sum mer camp near Goderich Sunday afternoon. After a sermon on “Power” and music by the Salvation Army Band of Wingham Tiger Dunlop WI served lunch. Eleven bands participated in the second annual tattoo at the Exeter Community Park Friday evening. Three Exeter bands took part and the massed bands were led by bandmaster Ted Walper at the close of- the evening. C.S. MacNaughton, Huron MLA and Mrs. Mac- Naughton attended the Governor General’s lun cheon in honor of Princess Margaret at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, Thursday. 15 Years Ago Construction of a swim ming pool in Exeter will begin around Labor Day, the committee decided last week. Funds for the bathhouse are expectedto be raised by next summer. The main pumphouse for Exeter’s new sewerage system reflects the sporty new look engineers are giving to what’s always been considered pretty mundane business. The tablet erected on a stone monument by the Old Boys and Girls in 1935 at the south end of town to honor Exeter’s first council was removed to Riverview Park. Mr. and Mrs, John Teevins of Grand Bend were presented with a $25 cheque by the federal post office department to reward them for foiling a possible robbery of the Grand Bend post office June 16. RCAF the the of Is §