The Citizen, 1996-04-17, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1996 PAGE 5.
Well, it took
its sweet time
Well, it took it's sweet time coming, but
spring is finally here. That means it's time to
get off the couch I've been bivouacked on all
winter and get down to some serious
exercise.
I thought I might take up hiking. Nothing
serious. No assaults on Everest or treks up
the flanks of Kilimanjaro. Just some languid
four or five mile saunters through the bush
to listen to the birds and catch the scenery.
That's what I thought — until I mentioned it
to a Yuppie friend of mine. He looked
dubious. "You've got the proper boots of
course" he murmured.
Boots? Well, I thought maybe I'd just
throw on my old running shoes and ... He
shook his head in disapproval. "You'll need
proper boots. Now, will you be day hiking or
going off-trail?"
I wasn't sure.
"Going up talus slopes? Crossing
snowfields?" I...hadn't thought about it,
really. I just wanted to go for a walk...
"You can get away with nylon-leather
boots for short hikes," he persisted. "But I
recommend all leather-uppers with
reinforced soles fitted with grooves for
attaching crampons for all-round hiking.
Plus you really should think about Gore-Tex
Canadians
in Haiti
Many Canadians will probably remember
the arrival of U.N. troops in the Caribbean
island of Haiti with the Americans forming
the largest contingent and accordingly
getting the greatest amount of publicity.
Tucked in this U.N. force were some
Canadians, all of whom had the job of
maintaining law and order while newly
elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide
could carry out his duties without running
the grave risk of being shot by one of the
right-wing paramilitary groups roaming the
island.
In the year's time since this highly
publicized arrival, little has been heard or
Haiti. It has not been without its successes
since Aristide is still alive and his successor
as president, Rene Preval, is due to take over
shortly. However, to say that stability would
remain on the island if the U.N. troops left
would be assuming a great deal.
However, the whole matter has become
something of a political football at the U.N.
The American troops are due to leave the
island shortly and the Chinese delegation at
the U.N. has stated that it would vote to keep
the peacekeeping force there only if it were
limited to 1,200 men and restricted to four
additional months.
There is a reason for all this. The Chinese
'are not too well disposed toward Haiti which
liners to improve your waterproofing."
He had lots more advice. He told me I
should always wear two pairs of socks inside
my boots: ,a thin, synthetic liner of some
miracle fabric like polypropylene under a
medium/heavyweight hiking sock made of a
combination of nylon and wool. He said I
should carry a half dozen extra pairs of dry
socks. I should carry "moleskins" for
blisters. I ought to re-waterproof my hiking
boots every week or so.
He made it so complicated that I said to
hell with it and went'back to the couch and
watched another episode of Seinfeld.
It's not just hiking of course...it's
everything. Look at bicycles. When I was a
kid everybody rode CCM one-speeds. There
were no gears, no brake cables, no spaghetti
noodle tires that twisted into pretzels at the
first pothole they hit. Those old clunkers
weren't fast, but they were virtually
indestructible. We left them out in the rain
and the snow, barreled along on them down
bumpy paths and railroad tracks. We rode
them off ramps, over culverts, along dry
creek beds — even off the dock and into the
swimming hole. You couldn't hurt them.
Then the fancy foreign bikes came along.
First the three-speed, then five and 10 and
15-speed beauties. They were lightning-fast,
light as a tuft of dog hair — and about as solid
as a politician's promise. That didn't matter.
They were sexier than our clumsy old one-
speeds, and like suckers we fell for them.
Now of course there are mountain bikes,
which combine the features of the racing
bike with some of the sturdiness of the old
By Raymond Canon
has kept a close relationship with Taiwan; at
the present time any friend of Taiwan's is no
friend of China. You have only to look at the
recent activities of the Chinese military in
the vicinity of Taiwan to see the reason for
all this.
At this point the Canadian government
entered the picture with a surprise
announcement, that they would make up for
the departure of the Americans by supplying
700 of our troups as well as 100 officers of
the RCMP who will be busy training a new
Haitian police force. Some of the U.N.
troops will remain but they will be in
command of the Canadian general who is in
charge of our 700 troops.
Incidentally the 700 will be from a
French-speaking regiment, which should not
come as a surprise since the national
language of Haiti is French. More of that in
a minute.
Our government is prepared to pay the
entire cost of the Canadian contingent rather
than have the U.N. fork over the money.
There is, nevertheless, some method in the
Canadian madness, a two-part method in
fact.
The Chretien government has been
anxious to show that it can carry out policies
which are acceptable to the Americans and
yet independent of them. It would be our
way of getting the Americans off the hook in
Haiti i.e. getting their troops home on time
for which they would be hopefully quite
thankful. That might have been the case, but
any thanks disappeared when Sen. Jesse
Helms started to rant and rave about the
one-speeds.
The difference is, the new mountain bikes
cost 20 times more than the old one-speeds
did.
