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The Brussels Post, 1978-02-01, Page 21317A10.40110 073 Brussels Post BRUSSE LS ONTARIO WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1978 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community, Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario, by McLean Bros.Publishers Limited. EVelyn Kennedy - Editor Dave Robb - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association *CNA Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year. Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each. Zero means a lot Vine and snow When the Brussels Post makes mk,Lakes it makes whoppers! At least that's what .our readers are thinking after the headline with an extra zero appeared at the top of last week's page one. A tiny little typing error resulted in a big mistake that gave the village $2 million in building permits instead of $200,000 last year. We apologize for the error and will try to see that it's not repeated. Brussels is growing., we're happy to say, but not that much. Still an increase in building permits of more than $200,000 is something for our village to be proud of. We're not standing still, we're not falling apart. No, Brussels citizens are making improvements, sprucing up their homes and businesses. And when sewers finally come, or when we learn for certain that they are not coming, more new building projects will likely result. Meanwhile, the Post will give itself a knock on the knuckles and we'll think carefully about just what a difference zero....when it's in the wrong place ...makes. To the editor: Retarded need help In the past , reporters of bur local paper have done an excellent job in reporting activities in the schools, classes and workshop of the mentally handicapped. We, the Board of the Wingham and District Association for the Mentally Retarded, and also the teachers are: very happy and pleased to see the local paper coming out in such a' positive way to. give the public a glimpse at what we are doing. In past years, the government has paid the bulk of our operating costs. But we rely still heavily on our local people who have their hearts in. the right place. We, the Board of our A.M.R. meet every month and make available some of our time to serve the A.M.R., and the mentally handicapped. We are responsible for raising 13% of the total cost for the Silver Circle Nursery. and by September we have to come up with 20% of the total cost for the operation of the Jack Reavie Opportunity Workshop. The money needed is between $12,000 and $15,000 , which has to come from donations and fund-raising projects. We have to go into a workshop program or close down. The A.M.R. Board has decided to go ahead with the program, but we cannot survive without the help of the public. We need about $10,000 over and above the government grant for the first year. (That is the 20%) But most important, we need work for the mentally handicapped adUlts to do in the worshop. We have a high calibre of teachers. Our workshops across Ontario in many cases are self-sufficient. In other words, they do not need any public funding. We can achieve this in Wingham also. Perhaps you have, or know someone who has work which can be done by our people. Please let us' know. Iii the meantime, we would like you to' give generous financial support. Y ou can give Bill Stephenson, our untiring, hardworking fund-raising chairman a call, or drop your donation in Box 726, VVingham. If anyone is interested, `I would like to organize a trip to the South Huron Workshop at Dashwood. We are invited to tour their very successful Workshop there, This would be quite an eye-opener for many, as to the ability of our mentally handicapped, Also, if you would like to become a meinber of our association, please drop Mrs. Pat Holloway, Lticknow, aline. If you have sonic time to spare, let me know. We need a few more members oil the Board. In closing, I would like to pass the , following revelation: "Happiness is a side effect. The more you give yourself, the More you become fulfilled:- • For all those Who have supported us in the past, thank you Very much God bless you, and I love yott for it. Adrian Keet President, Wingham and Districrt Association for the Mentally Retarded Behind the scenes By Keith Roulston It never ceases to amaze me the changes that a big winter storm can bring to humanity. We missed most of what the press has been labelling the "most intense storm of the century" (now don't you feel left out), but we did get enough to slow things down and make us think. And just to the south of us, in the London area they were in a state of near panic. Yet despite the fear that was with many people, there are some marvellous heart- warming stories that came out of the storm as there have been after every storm in the past few years. In fact it leads me to wonder, how : much worse a place might this be if it weren't for our :.frequent storms. People tend to be pretty wrapped up in their own problems these days, not caring about other people around them. It's a world where everyone seems -to be grasping, graping all the time. It's every man for himself. Yet in the midst of an emergency like a storm, the best side of people seems to re-emerge. It's mindful of the old time stories of pioneers where, if a man lost his barn in a fire, the neighbours would get together and rebuild it for him. The problem seems to be that human beings can't stand comfort. When there is danger all around, they work together for the common good but when everything is going well, they bicker and fight with one another. We seem to need to go back to the old situation of fighting to survive before we can bring out the best in humanity again. Thus when we have a war or a famine we see the better side of human beings than when we have prosperity. Maybe, if we had more emergencies, we'd be better off as a nation. If we could get all Canadians, French speaking and English speaking, easterner and westerner, native and immigrant, storm stayed in one small part of the country, • I think a lot of our present problems might be solved. People would be faced then with a common enemy and they would worklogether to survive and in doing so would gain a greater understanding of and respect for each other. Lacking that common enemy, as we do now in Canada, we become enemies of each other. The effect of a threat to survival was graphically shown a couple of weeks ago by Alice Munro's script for The Newcomers series on CBC television: ,Her Irish immigrant came from a highly structured society where there Were owners and tennantS, lords and peasants and never the gap between the two AlaS breached, But when Ile arrived in Canada there was the common job to be done of clearing the land, surviving the horribly cold Winters, and scraping; but- a living frem he Virgin Soil, Suddenly, tile immigrant noted in his letters home to Ireland, the divisions that had formerly divided them began to evaporate. Oh things didn't completely disappear. There was still enmity between the Orange and Catholic Irish and other petty enmities but the whole' class system that had been so evident in the homeland quickly disappeared in North America: Probably one of the things that haS kept Canada from being a truly united country as some such as the U.S. have been is not so much the fact that we have a small population and huge distance as some would point out, or that we have two official languages and still keep many others in various' parts of the country, but that we have beem'a peaceful nation. We have faced few crisis in our history. Once the pioneers survived the arduous years of settlement, they settled back to a relatively comfortable and enjoyable life. That life was only jarred by' such huge 'events as the two world wars where people felt they must work together. Even these, however, did not seem a real threat to survival to some people, particularly Quebec residents who ' saw it as a far off war in Europe, not a Canadian war. If the Germans had been invading Canada we might really have seen a uniting factor in the country but a European • war seemed a far off, unreal threat to some and thus proved divisive rather than some- thing to make all. Canadians pull 'together. By comparison, even since the 13 colonies decided to unite in the U.S., that country has never been, far away from a war. Since 1776, remember, the U.S. has twice attacked Canada. It has battled Britain, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Germany, the Chinese and Koreans in the Korean war, the Chinese, Vietnamese' and Cambodians in south east Asia and even set one part of the country against another in a bloody war. The feeling of unity that this sense of common danger has brought cannot be discounted in watching the way the two north American nations have taken different paths. The present crisis in Canada might have been easily solved by our leadership in another country at another time. They would simply have engineered a war that seemed a very just cause to fight. The fervour of the crisis would have quickly made us forget our petty bickerings within the country and poll together to survive. Canada has, of course, never been very warlike and this is not an age where Wars are conveniently begun and stopped as in the past. So' we're left only with natural dangers and .lately the powers seem. to be doing their best to provide enough of these to Make people react as if they Were in as much danger as a war. And Who knows, maybe if we get enough storms the Milk of human kindness will flow enough' to help us realize that most of our problems are caused by ourselves.