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The Brussels Post, 1979-04-25, Page 2 11111111.111Minnimmor II/It4SE LS ONTARIO WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1979 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.. Published each. Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association ACA Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Ydar. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. SITAR& iiiraeo urn Brussels Post Post Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston a The lesson of Arbour Day Sure we' re friendly Well, the arrangements are being made for the arrival of our visitors from Brussels, Belgium. Council, the PUC, and representatives of the BBA and Brussels service clubs should be congratulated for their efforts in getting together to make the visitors' stay an enjoyable one. Some good thoughts went into the planning of the event. A plaque representing a part of Brussels, Ontario that they can take back with them, representatives of the village on hand to meet them, and dinner and musical entertainment are all planned. What better way for people of completely different cultural backgrounds to get to know one another than in an atmosphere of friendly social entertainment? Only one week to go and the visitors will be here so let's show them what a hospitable, friendly place Brussels can be. CorrectiOns Also in the story on the Belgians who are coming here one of the paragraphs stated that, "Having a town named Ainleyville and a post office named Brussels con- fused things and so the Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Although I grew up on a farm in the 1950's and early '60's, I never went to the old one-room schools that were the normal place of education for farm children of the era. As a consequence there was one holiday of the year that I always missed and it seemed a little exotic to me. It was called Arbour Day and it occured about this time every year at the one-room school houses that dotted our township. On that day while those of us who attended school in town had to sit in stuffy classrooms, dreaming of being out of doors in the fine spring weather, our counter- parts in the country schools were using shovels and other equipment and planting trees. I guess Arbour Day is still being celebrated sporadically these days. I don't think it has anywhere near the acceptance it once did when those country schools were in operation. I imagine there were many parents who looked on Arbour Day as just another excuse for the teacher to get out of her work, just as many parents today look on professional development days as a chance for teachers to get paid holidays.I'll bet the teachers didn't exactly think of Arbour Day as a holiday as they tried to keep assorted ages of young hellions from amputating toes or heads with the tools they had for the occasion. Looking back, though, I suspect the lessons learned on Arbour Day were as important to the children as what was learned in days when the three R's were on the timetable. And I suspect we're in need of learning those lessons again today. In rural Western Ontario we've long had ambivalent feelings toward trees. This part of Canada was covered a century and a half ago with forest as thick as the famous rain forests of the southern climates. The deep soil, the heavy precipitation brought about by the proximity to Lake Huron provided a climate that grew huge trees. When the first pioneers moved into the territory they had to hack their way through the forrest that was almost dark at ground level. People suffered from ague, a kind of malaria caused by living constantly in the dampness of the deep forest. These hardy settlers had to hack down the forest with nothing but axes, and pull the stumps to make fields so they could grow enough food to live through the winter. In a good year they could clear five or ten acres on their farm. It's little wonder then that they grew to hate trees. A tree was an enemy and they wanted to banish every tree from sight. In a matter of a few decades we went from having millions of acres of trees to having a great lack of frees. Farm houses were baked by sun in summer and blasted by icy gales in winter because there were no windbreaks to protect them. Our towns were barren places because no trees had been left to shade the streets. A few people in the late 1800's began to realize the mistakes. They realized that trees had their place, even in the new settled land. They realized too that some of the country which had been cleared, should have been left in trees because it was good for little else. So tree planting began again. Most of the beauty of our countryside and our towns and villages today we can credit the people of early in this century with. They may be long gone but the trees they planted live on. The huge maples that line the streets of our communities, that give them that distinctive Western Ontario small town look are mostly more than a half century old. But now we're .in another period of ignoring the value of trees. For the last decade or so, more and more of those old trees have been coming down because they were too old. Because nearly all the trees were planted at the same time, there are no younger trees taking their place. Often new trees aren't being planted as the old one are cut. We face the day when our streets again may be barren, when our small towns will look like the horrible wastelands of big city suburbs where we bake in summer and shiver in winter. In the country side things are even worse. Dutch Elm disease took a heavy toll, killing off many of the graceful giants that once lined the road sides and fencerows. More recntly changes in farming practices have taken. a greater toll. Cashcropping and bigger machinery have led many farmers to chop down what few trees there were on farms so that the fields would be bigger and equipment could be handled more easily. More and more swamps have been drained. We haven't learned the lessons the pioneers