The Brussels Post, 1980-03-05, Page 2aitusse
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1980
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published each Wednesday afternoon at Biustels, Ontario
By McLean Bros. Publishers LimitOd
Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Lauglois - Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and.
Ontario Weekly NewspaperAssociation
Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year.
Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each.
How precious life is
New appreciation of life and the world is often expressed by those
who have been given a short time to live. Rarely has it ever been
better expressed than by Toronto surgeon Dr. John A. MacDonald,
who died of cancer recently after spending his last years helping others
face death.
Following is an excerpt from his book, "To Live With Cancer"
recently published by McLelland and Stewart:
"When I became aware of my mortality, my attitudes and feelings
changed. There was real meaning to the words "This is the first day_of
the rest of your life."
My appreciation of life increased. There was a heightened
awareness of each sunny day, of the beauty of flowers, of the song of
bird.
"How often do we reflect on the joy of breathing easily without pain,
of swallowing without effort and discomfort, of walking without pain,
of a complete and peaceful night's sleep?
How often do we eat merely to satisfy hunger without appreciating
the subleties of taste and smell of a well-cooked meal?
How often do we complain of our work when we should be thankful
for the great blessing of being able to work?
One soon realizes how precious life is, when it appear§ certain that it
will be curtailed."
Sugar and spice Acton Free Press
By Bill Smiley
with politicians, the body of your car, and
is frayed: your rubber boots, your patience
February freezings followed by March
madness.
As a rule, at this time of year, everything
Usually, it is a drear time of year.
who haven't sold many fur coats, and people
who don't want to take an outside job
because it's too cold. Most of which we do
of thing would have you and me subsidizing
commercial fishermen, farmers, merchants
Carried to its logical conclusion, this sort
your own body. anyway.
But this year , thanks to God or Pierre
I have no objection to sharing the wealth
Trudeau, who are sometimes indistinguish- with a guy who is out of a job, and genuinely
• able, Canadians can face it with more verve wants to work, but I grow cold with fury
than usual. We have had a winter with a when I am helping to support, via pogie, a
maximum of sunshine and a minimum of fisherman who has made a killing in his
snow. short season, a sailor who is knocking off
This combination has lowered the suicide , more than $20,000 a year for ten months
rate, the oil bill, and the horrendous work, or a heavy-machinery man who
amounts you pay for snow removal. gathers in the gold in the summer, then puts
Municipal councils who normally spend a his feet by the fire and draws enough
quarter of their works' department budget unemployment insurance to pay for his
on shovelling mountains of snow into board, bingo and beer.
people's driveways, are exuberant. Now
However, let us be urbane. It's been a
they'll have enough money to go out and tear grand winter, partly due to my subtle
up some roads, cut down some trees, cover a challenging of Mother Nature, the old
piece of green with asphalt. strumpet, about our weather.
But, as always in this country, one man's
I wrote a late September column about the
meat is another man's porridge. joys of sunny October. Thirty days of rain. I
This year, in early February, I received a wrote a late-October column about the
bill from the guy who plows my driveway, It deadly dullness of November in Canada.
was for ten dollars. Usually, by that time, I Twenty-four days of sunshine.
have squandered about sixty dollars, just
I didn't dare fool around again until early
so that I can get my rotten old car out of my January, when I wrote a
skinny old driveway so that I can drive to column predicting a vicious, freezing winter
work and remain unhealthy by not walking. that would last into August. Result? More
Multiply that by 100 custoiners,and the sun in Jan. and early Feb. than for forty
snow removal man is hurting badly. Almost years. This is known as reverse psychology,
as badly as I hurt when I have to pay him avidly practised by bridge and poker
forty bucks a month. Let him hurt, players.
Ski resort operators are crying the blues, But I am not heartless. I do feel sorry for
and, in Ontario,had the, colossal effrontery to the model who can't ski but has Spent three
ask the province for a subsidy, from the hundred dollars on an apres-ski Outfit, and
taxpayer, to make up for their lost revenues. there ain't no snow.
Let them sweat, in that beautiful winter
I do feel sorry for the' boy next door,
sunshine. They'll make it all up next year, Wilson, who shovels my walk and takes me
and more, by jacking up their prices. for about forty, bucks every winter. He's had
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of
being hated by everybody east and west in
the country because I had the misfortune to
be born in Ontario.
