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The Brussels Post, 1980-04-09, Page 2by Keith Roulston The dedicated profes n sioal* Behind the scenes WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1980 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, Subscriptions(in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. ,Businesses should work together A lest-ditch attempt to revive the Brussels Business Association has failed. Only four people even bothered to call about the dinner meeting which would have been held last Wednesday night if enough interest had been shown. The interest Just wasn't there, however. We can understand the small businessman's frustrations in trying to make a go of things as interest rates go ever higher and people cut down on their shopping. It's not a good time for either customer orthe business owner. An organization like the BBA, hOwever, could have promoted the optimistic point of view, by encouraging new businesses to come to town, getting behind special projects in the area so Brussels would be better known and draw in more customers. Perhaps someone could even have come up with some ideas for making Brussels' main street more attractive. There is the usual fear that if there was a business organization again, the same people would wind up doing all the work, but this is a time when businesses should stick together, coming up with promotions, so area people won't be hiking off to Listowel or Wingham to do their shopping. Losing businesses to those areas certainly isn't going to help Brussels, but by the loss of the BBA, it looks as though no one"eeally cares anyway. To the editor: Recently, a number of people applied for, the position of cafeteria manager at the F.E. Madill Secondary School in Wingham. The person chosen for that job was a London resident. I understand that several people from Huron County had also ,applied and I wonder why someone from outside this area was chosen. The high school solicits help for its' programs and projects from the businesses and people in Huron County, yet 'hires its help from outside. I believe that small businesses should be given a chance and that if people are to be encouraged to buy locally, then support for local busineeses and people should be shown in other ways as well. If Huron County doesn't support its own people, who else will? Bill Protopapas, Brussels I'm currently in tite middle 'of rereading. Dr. Wm. Victor -,JOhnston's book dealing With the problems of being a doctor in this .part of the country in the first half of the century: "13efore the Age of Miracles." It brings. back to me again the dedication that doctors of the era had, a: dedication that seems lacking in so many people in our ' - modern times. Dr. Johnston grew.np in. West Wawanosh, township and after. he studied medicine returned to his own area. Lucknow, to, practice his profession. -He did so for the - next 30 years, throttgh the last part of the twenties, all, of the thirties and forties and the early years of the: fifties. I vaguely remember him from my childhood, before he left what was my hometown. His daughter was one of my sister's closest friends. . The books was an unlikely best seller a few years back, riding the Canadian top ten selling list for 'weeks on, . end. In his retirement he moved back to his hometown where he died a couple of years ago in his eighties. I think one of the reasons the book became so popular was not just because of the writer, but because in it he represented so many selfless doctors all over Canada from another era. Dr. Johnston gives an idea of ' what it was like to be a doctor in those years. There were no miracle drugs. There was no health insurance. There were few hospitals. Babies were most often born at home in the rural areas. Those were the days when the doctors went to the patients. In a village like Lucknow it meant that the doctor had to travel out to his patients in the country. In summer this wasn't particularly a problem since by the twenties most doctors had cars. The winter was a different story. What's a short five mile trip for us in heated cars on a cold crisp night became a trial in a horse and buggy. Especially when the doctor was expected to use his frost-bitten hands in a most delicate fashion when he got to the home of his patient. (It couldn't have been much fun for the patienthaving a doctor with such cold hands either.) Those were the days when each doctor was likely to work alone in a practice. It meant that lit 'worked seven days a week, often day and night: lir. Johnston estimates small town doctors saw 280 patients during those seven days, a total 4%000 patients a year. It was a hard life. Dociltrs *may have been regarded as wealthy cinieks of the community but they weren't often as Well off as they seemed. They were :respected, iff some cases loved. ' I remember that kind of do-dor myself. He was the successor to Dr. ',Johnston in that . practice. In the late 1950'a I contracted an illness which today is relatively mild but at 'one time was quite fearedln children. If our familyhad bad the kind of medical insurance we have today Lwouldbar b een sent to, hospital. It would have bankrupted a struggling farm family if V'd gone to the hospital then so I spent the ne.rt two months in bed being nursed by a patient mother. During that time in the middle, of winter the doctOr paid regular visits, trudging through the deep snow up our long farm lang. He was known as a gruff man, without 'a lot of bedside. manner, yet my memories of him are as a very kind, thoughtful man. Later when was finding the strain of grade 13 studies so much I was getting - headaches (those' were in the, days when we still had dreaded department exams), he took a few minutes out to talk to me abounthe 'troubles he had had with his studies too. Doctors weren't the only dedicated pro= fessionals. There were the school teachers who struggled in one-room achool houies for far less than they deserved. There were the veterinarians ready at all hoUrs to go out to a farm, to look after a sick animal. There are dedicated doctors, teachers veterina:.rians and, other people today of course. There have been improvements in their situations through sheer common sense ways