learned, that trees are friends as well as enemies. We haven't learned that if we don't have enough trees we have water and wind erosion of the soil; we have hot houses in summer and cold in winter. I think we could use Arbour Day again to teach us just how important trees are to our enjoyment of life. A cutline underneath a picture of Science Fair win- ner Joanne DeVries last week was incorrect, when it stated that she had won second prize. It should have said first prize, council at that time got together and decided the name Brussels would be used. It should have said railway station, not post office. Teaching: It's not a dull life Don't ever try to tell me that teaching school is a dull life. Oh, it can be pretty gruelling, not to mention gruesome, in Jan. and Feb. But once we get that March break behind us, the whole scene blooms like a riotous garden in May. For one thing, it's spring. And as you walk around the halls of a high school, trying to pry apart couples who are so tightly grooved that you're afraid they're going to cave in a row of lockers, you can't help thinking you were born 20 to 30 years too soon. For another, the cursed snow and ice have gone, or almost, and you know there are only 10 or 11 weeks of martyrdom left until you walk out of that shoe factory, (which most modern schools resemble) and kiss it goo ye for eight weeks. Then, in the sp ing, all kinds of things pop up. The drama festival, The teachers vs. students hockey game, in which an assortment of pedants, from nearly 60 down to the late 20s in age, pit theit long-gone skills against a group of kids in their prime, who would dearly love to cream the math teacher who failed them in the March exams, or the English teacher who objected gently to their use of fourletter words in essays. As I write, our school is bubbling with excitement, First of all, our custodians are On strike. Thisgets the kids all excited, arid rumours fly about the school being closed, and a free holiday. Then their faces drop a foot when they're told they may be going to school in July, to make up for lost time. And they start cleaning up after them- selves, instead of leaving it all to the janitors, as they usually do, and hope the strike will be over tomorrow. They don't give a diddle about the issues in the strike. They are practical. They want to be out of here on the first possible day in June. Don't blame them. It's human nature. For the teachers, who generally respect the caretakers, it is an object lesson in how important are the latter — the guys who sweep the floors, vacuum the rugs, wash the windows, and generally do the hard and dirty work of keeping the school spruce and sparkling. As an old floor-scrubber and lavatory-cleaner, from the first job I ever had, I perhaps respect them more than anyone. Unlike other countries, like England, where unions are closely knitted, we cross the picket line and go to work, however much we respect and sympathize. If we don't, we're fired. Simple as that. But we oare forbidden, by our union, to do any of their work, such as emptying a waste- basket, sweeping a floor. Sort of fu n. But the really big excitement among our staff, at least the males on it, is the shuffle-board tournament, Oh, I don't mean the outdoor kind, where elderly people push with a pronged stick a plate-like object. No this is the kind you find in taverns across the land: guys with a beer in one hand and a two-dollar bill in the other, shouting their bets through the smoke. We don't have beer in our staff room, but we do have a shuffle-board table. It's no frill from the school board. A staff member built it, and the rest of us bought it from him. It's the greatest relaxer in the world, after teaching four classes in a row the great truths of the world to 120 kids, 90 per cent of whom are about as interested as an aardvark. Shuffle-board is to curling what dirty pool is to English billiards. Curling is a gentleman's game. theoretically, where you shake hands with the wi nners, and both teams sit down for a drink and discuss the fine points of the game. The spectators are either behind glass or up in the stands, where they politely applaud a good shot and groan with sympathy when someone makes a near miss. Something like a cricket match, with good manners as important ,as winning. Shuffle-board is a game where you walk away after losing, face red with rage at your stupid partner, who missed a key shot.) have never seen any hand-shaking, but have heard a lot of muttering, The spectators constantly heckle and offer coaching tips designed to destroy the player's concentration, "Put a guard on it., No, draw around it. Tap yours up. Draw deep. Play safe and cut them down." etc. There is Universal delight among the watchers when a great player misses an easy shot, and reluctant grunts of ap- preciation when a poor player makes a brilliant shot. Out-psyching the opponent is a vital part of the game. Just as he is about to shoot, you lean far over to blow away an imaginary speck of dust, hiding the rock he is shooting at with your tie. You always blurt, "Don't miss it now," just as he is about to make game shot, And he frequently does. It sounds like foul play, and it is. But it can be hilarious. Shuffle-board brings out the absolute worst in characters who are normally considered to be people of intergrity. As played in our staff-room, it is not a game for those who believe in winning in a gentlemanly fashion. They wind up with ulcers and don't sleep nights. In our type shuffle-board, the mighty can fall, and the turkeys become eagles. I teamed up with another venerable gentleman, both of us former prisoners-of- war (on opposite sides), and we showed some of those young punks who were in their diapers while we were trying to make a better world for them. We came out of eight games with four wins, .500, the best I've ever hit m my life. And if that dummy Hackstetter hadn't missed his draw in the fifth game and bumped the opposition up for five, we'd have won the tournarnent,