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The Brussels Post, 1981-05-06, Page 2( Subscription rates: Canada $12 a year (in advance) outside Canada $25 a year (in advance) Single copies - 30 cents each Authorized as second class mail by Canada I Post Office. Registration Number 0562. Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation. WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1981 Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston IWHAT AM t BID? Ron Ball , (Second from left) Who formerly auctioneered In Brussels got a chance to thoW Brussels residents his skill once again when the Optimists held an auction sale at the arena on ' Saturday, Assisting himfrom left are DarWin Ducharme, Don Bray and Dan Pearson. , photo by Lanspois) Making changes to a watercourse? The waters of rivers, streams and creeks belong to everyone. Improper use of the watercourses which carry these waters may result in the following? - irrigation and drainage problems for neighbours - destruction of aquatic and wildlife habitat - reduced recreational opportunities - erosion and flooding problems Whenever permanently flowing watercourses are to be altered in any way including damming, diverting, and channelitation, Federal and Provincial laws require that the approval of the Ministry of Natural Resources be obtained. As a first step in planning any work on a watercourse, contact us. Our staff will be glad to,discuss possible design and layout alter- natives which will minimize future problems for you, your neigh- bour and public in general. District Manager, Ministry of Ministry of Natural Resources, Natural R. R. if $ Wingham, Ontario Ontario Resources NOG MO t69 E kity Iftil irt; 4 ."; 1.g1• ty!,4 , BOX :50t ° roses's, Ontario. w ,EttablIshed 1872 519-887-6641 NOG 1H0, Servhg Brussels and the surrourldIng community Published at BRUSSELS, 'ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Andrew Y, McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor By B~IL:Srn~ley The Battles in the streets of Northern Ireland are being fought in the "letters to the editor" columns in Canada. One of the unwelcome exports to the new world of North America during the pioneer years was the old hatreds that for so many years had plagued the old world. The old prejudices became the new prejudices. Signs in. Toronto at the time of the influx of immigrants from Ireland after the potato famine said "no dogs or Irish allowed." On the other hand Canada owes, at least in part, its founding as a united country to the Irish troubles. Americans of Irish descent, The Fenians, determined to end British rule in Ireland by attacking Canad- ians (the kind of inverted logic that has been getting innocent people killed in Ireland for so long.) The various colonies strung along the U.D. border decided one way to protect themselves was to band together to become a big enough country to be able to beat back the invaders. So the formation of Canada was perhaps the only good thing to come out of years of struggle in Ireland. It is surprising, in a way, to see how far we have progressed since then. The paranoia at the time of the Fenian Raids was about as strong in Canada as the paranoia that grips N orthern Ireland today. As Protestants in some towns expected local Catholics to join with the Fenians when the invasion came, distrust was everywhere. Today the Orange movement has become a quiet social club, the hatred has become something that seems strangely prehistoric, Catholics and Protestants for the most part simply accept each other as being people taking two different roads to the same place. The ties between North America and the', Irish troubles are still not completely cut. The deaths of people in the streets of Belfast could be halted or greatly reduced, it has been said, if the Irish bars of Boston and New York and Chicago stopped being donation points for Irish Americans to give, money supposedly for humane purposes but money which more often ends up buying guns and bombs. Mostly, however, the explosiveness in North America is left to fiery rhetoric in the letters to the editor or angry chants outside British Airways Offices in Toronto. To these North Americans, there is always a simple solution to the problem. While most of us in Canada and the U.S., well withdrawn from the passions of Ireland, simply shake our heads in sorrow at the seemingly endless killings and butchery, partisans from both sides of the struggle have a simpel solution: the British should go home. The resentment on the part of Irish Catholics toward the British army is perhaps understandable. Distrust of the army is deeply held, dating back to the years when the Irish were kept in place as peasants in their own land by the British army and later, when the army often went against the resolutions of the British parliament which were to give Ireland home rule. The army represented the British aristocracy which favoured British Imperialism and felt Britain should keep the Irish as serfs, no matter what the parliament said. The irony is that the army of today is in Ireland to proltect the Northern Irish Catholics from the! Protestants. When the rest of Ireland becames a free republic Ulster, populated by a majority of Protes- tants who were desperately afraid of being ruled by a Catholic majority, managed to get the support of the British aristocracy to have a separate country set up, loyal to the British crown. The Protestants then set out to do to the Catholic majority all the things they worried a Catholic majority might have done to them. So today we have two armed, vicious Iterrorist gangs, one on each side, playing on the old hatreds and distrusts and sniping at the British army trying to keep them apart. Young people, even before they