Which means they are attractive to
thieves. Which means you have to take off
the front wheel and lock it to the bike and
tuck the entire seat under your arm every
time you leave them.
Nowadays, a decent bike lock costs more
than I ever paid for a CCM one-speed.
I think there's a big buck to be made by
bringing back the old, utilitarian one-speed
bike. Call it the Volkswagen bug of
bicycledom. Cheap, simple and reliable.
Sure, you can't ride them up a mountainside
— or even a very steep hill. So what? Get off
and walk the bike up. It beats courting a
coronary and going crazy trying to find your
17th-lowest gear.
As for those hiking boots, I don't think I'll
be buying them any time soon. I'm more
interested in opening a local chapter of a
club that's very popular in California.
It's called the East Bay Barefoot Hikers
Club. Club members do all their hiking sans
polypropylene, nylon/woolen weave or any
other kind of sock. Without shoes, in fact.
They claim that actually having the bare
bottoms of your feet in touch with the trail
constitutes a much deeper, more satisfying
hiking experience.
Come to think of it, going barefoot is
another thing we used to do a lot as kids.
One speed bikes. No boots.
Maybe we were a lot smarter than we
knew.
shame of Canadians doing business with
Cuba.
However, there is another angle which has
not come out too much at the time of
writing. One of the constituencies in
Quebec, which had a by-election on March
25, is populated by a great many Haitian
immigrants. In fact, one voter in seven is
from that island. A great reason, therefore, to
do something that would meet with the
approval of Haitian-Canadians, who are
French speaking, but who have little
inclination to support the separatist cause in
Quebec.
So important did the Haitian vote seem
that the NDP candidate was originally from
the island, while the husband of the PC
candidate could claim the same heritage.
Two of the candidates actually flew to Haiti
to attend the inauguration of the new
president.
Canadians like to believe that it was their
country which invented the whole concept of
peacekeeping. There have, as a matter of
fact, been few such missions in which our
soldiers have not been engaged.
However, our altruism is not above being
wrapped in some political strings from time
to time. Haiti is a case in point.
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The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Good to know we cared
Human beings these days are not easy to
win over. Working more for less, fretful
about our own security, our own future, we
are suspicious of others' good luck stories
and wary of giving too much of ourselves.
We take disappointment very personally and
we aren't always quick to forgive and forget.
Take the Toronto Blue Jays, for example.
Riding high on back to back World Series
titles, they were adored, worshipped. There
wasn't much in those two years that would
dim the hero worship in our eyes. Bringing
the championship across the border was the
golden thread to bind a country which
seemed in danger of tearing apart.
Then the baseball strike hit, and when it
ended the Jays seemed a pouty lot, who
didn't care and didn't win. Robbie Alomar
and others demonstrated just where their
priorities were — not with the Great White
North or the Jays fans, but to the rosy
warmth which emanates from being a
winner, especially a very, very rich one .
People stopped caring and now the
bandwagon has emptied and the field of
dreams is being abandoned. The early
beginning to this year's baseball season at
the SkyDome has attendance at a record low.
This is ironic too, as the new crop of
unknowns taking to the field these days are
showing the stuff that dreams are made of.
They are young, enthusiastic and promising.
Unfortunately some people will never
know that until the bandwagon passes by
again. Once hurt, twice shy.
People don't like to give their faith then
end up feeling cheated. They don't like to
feel they've been made fools of. Which is
distressingly what happened last week, when
generous donations poured in, to the tune of
over $110,000 to help Donna Mercier. As
everyone knows by now, Mercier is the
Toronto woman who claiined her purse,
containing medication for her terminal
cancer, had been snatched. Saying she was
on her way to make arrangements for her
son to live after her death, sliced into the
hearts of many, whose compassion for this
soon-to-be motherless child and this tragic
woman flowed freely, purging cynicism and
selfishness from all who heard this tale.
Then as the tide of compassion rose, the
news broke that it had all been a sham, that
everyone, police included, had been
swindled. The purse had not been taken and
though she was ill, she did not have cancer.
Newspaper interviews with people who had
been touched by the story, who had given to
someone they believed in trouble were at
worse bitter, at the least, disturbed. Some
blamed police for saying too much before
they knew enough, while others were
concerned of the repercussions this would
have on humanity's potential as a giving
spirit to others in need.
It is certainly troublesome that
sentimentality and sympathy for another
made people vulnerable, that concern and
generosity were rewarded by deceit. Yet,
while her misfortunes were not as she
heralded them, it was still a cry for help
from a wretched life. There is little
question, considering this is the second time
that she has cried wolf (there was an earlier
false accusation of rape made), that there are
other issues here.
Perhaps the police jumped the gun.
Certainly people were taken in and may not
be so easy to warm another time. But on the
other side of the coin, wasn't it heartening to
see once again, what unity can be found
when we have something to champion,
something to care about?
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