The Brussels Post, 1980-09-03, Page 2• 4
111M9 0•7-•
Behind thesceites
by Keith Roulston
WEDNESDAY, ,,SEPTEMBER 3, 1980
Serving Brussels and the surrounding comniunity-
Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario ,
By McLean Bros. Publishers. Limited
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association
Evelyn KenUedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising
Humanity needed
The Ku Klux KlarA has Joined us--unfortunately. They've set up in
Kitchener and also in smaller places like Hanover and Walkerton.
So far they haven't'come to Brussels and let's hope they stay away.
The Kianners no longer dress in the white hooded garments, nor do,
they scream and shout their white supremacy to the nation. Instead
they dress in conservative suits and gently point out how
people of other races and religions have taken away Jobs from the
whites to the point where it may sound logical and convincing.
It isn't, and this kind of narrow-mindedness does not benefit this
country. The fact that theKu Klux Klan can now come out so easily
into the open points to a reversal of attitudes, back to the old-fashioned
foolishness of many years ago.
That the Klan is so obviously back in action also seems to 'indicate
that things aren't improving in this country.
A humanitarian attitude Is one thing that's really needed when a
country seems to be splitting apart. Let's work that way instead.
Sugar and spice —
There's a line in the play, The Life That.
Jack Built, that says it well. Commenting
on the great painter Emily Carr, another
painter says he pictures her getting up in
the morning, having breakfast,, putting
pile of chips of her shoulder and going out
to face the world.. Life is never so tough, he
says that you can't make it, tougher...
That image came to mind the other day
when I read aletter to the editor in. Today
Magazine. The writer was one of several
who protested an article in' the magazine on
lily Schreyer, Cana ‘a's first lady, which
they considered "a ''atchet job". While
other , correspondents from Winnipeg,
Toronto, Fredericton and Ottawa were ,
leontent to simply blame the writer from the
'article for, the injustice, the letter writer
from Victoria had to see it as anouter'
instance of the eastern ploy against
western Canada. "No doubt eastern
sophisticated readers will have enjoyed
Charlotte ,Gray's slick hatchet job, but to
me the story brought home one point: the
gulf between eastern and western Canada
is too wade to bridge." (I like the subtle
use of a capital on Western Canada while
eastern Canada goes without.)
It seems •there .are a lot ,of Canadians
hobbling aroung lopsided from the pile of
chips on their shoulders these, days. It's for
sure Western , Canadians don't face an
energy crisis for example because if they
do run out of oil they can always burit the
wood piles on their shpulders to be kept
warm for, a year or two.,
Now don't get me wrong, I do, believe
that people, in the West do have
grievances. From .the days the first white
skinned settlers moved west there have
been injustices: injustices due to ignorance
on the part of the easterners; injustices due
to lack of communications; , injustices
because of easterners being too , wrapped
up in their own concerns tp even look west;
and injustices because ,of the power of
eastern businessmen who wanted to make
as much money as they could whether
selling or buying in the west.
Yet through all the "haver not" years the
westerners were still known for their •
hospitality.- Easterners visiting the prairies
whether tourists or migrant farm workers
came back talking about the warmth of the
people. Now the have not years are over.
Westerners with their wealth of resources
will soon see the rest of the country
dependent on them, not just for wheat and
oil, but for, the very business investment
they have looked to Toronto and Montreal
for in the Past. Bat instead-of giaekeaslY
'accepting their new position ,of puWer,,
many westerners seem. U. want to carry ohn
*ling hard used.' There have been more
bitter complaints, more demands for
justice in the last two years than in the. two •
decades before. For many in the west R
seems not good enough to have the power
they so long resented the east having, but
they must get revenge, rub the noses of all
the easterners in it. .
Not that Minis "chip,Of the shoulder"
stuff comes from the west. It apparently
hag ' infested the country. Everybody is
being hard used by everybody else.
QUebec, of course has been getting
mileages for the last two decades froth the
injustices of the century before. On the
other hand many Ontarians are so paranoid
about, the power of Quebec that every time
someone from Quebec is made a cabinet
minister they think it's another step to the
"French" taking over Canada. ,
Nova Scotians of course have been
carrying large timbers on their shoulders
for nearly a century now. Neva Scotia was
in, the positipn of Ontario about the time of
Confederation. Fueled by the lumber
industry, ship building, maritime trade and
fishing, Nova Scotia was the old power, the
old money. in the new country. But the
world was changing. Canada didn't have, so
much lumber to ship to Britain anymore
and it wasn't going via the wooden sailing
ships the Nova ,Scotians were so expert in
building. The power and, the wealth shifted
• west and some Nova Scotians still haven't
been, convinced that it would , have
happened whether they had been Coded-
eration or not. ,
And of course, since Newfoundland
joined confederation in 1949 somehow all
the , problems of poverty and lost job
opportunities that had plagued the colony
for a hundred years before became the
fault of the mainlanders.'
There is some truth in all the complaints.
