Loading...
The Citizen, 1990-05-02, Page 5Arthur Black Canadians obsessed by fashion? Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. Oscar Wilde Mayber it’s a late-breaking epidemic of spring fever, but Canadians are suddenly, inexplicably prattling about fashion, of all subjects. This is an unexpected development from a people whose contributions to the world of High Fashion to date are the toque, mittens-on-a-string and toe rubbers. Fashion plates we ain't. When it comes to fancy dressers, the Americans have Cher; we Canucks have Cher-ry. As in Don. But that, as I say, may all be changing. Suddenly, Canada is a-buzz with fashion gossip. And it’s getting louder. First, it was the Mountie hats. A court decision decreeing that Sikhs could legally wear turbans while handing out parking tickets on horseback plunged the country into two bitterly divided camps. On the pro-Choice side were the Canucks who thought that turbans were fine - and while we’re at it, why not bicycle helmets, yarmulkes, feathered headdresses, Raid- Cheaper in the United States BY RAYMOND CANON I go over to the United States from time to time on business and it does not take a great amount of intelligence to notice that the lines are longer these days at the bridges to and from Canada. This is certainly true at the Blue Water bridge at Sarnia where I make most of my exits and only a few seconds more of observation are enough to establish the fact that a good marjority of the cars coming and going have Canadian licence plates on them. Thus, when I read in the newspapers that Canadians are going over in great numbers to do their shopping because prices are lower in the States, I am not the least surprised. If I remember correctly, this has been going on ever since I came to Canada so it is nothing new; it is just that the whole process has been accelerated somewhat due to the arrival of the Free Trade Agreement. Obviously, when Cana­ dians want to save money, they are not going to let any loyalty to Canada stand in the way. I can’t say that I blame them too much. After all it is no secret that our cost structure this side of the border is badly out of line. Many stores in malls in Ontario use the 2.7 formula when calculating the retail price of their wares. What this means is that, whatever the wholesale price may be for a product, the retailer will mark it up 2.7 times and try to charge the public that. The public takes a look at the prices displayed in the window and decide that it is a good time for another pilgrimage to the U.S. There must be some good bargains over there for, when you calculate the cost of transportation there and back as well as the bridge tolls going and coming, a lot of people feel it is worth the trouble. I could argue with some of their calculations but that is not the point of this article. You knew there was a point, didn’t you. After all, I never start out on any subject even remotely connected to economics without sneaking in some little sermon on the subject. Well, this time you are not going to be disappointed either so read on. Frankly our costs have got out of line with those of the United States; it is not that theirs are too low; simply that ours are too high. This starts right at the point ers-of-the-Lost-Ark fedoras and Beanies- with-propellers too? These Bolshevik faddists were strenu­ ously opposed by the Traditionalists - staunch, loyal patriots who liked the Mountie hat just the way it was, thank you very much. If I understand the kernel of the Traditionalist position it’s “if the hat is good enough for Yogi Bear it’s ^ood enough, by God, for Canada’s finest.’’ But the Mountie hat is not the only brush fire on the fashion front. Ed Werenich has joined the fray as well. A few weeks back, on his way to the World Curling Champion­ ship, Ed got his rocks off about the deteriorating dress codes for curlers. Dress codes for curlers??? Is this a David Letterman sketch? Nope, Ed was serious. He hates those track suits that European curling teams wear. “It’s like a pyjama party. They look like they should be out jogging instead of curling.” The Canadian s"kip favours the time-honoured sweater and pleated-slacks approach. Well, whether or not you agree with him, you have to admire Ed’s chutzpah. Here’s a guy with the silhouette of a municipal water tank telling us what’s chick and what is not. I’m not saying that Ed is unduly chunky ... but he is the only member of the Canadian Men’s Curling Team who was forced to wear a T-shirt with the message I where retailers pay too high a rent for the space they occupy in malls to such things as the entire tax structure, higher interest rates, labour costs, social security pre­ miums and now, in 1991, the new federal sales tax on goods and services. The situation has been getting steadily worse over the past few years but it took the whole debate on trade liberalization to make us realize far more clearly than ever better before just what was going on. Refusing to enter into a trade agreement would not have solved the problem; it would have covered it up for a little while longer, if only to give it a chance to get worse. The whole process has been very insidious and, now that it is more or less out in the open, we have to decide what to do about it. In short we have to get our costs down in all the areas which I suggested above. If we can’t compete with the United States, whom can we compete against, short of third world countries and nobody wants to even contemplate the possibility of Canada Column I’m tired of the big guy BY BONNIE GROPP I’m tired of the big guy. I’m tired of big guy Brian playing games with the little guy’s Canada. I’m tired of big guy corporations making it virtually impossible for the little guys in business to compete. And I’m tired of the big guy expecting the little guy to pick up the pieces. From the time 1 was 11 and stopped growing I realized more often than not the big guy reigns supreme. Whether it’s in stature or in wealth or power the big guy can usually battle any obstacle in his way, or get a little guy to do it for him. For example last week I talked to area clerks and politicians about the provincial government’s plan to drop the quota requirement for soft drink bottlers to offer at least 30 per cent of their product in refillable bottles. A government spokes­ person was quoted as saying that due to the success of recycling this requirement is no longer as necessary as it has been in the past. However, what they failed to recog­ nize, either through intent or ignorance, is that due to the success of recycling, landfill sites are now being buried under the Am Not The Zamboni, Please Get Off My Back. And as if fashion uncertainty on the curling sheets and in the Mountie’s saddles of the nation wasn’t turmoil