reach their teens, are picking up the legacy of hatred and pouring it out in flights of rocks and Molatov cocktails and acid bombs, taking out their frustrations on the almost equally young soldiers who are trying to bring peace to people who seemingly don't want peace. There is no simple solution. Catholics who say the solution is one united Ireland are as foolish as those who say the solution to the Palestinian problem is to have all the Jews get out of Palestine and let the Palestinians have it all back again. Thely ignore reality. Ignorant, cruel and wrong-headed as they may be, Ian Paisley and his Ulstermen are there to stay. They have been part of Ireland for centuries and wishing won't make them go away. Wishing won't make the IRA go away either. Perhaps only the British army can go away. At least the lives of the young soldiers could be spared if the army pulled out and let the others have at it as they would like. Once again, I must confront that spectre that looms *before quite a few old guys like me. To retire and live on beans and dog food, or to step once more into the breach, dear friends, and not become an old dog,, licking its wounds and less savorable parts, waiting for the final stiffening into extinction. Well, that was a fairly literary first paragraph; anyway, with a reference to a spectre, Henry V, and old dogs, perhaps loved, but increasingly useless, and ready for a shot through the head. I could get the last-named, at times, from my wife, if we kept a gun in the house. That's one reason we don't. Another is that I decided, some years ago, after shooting a black squirrel while thinking it was a black bear, that I wasn't cut out to be a hunter and bring home the game, unless it happened to be chess, or dominoes, or Scrabble. Secondly, I am not an old dog, though I would love to be. I always wanted to be a develish old dog, twitching my moustaches at the ladies, pouring a sherry for a fascinating widow in a suave flat overlook- ing Kensington Gardens at the Page of 82, sipping an aperitif in the great square in decaying Venice when I was 88. `Twas not to be. I am just a youngish old dog, to whom no widow under the age of 59 (her version) would give a second look. Unless she were really broke. In the third case, I am not young King Hal of Tudor times, looking for breaches to go into once more. I have been in too many breaches (note to proof-reader; that is not britches) already. The next breach I leap into will be the last one: that hole in the ground. And in the fourth place, I ain't afraid of no spectres. That's what Scrooge said, and you know what happened to him. This retirement gig is not that simple. First of all, inflation has you by the short and curly. All my friends who are retired cry, "Don't do it!," as though I were a 17-year-old about to take my first drink or something even more sinful, according to the society in which we grew up. They claim they can eat steak only once a week, that they haven't even the money for one of Freddy Laker's trips to England in -the off season, that they're going to have to sell their fine middle-class homes and move into some fine middle class apart- ment where they don't even have any lawn to cut or snow to shovel. It's a horrible prospect. Most of these old friends are in a pitable state. They have decaying discs, heart problems, high blood pressure, the gout, the crud, or some other debilitating nightmare. Yet they're all in their early sixties. My father-in-law, 89, would call them "boys". Well, I don't think I'll be one of the boys, at least not for another year. I am a mere sixty years old. I am as sound in wind and limb as a man of thirty. Forty years ago. I limp a bit with the gout. But that is merely a sign of good living, and I limp rather proudly. I scarcely need glasses, except to tie my tie, or hit an ash-tray. I can't hear much of what the students say, but my lip-reading is excellent, and I don't want to hear what they say, anyway. They've been giving the wrong answer for years. I have a partial plate, but I lithp through it only when we have hamburger in the cafeteria and it gets a bit; clogged-no more than three or four days a week. All in all, a fine specimen of homo mithancropus, whatever ,that means. I wouldn't want to translate it, because some 89-year-old Latin teacher (we don't _teach Latin any more) would jump on me and tell me I was either a depressed ape or a melancholy man. That I don't need. I feel like either, at given times. But then my conscience assails me. I think of all those young fellows of 40 or 45, whom I am keeping out of a department head's job, and I pretty nearly break down. Until I recall the fact that their wives are working, they have just bought a new van or boat, and they are making more money that I. Then I decide to stay another year, and I break up, chuckling at the grinding of teeth, the silent curses in the night, the visions of their child having to work during his/her summer vacation to make it through college. "Why doesn't the old nit quit? He can't teach anymore. His department is the worst run in the province. He has no idea how to organize his budget. He doesn't know what a budget is. He's not sure whether it's fall term or spring term. And what is really maddening, he doesn't care." And they're right, or partially so. Well, I've decided. I'll stay until at least Christmas. I'll quit then, suddenly, and leave somebody else to sort out the mess. And some mess. I have keys to locks that don't work. I have filing-cases full of material taught in 1914, that have never been opened, because the keys are lost. And if my wife doesn't stop spending money on decorating, I'll re-run this column in '88. Why doesn't Trudeau solve it by appointing me to the Senate? iGNA 0041101115040,444...