The Brussels Post, 1980-03-12, Page 2Behind the soettos.
by Keith:RpulOon.
fit this winter?
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published each Wednesday afternoon at Bruatels, Ontario
By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited
Evelyn Kennedy - EditOr Pat, Langlois - Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspapfer Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper ASsociatiOn
Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Yegrr.
Others $20.00 a Year. Single. Copies 25 cents each.
BLUE
RIBBON
AWARD
1979
Who wants a ghost town?
Another Brussels business has closed its doors and the loss of
Smith's Coffee Shop means a disappointment for a number of
Brussels area residents.
Fortunately there are other good eating places in town, but area
youngsters are going to have a hard time finding a hangout, where a
number of them can just sit and be themselves without getting yelled
at by irate adults.
The building is to be taken over by our MP for his constituency
office, so it at least Ina ill be getting some use but the increasing sell-outs
of old businesses and the lack of the new, is disheartening to see in a
village that seemed to be thriving only two years ago.
Promotion of the village is the key to getting new businesses in, and
it's something area residents should be seriously thinking about if they
don't want to see Brussels a ghost town.
To the editor:
Heart fund says thanks
"Heart Month" in Canada is now over
and on behalf of the Canadian Heart Fund,
Ontario Division, please accept our heartfelt
thanks for your promotional support during
February.
Our objective for the 1980 Heart Fund
Campaign was $6.4 million and although all
returns are not yet in, we are quite hopeful
that our objective will be attained. Without
your willing co-operation in communicating
our needs to the public, we would not be able
to express such an outlook.
The Medical Committee of the. Ontario
Heart Foundation met at the end of January
to review research applications submitted to
us for support. You will be pleased to know
that after deliberations, $7.4 million was
committed to cardiovascular and
cerebrovascular research projects in
Ontario, 'commencing June 1980. The
financial support of many individuals and
businesses has made this commitment
possible.
Thank you again for your support, and for
helping us to ensure that research against
our nation's number one health enemy will •
continue.
With best wishes.
Yours very truly,
Canadian Heart Foundation
Ontario Division
Esther M. Richards
Director of Public Relations
This rather tame snowbelt winter has
done wonders for municipal snow removal
budgets but not much for my waistline
removal project.
Usually when spring rolls around I don't
have any rolls around my middle. I'm
probably in better shape when the snow
goes than at any other time of the year.
Part of the reason is a 900-foot long
laneway on our place that gets clogged
with snowquicker than'you can say "I need
a snowblower". Because we don't have our
own snowblower the lane often stay
clogged for a few days while we hike in
from the road.
Making that hike once, twice or three
times a day the last few winters has been
my equivalent of jogging. It gives me fresh
air (and frozen lungs) and strengthened leg
and stomach muscles.
Recent year our family has also turned
winter into a recreational asset through the
use of cross country skis. It's one of those
few activities that is both fun and healthy
at the same time.
But this year there hasn't been any
snow-clogged lane to walk in. Few have
been the days there has been enough snow
or wind to block the lane to a car. So the car
has heen'right at the door, convenient, but
not very good froin an excercise point of
view.
Skiing too has been virtually non existent
because for the major part of the winter to
date there hasn't been enough snow in the
fields to allow the runners to slide over the
clods of dirt.
On top of that I haven't had to, push out a
single car all winter (now just watch a
blizzard come next week and see me
pushing cars by the, dozen). I have hardly
picked up a snow shovel. In short, I'm a
sedentary, softening mass of once-firm
muscle.
In truth about the only strenuous
excercise I have had this winter has come
on trips to the big city. Now we in the rural
aras like to see ourselves as far superior to
the soft city types. We're tough, we tell
ourselves. We breath fresh air and get
plenty of excercise and we're strong of
mind and body.
Well I may not have breathed fresh air
but I got far more excercise in the city that I
ever get around here. In the city I tend to
guide my car shaking and quaking and
ducking rushing taxicabs to the nearest
parking lot and proceed to walk wherever
I'm going. Going a longer distance I will
likely take a bus, street car or subway but
often I think it isn't worth the effort and
money of taking public transport just for
a few blocks so I walk and the first thing
you know you've covered a mile or so on
foot.
Can you imagine people in our towns
walking a mile on foot? People in our small
towns get in the car to go two blocks
downtown to get a. pack of cigarettea, If
they also, need to get the mail, they'll get
back in, the car and drive it half a. block to
the post office. -
How_ about our farmers? A lot of people
think of that commercial with Bobby Hull
pitching a heavy bale of hay as if it were a •
' 'feather pillow and think farmers must:be in
great physical shape. Your average farmer"
feeds the livestock by pushing button;
cleans out the manure by pushing another
button, climbs in , the cab of his pickup
truck to drive to the back field where he
climbs into the cab of his climate-centrolled
combine or tractor and sits on his
ever-expanding derriere for the rest of the
day. He may not wear a three-piece suit
but he has pretty much the same environ-
ment, the same stress and the same lack of
excercise as and executive in a high-rise
office building.. —
There's a difference though. City people
in recent years have come to realize just
what terrible shape they're in. They're
tired of being beaten by that .60-year old
Swede. Thanks in part I suppo se to those
Participaction commercials the cities have,.
gone fitness mad. There are health clubs-
all over the place. Drivers not only have to
watch each other but also joggers and
cyclists. „
It may have something to do with the me
generation., Everybody wants to look your
best. It's not much good to go and by a
$100 dress at a fashionable boutique if the
roll of fat around your middle pushes it all
out of shape. And in these days, of sexual
liberation few ladies want„an admiring
male hand to feel a girdle.
