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The Brussels Post, 1978-07-26, Page 2Brussels Posy liiit... ..pwssk,,s. arrAflo) WEDNESDAY, JULY g6, 1978 . ' Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros,Publishers Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor. Member Canadian. Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association eNA Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year. Others $17,00 a Year. Single Copieis 20 cents each. Watch those bikes The last trip to swimming lessons Kids, please be careful on your bikes. That short message is the only way we can think of to bring home to kids the fact that they are in danger every time they take their bicycles out. Brussels and community recently had one tragedy involving a small boy who was killed while riding his bike. Newspapers from surrounding towns and villages have been full of similar heart-breaking. stories. We know it's summer. We know kids will be kids and there's a great temptation to take chances on the highway, to race and play "chicken" with cars. We know when it's, hot and a kid is out of School it's too easy to be just a little careless. But it's up to us, as parents to insist, and back up our words with action, that our children ride their bikes only in an absolutely safe manner. Or they don't ride them, at all. Drivers have a responsibility to be especially wary while the children are Out of school, and to expect the unexpected when kids on bikes are on the highway. But drivers aren't saints or miracle workers. And none of them can do much when a careless kid rides his bike into the path of a car travelling at 50 kph. No, bike safety can't start with drivers; it has to start with children and all of those who teach them. Getting our child-bike accidents statistics down to zero, where we'd all like to see them, requires work on the part of parents, teachers, police and even community members who see kids on bikes misbehaving and stop to warn them. Because somehow, we've got to get the message across: Kids, please be careful on your bikes. Behind the scenes We have troubles By Keith Roulston Whenever a wave of immigration hits a country some of the less admirable qualities of mankind seem to surface, Canada, peopled as it has been by surge after surge of immigration from various corners of the world, has not had a gracious history as far as understanding goes. When the Irish arrived in Canada, for instance, in the 1840's and 1850's, they were met with signs in parks that said "No dogs or Irish allowed" or with help wanted signs that stipulated "No Irish need apply". Yet within a decade or two when the Irish had settled into their new land, been accepted and become part of the new fabric of the land they were, among those who resented the coming of other European nationalities. A second major wave of immigartion has struck Canada since the end of the Second World War with huge influxes of Italians, Germans, Dutch, Greeks, Hungarians and even Americans. Each has been subject to harassment arid intollerance. Most today have settled in and are more or less accepted. A new wave is having troubles as witnessed by the cruel "Paki" jokes that are making the rounds, particularly in the larger centres. The more immigrants there seem to be, the harder the resentment seems to grow . I. have always hated that kind of smalimind- edness that leads to such discrimination but I got a little better understanding of what leads to it a few weeks ago when I was down in the city for an evening. My destination was a theatre in a neighbourhood that had a particularly rich ethnic mix. Walk in one direction and you were likely to see stores advertising in Italian.. In another were stores specializing in clothing for the stylish young black woman. It was like a little United Nations in a few blocks of Toronto. For a country boy used to Canadians born here front families a century in the country whose main contact with new Canadians was with the Dutch who look so much like the oldtiniers anyway, it was quite an unsettling experience. It was hard to believe this was my country. It was supper time and after searching for a place to eat, passing Up a number of ethnic restaurants because I didn't feel up to the strain of experiementation with foods I'd never tasted before when I was all alone, I picked what seemed to be a safe.spot, a corner lunch counter. I mean hamburgers may not be exciting ethnic fart, but they're a nice comforting thought when all about you is So I went in and sat down at the counter and ordered supper. Then I began to notice that while the food might be typicOly North American, `the language wasn't. You might ask for a hamburg and french fries, but when the order was delivered to the cook in the open kitchen, it didn't sound the least like "hamburg and french fries". It was all Greek to rne, literally. Now that's nothing new, of course since about half the restaurants in Toronto are run by Greeks, as are even many of those around here. The fun began when some Greek customers came in. The waiters and cooks called back and forth to the customers saying a few words in English, then switching to Greek then back to English and so on. The trouble is that when they switched to Greek there was almost always a laugh along the way. When they were speaking English they were saying ordinary things like "nice day today." What was so sunny when they were speaking Greek. Were they pointing to me and saying "Look at that dumb hick from the country who doesn't even know how to eat a hamburger without dribbling the ketchup on his beard?" Are they casting aspersions on my ancestry? Actually what they were probably doing was talking about the soccer game last night but who knows. There is a kind of paranoia that can envelope you when people are speaking another language and you don't know what they're saying, especially when you know they can understand you but you can't understand them. You have to be awfully secure in yourself or you can start resenting the other person and for that matter his whole race. Most people aren't that secure and so we have the distrust, the animosity that leads to conflict. The trouble comes not so much from the tensions between the nationalities or races, but from the weaknesses within ourselves. So we have troubles with immigrants and we have troubles with our French Canadian brothers and we fail to lay the responsibilities where they belong, on our own weaknesses and petty fears. We lose the chance to enjoy the beautiful things that can come from Meeting people of a different background and exchanging our experiences, The only good thing about it is that given time, the majority of us are able to sort it all out and we do get along with the new arrivals, just in time to present a united front to the next group of immigrants.. strange, Respect trees and wildlife!