Injustices do exist in Canada. We here in
Huron County have our grievances against
the government in Toronto. The politicians ,
there don't understand us. The, big
businesses here see us as a place to buy
produce cheap and sell manufactured
equipment expensive. ,
But the point is that no one• has ever
gained much from carrying a pile of chips
on their shoulder. The pepple who succeed
• in the world are thoie who circuinvent, the
hardships to get on with the job. It would
be nice to see Canadians stop feuding and
get.op with making this a better country.
Advertising Is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error the a4vertising space
occupied by the erroneous Hein, together with reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for but
the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate.
While every effort will be mode to Insure they are handled with care, the publishers cannot be responsible for
the return of unsolicited .nistelocriPto or Photos.
By Bill Smiley
Backyard bonanza at Smiley home
•
NO ESSAY this week. No .controlled,
clear, coherent, concise evaluation of some
piece of trivia, as is my wont.
It's quite difficult to keep one's brains
unscrambled in a summer like this. One
day you are gasping around like a
newly-caught fish, trying to extract enough
.oxygen from the humidity to remain alive.
Next day you are pounded on the head
with hail - yes, hail - or you do down to the
basement and there's a fpot of water in it.
First couple of times, I mopped it up. Now,
we just ,stay out, of the basement until the
infoor swimming-pool has dried up, by
evaporation.
Once again,. we have discussed at' great
length, what, to do about the "patio." We
• call it that for want, Of a better word We
have two French doors leading mite the
patio. The patio is a pile of rocks, •ranging
' from three pounds to two hundred pounds.
It has no known purpose that we've ever
been able to discover. It has no gepmetric or
any other kind of design. It looks like
something a cross-eyed architect, well_ into
the grape, assembled one night with the aid
of a, bulldozer and a couple of bibulous, but
mighty strong companions, in the belief that
he was re-creating the Pantheon, in Rome.
And if you walk upthe back path at night,
with no lights on, one of the protruding
rocks can give a hell of a rip on the shin.
Scattered among he patio rocks are bricks
and half-bricks, pulled from the wall of the
house by a vine that is a herbivorous
Incredible Hulk. By day, it is a thing of
beauty, making the old house look like
something out of a book of Georgian prints
of stately homes.
It must be at night that it turns into a
monster, snatching bricks with its octopus-
like tentacles and stuffing ,.them hit° its
voracious maw, except for those that dribble
out of the corner of its mouth onto the patio.
And let's not , speak of nights. Four
mornings in a row I went out for my
pest-prandial coffee and morning paper.
Four mornings in a row, I dashed back into
the house, white-faced, shouting things like:
"Call the cops. Get the fire brigade. The
Vandals are here, and maybe the Goths. The
Martians have landed. Gimme some brandy.
Now my back lawn is not exactly pristine
and perfect, a classic greensward. Let's say
you couldn't bowl on it, unless you were
using square bowling balls. It has its little
ups , and downs, like the rest of us. Some
almost of ski-hill potentiality. But it's mine,
and I like it.
How would you like to, go out and discover
that a herd of elephants had been grazing on
your back lawn, during the small hours?
There were divots there that Jack Nicklaus
couldn't make with a nine iron. There were
holes that looked as though they'd' been
made by Mighty Mole. There was turf and
grass and dung all over the place. It looked
like a used car lot from'which all the cars had
been lifted by a mighty magnet.
Second time I saw it, I was cooler.
Elephants make bigger droppings than that,
and there's been no news report of a band of
rogue elephants. I figured it was horses. But
then I thought, horses eat grass, they don't
kick holes in it.
Third morning, I knew it was the dogs
next door, a couple of beautiful Pinch-
yourrnan Dobers or something. But they're
perfectly trained and kept in at night.'
Finally, I knew. It was a kid I'd failed last
Rine, getting back at me in some twisted
fashion.
I rapidly ran through the group,
mentally, and came up against a brick wall.
They -were all too lazy to do such a
prodigious amount of damage. ,
Next, we thought of coons. There are
some around. But no self-respecting coon is
going to be out there digging like a dingbat
when all he has to do is whip the top off the
garbage pail and regale himself on
watermelon rinds and tag-ends' of pizza.
Fifth night, we left on the outside light
and I sat up all night with a brick in one hand
and a hockey _stick in the other. Nothing
happened except that I fell asleep about two
am. 'and dropped the brick on my bare foot;
Finally, as I should have done in the 'first
place, I brought, my neighbour, a man on'
eminent 'good sense and wide knowledge,
over to view the vandalism.
He looked at me pityingly, as' he so often
does. But he's not brutal. He led me gently
but accurately, as a seeing-eye dog does
with a blind person. •
"YOu've had your lawn sprinkler on?
Quite a bit?" . -
"Well, sure. My grandsons turned it on
back in July. I turned the tap off but not the
main valve. It's in the cellar. But there's
been just a little trickle' coming out of it for
the last month."
"Skunks,"he stated succinctly. "The
water brought up those white gruhsand the
skunks went after them."
I wanted to give him an argument but]
couldn't find a thing to say. If it wouldn't be
a rotten pun, I might admit I felt a bit
sheepish. Sheep were the only animals I
hadn't thought of.
Anyway, the water is turned off and the
skunks are off to ravage some other plot. I
learned something, an achievent these days.
And I have one more mark on the lenghty
tally my grandboys must answer to one day.
•