enough, we’ve got vogue vagueness in the Post Office as well. Canada Post nabobs chose the Spring of '90 to unveil their all-new ‘Posties On The Job’ Fashion Line. Were the 27,000 new uniforms (trousers, shorts, jackets and baseball caps all in acrylic royal blue) a critical hit? Well, they took the Canadian Union of Postal Workers collective breath away. Most of it, anyway. The Posties still had enough wind left to say words like “ugly”, baggy”, “synthetic” and “clownish”. “Most people could leave the Post Office and start working at Burger King without changing clothes” said one official. Look­ ing sideways at the ‘transparent-when- wet’ top, a female letter carrier commented “I’m not too fond of entering wet T-shirt contests”. Ah, me. Costume quandary and uniform uproar everywhere you look, these days. Personally, I don’t know what the Moun- ties, Ed Werenich and the Posties are whining about. Those new get-ups aren’t so bad. Somebody should tell ‘em to straighen up and stop complaining or we’ll hit them with some truly hideous uniforms. Let’s see now ... the Vancouver Canucks are out of the playoffs, aren’t they? being ranked in that category. While all this is going on, people are understandably going to nip across the border and try to save money wherever they can. If the price disadvantage gets worse instead of better, it will not be too long before you start to see a dramatic increase in the level of smuggling as consumers try to expand their ability to save on the other side. I once came across the border at Ft. Erie when gas was cheaper over here than in the United States. Needless to say, I waited to tank up when I got across and duly pulled into a gas station near Ft. Erie. There were no less than 19 (1 counted them) cars ahead of me and all of them had U.S. licence plates on them. There is a moral to all this. Since there are 10 times as many Americans as Canadians, just think what would happen if we could get our costs to the point where we had an advantage over those in the U.S. They would flow over here in droves and leave megabucks in our coffers. The law works both ways! deluge of a different kind of waste. While our recycling efforts should continue and we should be commended for what we are doing, isn’t it time the person who sparks the problem is the one responsible for extinguishing it? Isn’t it time they helped put some of the emphasis on reducing waste by reusing waste? Bottlers say that consumer demands show that our preference is for cans. The problem with that is that there is no other alternative available for us. In individual serving sizes of pop there is nothing offered in a returnable bottle, unlike Ontario brewers who provide us with the option. So the question is that, given the choice, would 1 choose cans over a refillable bottle? Probably not, I, along with countless other little guys have already made so many small concessions in our lives to help protect our planet and ensure the future of our children, what’s another? Sure, there are plenty of times when it would be easier to take the car, but now I try to walk whenever I can. I have Continued on page 19 THE CITIZEN. WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 1990. PAGE 5. Letter from the editor What is the solution to violence? BY KEITH ROULSTON I don’t know if it’s because 1 have a daughter who’s off at university or because it’s just closer to home, but the murder of Linda Shaw along the side of Highway 401 near London effected me more deeply even than the massacre of women engineering students in Montreal. While the Montreal tragedy became a cause celebre for the feminist movement, in a way the Linda Shaw case says more about the sorry situation of violence against women than the much greater death toll. The madman in Montreal happened to single out women but a madman could just as easily have been upset with dental students or the school football team or the school newspaper staff. There have been plenty of mass killings of a similar nature in recent years. But the Linda Shaw case is something different. It points up very definitely an inequality between men and women. Men think nothing of driving alone on a major highway late at night. Women, particularly now, will never feel safe in similar circumstances. A woman I know told me last week she never gets in her car when she’s alone without looking in the back seat to see if someone might be hiding there. How many men would have such a worry? The sad truth is that there is a huge difference in the freedom of men and women when it comes to personal danger. A man walking alone at night may be a target for a robbery, but he likely doesn’t have to fear for his life. He isn’t likely to be raped. Murder is likely to be accidental if it happens at all. Anyone who thinks of attacking the man will either be armed or weigh carefully the chances the victim may overcome the attacker. Women have a completely different situation. Either robbery or rape can be the motive of some demented stalker. Some­ one sick enough to rape may easily be sick enough to go the next step and kill his victim. And, armed or not, he doesn’t have to fear being overpowered by any but a few women. There’s no doubt that almost all the danger to women in cases like Linda Shaw’s comes from men. Nearly all violence against women comes from men: their husbands, their boyfriends, men they’ve met for the first time. And yet it’s not fair to paint this in a men-versus- women situation. The vast majority of men do not take part in violence against women and they shouldn’t be branded as potential assaulters of women just because they’re men. And yet the frustration is what can you do to solve the problem? How can anyone identify the potential loonies from the non-violent men? How can you do some­ thing to change the way these men behave? How can a woman live a normal life and still protect herself from that one-in-a-million chance she’ll come in contact with a violent individual in the wrong place at the wrong time? If a Linda Shaw can happen to meet up with a killer when she stops to change a tire on the side of busy Highway 401, how can any woman feel safe anywhere? There are no simple solutions. We might try to educate men better that they shouldn’t abuse women. We might try to curb violence against women in movies, television and books. We might make society’s treatment of violent men tougher. Yet the worrisome truth of the Linda Shaw case is that there is no protection from the random coming together of a killer and a victim. It’s one of those things that, no matter how advanced our society becomes, we may never be able to prevent entirely. And that’s why, despite legisla­ tion and good intentions, women may not enjoy the same freedom as men for a long, long time fo come.