of ,working. Doctors share practices so they can get more time off. Teachers no longer have to deal with eight classes at once. , Yet dedication in general in our society is a word that has nearly lost its meaning. Somewhere along the way in our search for efficiency, our fight for prosperity, our concentration on the rights of the individual, dedication came to be thought of as something only suckers go for., Today most people in most profession's are out to get as much as they can for as little investment of money, ,time and emotional involvement as they can. The people who throw themselves into doing a: good job of serving people are looked on as something that should be in a museum of curiosities, right there beside the calf with two heads.' , Dedicated- people past and' present may work longer hours than the "smart" people.' They may not have as much to show for their efforts materially. They may not have 'the' trips to Mexico or the hot tub in the backyard. But they. have I think a treasure the "smart" people can never have and probably wouldn't understand anyway. They have the feeling of having done something well. They have the knowledge that when they leave the world they'll leave behind not just a collection of morn-out gadgets to be divided among the remaining relatives, but memories of them'kept by all the people they have helped along the way. Now that is a legacy that is priceless. BLUE RIBBON AWARD 19 79 Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley The Canadian dream My heart goes out to all the young people who have been saving to buy a home. At today's interest rates, they have about as much chance to achieve their ambition as I have of being chosen Best Dressed Man of the Year. Let's take a typical example, and reflect on the grim picture a couple with young children face when they want a home of their own, with a bit of lawn, a little garden, some room for their kids to explore and set same roots. By dint of cutting every corner, pinching every portion, Dick and Jane, who have two kids called Jick and Dane, have amassed a total of $5,000 over their five years of wedded bliss. They've been able to do this only by eating cheap food, eschewing all luxuries, such as drinks, steaks, movies. They have taken moonlight jobs on their holidays to make a few extra bucks. And of course they have both been working, sending their kids to daycare, for which they have to pay. Their only concession to entertainment has been black and white 'IV, an old car in which they occasionally venture forth for a picnic; and extremely careful sex. Mindyou, they're not suffering. They're getting enough to eat, unlike those "poor little starving children in China" of whom my mother reminded me every time I clamped my lips tight and refused to eat lumpy oatmeal. (I wonder what happened to those poor little starving kids in China, anyway. Every time I see some little Chinese kids on TV, they look remarkably well-nourished. I think they've all moved to Biafra or Bangladesh or South America.) At any rate, this is no horror story about a young Canadian couple who can afford a twenty-four of beer only on Saturday nights. Their kids are healthy, and reasonably well, dressed, thanks to Zellers and Woolworths and other philanthropical Canadian comp- anies who buy cheap but sturdy rags in Hong Kong and Taiwan. But I still feel sorry for Dick and Jane. They had a dream, the old Canadian dream of owning your own house and a bit of land, and it's turning into a nightmare. They don't want to be up there with the Vanderbilts. They'd settle for a, very modest home, around $40,000, if there is still a detached house in the country for this price. Dick would work on improvements and Jane would make it warm and lively with her unerring sense of taste. So they decide to take the plunge, With their hard-saved cheque for $5,000 clutched in one of their hopeful hands, they go to the bank or a trust company to borrow the rest.. No problem, as the ads said a few years ago. Then comes the crunch. The .bank manager, or the realtor, or the trust company bird, welcomes them ' with the warmth of an undertaker, and fiddles with •his pencil, and mutters about the Canadian dollar and interest rates, and finally gives them a figure. For the $35,000 they still need, at 15 per cent a year, their - uh - interest would be $5,250.00, just $250.00 more than they walked in with. To say that Dick and Jane are stunned would be like saying that Pierre Trudeau is humble. With both their jobs, they gross $22,000. After the Revenue Department is through with them, they'll be lucky to have $18,000. More like $16,000. But that's still quite a bit, isn't it? Take off another $4,000 just to eat and keep clean and maintain the old rusty car. Take off a few hundred for telephone and hydro and medicare, and all the other deductions from their pay checks, and it's another $1,000 they haven't laid hands on. We're down to $11,000. Of coursejf they have a house, they won't have tb pay rent. That will save about $3,600 a year, if they happen to be living in a slum. But that $3,600 will be gobbled Up by taxes, fuel and , all the other things that houses gobble. Then thete's that $5,250.00 a year interest on the mortgage. They are left with around $5,000 a year to pay for clothes, toothpaste, repairs to everything, dental bills, and all the other flack of modern living. And they still haven't bought a washer and dryer, a stove and refrigerator, and color TV, or a second car, all'the absolute necessities for a proud house-owner. Poor devils. They might just make it, if they were prepared to eat porridge and spaghetti for the next twenty years, never take a holiday, stayed healthy and, each got an extra job. They could always send Jick out babysitting and Dane out shining shoes, but they won't be ready for another ten years. By that time Dick and Jane will have paid about $50,000 interest on a'$40,000 house, and nothing on the, principal. Forget it, Dick and Jane. Take your five thousand, blow it on a good holiday, and go on welfare. You'd be better off, and without the stress, would live an extra ten years, So much for the Canadian dream. And I don't want some accountant writing refuting my figures. They're close enough.