There was an article in one of the
newspapers on the weekend by a western '
writer complaining about the stereotyping
of Albertans by the C.B.C. as all rich,
blue-eyed shieks in cowboy boots and
stetsons. Well I'm tired as an Ontarian of
being viewed by people elsewhere in the
country as a Bay Street tycoon living high
by gouging the rest of the country, buying
resources for as little as possible and
selling manufactured goods back for as
much as possible.
I'm tired too of being made feel guilty of -
denying French Canadians their rights
because of some bigots who happen to live
in my province.
I'm sick and tired of people playing one
a lean year. But the grass will probably grow
with the abandon of marijuana next summer,
and he'll make up for it by cutting my lawn
six times a week.
There is one area in which I am heartless.
It doesn't bother me one whit, whatever a
whit is, that the snowmobilers have been
cruising most of the winter on grass and
pavement. Long may their tracks rot.
Another great plus about the sunny,
low-snow winter is the lack of envy and
depression.
Every time I climb out of bed in' the pitch
dark, clobber into my heavy clothes and
boots, lumber out through a blizzard to the
garage, and can't get the car started, I
commence cursing rich people, who have
gone south for the winter. I mutter things
like, "I hope all your pipes burst," or "I
hope your roof falls in, under the weight of
snow."
This is un-Christian; and this winter I've
been able to choke back such curses, merely
hoping that the weather in the south was
unseasonally chilly. Or very wet.
And that depression. Normally, about the
middle of February, I am as low as a
caterpillar's crawl. Dark; cold, snow, wind,
freezing rain, rotten, snuffling kids, crabby
wife, and the furnace gulping like an
incredible hulk.
This year it's been like taking an upper,
instead of a downer. The ice crashes off , my
roof with earthquakian rumbles, but the sun
is doing it, not some bird at twenty dollars an
hour:
You can go down into our basement
without wearing a parka. You can go up to
the attic without a winter survival kit.
All in all, a jolly fine winter.
part of this country off against another. I'm
tired of people who seek gain for
themselves by promoting hate and mis-
trust.
Sure there are problems of ignorance
and misunderstanding in,the country. Sure
people in the Maritimes, Quebec and the
West often get overlooked by the major
media, but so do the people in Huron
County, in Eastern Ontario, even in
London and Windsor. The problem is not
one of Ontario against the rest of the
country but of centralization of power, in
business and the media in one large centre
like Toronto ,(and before that Montreal).
The ptoblem isn't . unique to Canada.
How would you like to be a resident of the
southern U.S. and have the people of the
rest of the country take their image of you
through what they see on The Mis-
adventures of Sheriff Lobo or The Dukes of
Hazzard? Surely the people of Iowa must
be tired of dealing with companies that
push buttons and pull strings from New
York.
Probably even more so than in Canada,
the U.S. is dominated by a few large
centres. If the people of Manitoba feel
slighted by CBC how must the people of
Montana feel about NBC, ABC or CBS.
The media in the U.S. is concentrated in
two centres, New York for publishing and
to some extent television and Los Angeles
for television, movies and music. Every-
thing in the country as it will appear on
television'or in the movies is seen through
the cock-eyed viewpoint of Californiarfs.
You may see a show called WKRP in
Cincinnati but the closest that show ever
got to Cincinnati was when a film crew` flew
in to shoot some scenic film to roll behind
the opening credits. The rest of the show is
acted in California television studies,
written by writers who brown themselves
under the Californian sun while they dream
up ideas for what should go on in their
showbusiness idea of what it would be like
to run a radio station in Cincinnati. Even
many of the television shows about New
York are now written and produced in
California. And when was the last time
you saw anything but a football game from
Chicago, a city several times the size of our
biggest cities in Canada but almost
forgotten in the media polarity between
New York and Los Angeles. The only
national exposure Detroit gets' is in
something about the auto industry or a
murder.
I imagine the discontent is heavy in
Chicago, in Cincinatti, in Billings,
Montana just as it is in Edmonton,
Winnipeg and Halifax. The difference
seems to be that in the U.iblifte discontent
either isn't expressed °icily or is ignored
by the media: Have you heard about
'Southern separatism lately? Is Oklahoma
threatening to keep its oil from the rest of
the U.S.?
The U.S. Of course; had its hatred and
mistrust more than a century age.
(Continued on Page 31
SNOWMEN AT CALLANDER —It's unknoWn who built these snowmen
outside the Callander Nursing Home in Brussels but it's likely that they
pro vided an enjoyable sight for the residents inside. (Brussels Post
Photo)
Behind the scenes
by Keith Roulston
I'm tired of being hated
Give thanks for this winter