The macho Man at the disco doesn't look
too macho if his knees buckle' in the strain
of boogying. And the tight-fitting sexy
shirts don't look well with a sagging
tummy.
So the city people have taken to fitness in
a serious way.'We out here in the healthful
countryside seem happy enough to waddle
slowly onwards toward indolent old age.
We don't worry about boogying at the
disco. Most people don't really worry about ,
fashions. Health clubs are virtually non-
existent and the idea of jogging with
people looking out their windows saying
"There goes that idiot again" fends to
keep a lot of people from joining the
jogging generation. Try to get some
excercise by going fora long walk and
you're likely ' to have some friendly
neighbour stop and offer you a, ride in his
car.
It's part of our rural culture to think of
the city kid and the country kid: the city
kind trying to show how much smarter he is.
than the country kid until finally the
country kid gets mad and slugs him.
Maybe we'll soon have to get used to the
idea that it's the city kid who'll be the one
tough enough' to do the slugging.
Sugar and spice
By Bill Smiley
The travel bug attacks
Sometimes I am convinced I was born 30
years too soon. When I see the wonderful
opportunities for travel young people have
today, I turn pea-green with envy.
When you and I were young, most of us
didn't get much farther than the next town.
A minority visited the city occasionally, and
it was considered a big deal. And a shal
whale of a lot of people never did gef to see a
big city in their entire fives. And were no
worse off for it, of course.
Man, how that has changed. Nowadays,
young people go galloping off to the four
corners of the earth with no more thought
about it than we'd have. given to a weekend
in the city. They're so blase about it that it's
sickening to an old guy like me, who has
always yearned to travel, and never had the
time or money or freedom to do it.
In my day, during the Depression, the
only people who could afford to travel were
the hoboes. They could afford it because,
they didn't have any money. They rode free
on the tops and inside the box-cars of freight
trains. And they didn't haye any re-
sponsibili ties except the next meal and a
place to sleet).
Looking back, I was one of the lucky ones.
Most of my generation of youth~ was forced
by circumstances to stay home, get any job
available, and hang on to it like grim death,
never venturning forth on the highroads of
life. I was the envy of my classmates, when
at 17, I nabbed a job on the upper lake boats,
and could come home bragging of having I
been to such bizarre, exotic places as
Duluth, Sault Ste. Marie, Detroit, the
Lakehead.
Today's youngsters would sneer at such
bourgeois travels. They exchange anecdotes
about Morocco and Moscow, Athens and
Australia, Paris and Port-au-Prince, Delhi
and Dubrovnik. Fair nauseates me, it does.
By the time he was 22, my own son had
lived on both coasts of Canada, been to
Mexico, New Orleans; Texas, Israel, Ireland
and a hundred other places that are just
names in an atlas to me. He's been to
Paraguay, South America, and his visited
Argentina and Bolivia. He sneaks four
languages. I speak one, not too well.
My nephews have seen more countries
than Chris Columbus or Sir Francis Drake.
One's an airline pilot, and knows Europe,
North America and the West Indies the way I
know my way to school. Another has worked
in the Canadian north, Quebec, the Congo,
Jamaica, and Costa Rica.
My nieces are just as peripatetic. They've
been to the West Coast, France, England,
Russia. A four-day. trip to New York, tor
them, is scarcely worth mentioning.
Migawd, I'd have given my left eyeball to
see New York when I was their age! I
thought it was pretty earth-shaking the first
time I saw Toronto. Toronto; yete-c-,ehl
Thousands of university students' annually
take a year off, borrow some money, stuff a
pack sack and head out for a year of
bumming around Europe, the
Mediterranean, North Afica, India. Rotten
kids!
In the last decade, the travel bug has
spilled over into the high schools. Some of
theni are beginning to sound like agencies,
with frequent announcements over the P.A.
system:
"Will the group going to Rome in the
winter break please assemble in Room 202 at
3:30 for a lesson in tying your toga."
"All those taking the Venezuela trip are
requested to see Mr. Vagabond in room 727
at 3:15 today." •
"Those who are involved in the spring
break trip to the Canary Islands should have
their passports by March 1st". '
"An urgent meeting will be held today, for
those who plan to take the London-Paris trip
during spring break. All seats are now filled:
If enough are interested, 'we'll hire another'
plane." •
It fairly makes your head awirn, .especially
when your own ideas of a trip south is 100
miles to the city for a weekend, a trip west
means a visit to great-grandad, and a trip
east means you're going to a feneral or a
wedding among the relatives:
Next thing you know, this travel binge will
bulge over into the elementary schools, and
(Continued On Page 3 )