The Brussels Post, 1975-07-09, Page 8Lent's Restaurant
will
Re-Open for Business
Tuesday, July IS
Sugar and Spice
by Bill Smiley
Many people have a peculiar idea of
"progress". They confuse it with change
or growth for their own sakes. All too often,
these things represent regress, rather than
progress.
I try not to be bitter, but I have a perfect
example of that kind of "progress" right
outside my front door.
When we moved to this house, it was on
a quiet, residential street, a leafy tunnel of
voluptuous maples and stately oaks, with a
green boulevard on each side of the street‘
It was gentle and pleasant and safe for
children.
The town council ; in the name of
progress, tore out the boulevard, cut down
some trees, and widened the street.
Results? We now have a speedway out
front, and you can scarcely risk crossing
the street to the mailbox. The squeal of
tires makes the nights hideous, as the
punks try to proclaim their dubious
manhood. The remaining trees are dying
because their natural environment has
been disturbed and because they get a
heavy dose of sprayed salt from the
snowplow each winter.
' Much beauty lost, and the only ugly
things on the street, dead cedar poles for
telephone and hydro, left standing in their
nakedness.
Just to complete the picture, there has
been a "development", which is
synonymous with progress in many small
minds, at the end of our street. What was
once glorious bushland is now an asphalt
wasteland inhabited by supermarkets, a
gaggle of gas stations, and the inevitable
hamburger joints and milk stores.
Because of the "development" and its
accompanying "progress", traffic on our
street has quintupled about five times,
with the accompanying multiplication of
stink and noise.
Tough hick, says you. Right, says I. But
this is not just a private beef. I've seen this
sort of thing happen so often on handsome
old streets in pleasant small towns that it
makes me sick.
First move of the progress-happy
morons is usually to cut down the
trees,some of them 70 years old, so that
they can widen the road. Grace and shade
and dignity are sacrificed to the number
one god. of North America - the car.
In the cities, the same process holds.
Potential parklands are turned into instant,
parking lots. Thruways slaughter miles of
greenery.
Ranking high among the villains are the
"developers". In more enlightened
cultures, they would be called ecological
rapists. They take a section of beautiful
bushland, fertile farmland, or lush
fruitland. They send in their bulldozers to
ensure that the property will look like
no-man's land. They then carve it into
50-foot lots and. jam in the jerry-bt.ilt
houses, cheek by jowl, give the whole thing
a fadcy name, spend a fortune on
advertising, and flog the swollen-priced
abortions, to poor suckers who are so
desperate fOr aihopse of their own they
shoulder a mortgage they can never
possibly get out from tinder.
This, when Canada has more land that is
useless for anything else but building than
it can ever use,That is "progress.'
Oh, "progress" has many faces, and
many sounds, and not a few smells.
Far below the roar of the over-sized,
over-priced cars burning up precious
energy as they whoosh down the
super highways may be heard the whimper
of starving children.
Behind the smiling face and honeyed
words of the Public Relations Department
can be seen something not unlike a
mountain range - huge, ever-growing piles
of non-returnable bottles, rusting cans,
and indestructible plastic garbage.
And the stinks! "Progress" will take a
cool, clean, sweet trout stream and poison
it with chemicals and detergents and other
toxic elements, because "We need the
industry." And the big, belching
smokestacks go right on belching their
nauseous gases from their rotten
stomachs, laughing hilariously when the
government slaps them on the wrist with a
stagger ing $25 fine.
"Progress" hoists, again and again, the
taxes on booze, because governments
would fall without that revenue, and sets
up a cheap and panty-
waist program barely hinting at the evils of
drink.
"Progress" produces bigger cars that go
faster and burn more fuel on bigger
highways, the vehicles propelled, in many
cases, by drivers who couldn't handle a
crisis in a kiddie-car race.
"Progress" taxes everything but the
living breath of the working stiff, but
encourages the plumpies with the expense
accounts and the credit cards to go out and
live it up and lie and cheat on their taxes.
Medical "progress" means turning a
great number of adult neurotics into drug
addicts by socking the pills to them, and
with the other hand giving a stiff-arm in
the face to the dirty, sick, frightened kids
of the drug age.
A pretty dim view of progress? It is, as
many people look on the word.
But surely there are enough of us left
who believe in the real meaning of the
world - moral, social and intellectual
progress- to try to do something about the
spreading sickness
Same time next Sunday, please. In the
meantime, on guard against the
"progress" people.
Cranbrook
B.C. family visits area
Robinson, and daug. hter,
Kitchener, visited friends and
relatives in this area on Iiday.
Mr. and Mrs. Fred Kirkpatrick, Mr. and Mts. Wm. Muchan, London, visited with Mrs. Glenn. Sr. and sons Keith and Bruce,
Iluether and Mr.s Mac Engel on London, visited on Sunday with. Monday.
Mr. and MrS. Gordon Mitchell
and family , Thorold, spent a few
days with Mr. and Mrs. Howatd
Mitchell.
Mt, and Mrs.Earl Dunn
attended the funeral of Mrs.
Bertha Black in London on
Wednesday and visited later with
Mr, and Mrs. Bill Muchan,
Mrs. Cecil Robinson, Kelowna,.
B.C., her Son Kerry and Mrs.
The settlement of Ttikoyakttik
on the Arctic coast near the
Mackenzie River Delta,
Northwest Territories, is the only
nertiletli Canadian seaport at the
mouth of a major river.
BRUSSELS POST', JULY 9 0 1975
Mr. and Mrs. Earl Dunn.
Mrs. Calvin. Cameron visited
friends in Galt and Brantford the
past week. M rs. Howard
Williams, San Francisco, spent a
few days with Mrs. Cameron.
• Correspodnent
Mrs. Mac Engel
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Business Directory
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BsiyAttiLEs & SERVICE
523-9640 .
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RADIO
TV
(Electrohome)
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Bray Chiropractic Office
197 Josephine Street
Wingham, Ontario
Phone 357-1224
Anstett Jewellers Ltd.
Watch and Jewellery Repairs
— We Sell and Service
BU LOVA — ACCUTRON — WATCHES
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SE4FORTH CLINTON — WALKERTON
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527-1240 482-7010 a
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887-6453 357-271 1 -------
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Sales and Service Brussels Seaforth
887-6365 Walton 527.0245
JIM CARDIFF
REAL ESTATE BROKER —, GENERAL INSURANCE
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FIRE — AUTO ,-- LIABILITY
Phones: Office 887-6100 Residence 804164
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