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The Citizen, 2019-09-26, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2019. Editorials Opinions President: Keith Roulston • Publisher: Deb Sholdice Editor: Shawn Loughlin • Reporter: Denny Scott Advertising Sales: Brenda Nyveld • Heather Fraser The Citizen P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. N0M 1H0 Ph. 519-523-4792 Fax 519-523-9140 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. N0G 1H0 Phone 519-887-9114 E-mail info@northhuron.on.ca Website www.huroncitizen.ca Looking Back Through the Years CCNA Member Member of the Ontario Press Council The Citizen is published 50 times a year in Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $38.00/year ($36.19 + $1.81 G.S.T.) in Canada; $180.00/year in U.S.A. and $380/year in other foreign countries. Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, only that portion of the advertisement will be credited. Advertising Deadlines: Mon. 2 p.m. - Brussels; Mon. 4 p.m. - Blyth. PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40050141 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO CIRCULATION DEPT. PO BOX 152 BRUSSELS ON N0G 1H0 email: info@northhuron.on.ca September 26, 1968 The Brussels Area Men’s Dart League was on the cusp of another season and elected its executive at its first meeting on Sept. 11. Willis Knight would serve as the president, while Jim McNeil was the secretary and Ross Alcock was the treasurer. Lions Club Zone Chairman Lloyd Casemore visited a regular meeting of the Brussels Lions Club on Sept. 23. At the meeting, Casemore spoke about Helen Keller and serving the visually-impaired population. For their September meeting, the Ethel Women’s Institute entertained members of neighbouring institutes from Brussels, Moncrieff, Cranbrook and Walton. September 26, 1973 Huron MP Robert McKinley was named whip of the Progressive Conservative Party, succeeding Tom Bell, who had held the post since 1958. As a result of the new posting, McKinley also became the new House Leader of the party. Seventeen-year-old Margaret Eckert was crowned Huron County Dairy Princess at the 109th annual Zurich Fall Fair. Eckert, a Grade 13 student at Seaforth District High School, would then compete at the provincial level the following year at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. For the first time in Huron County history, residents would begin paying for some services on a population basis, rather than by assessment. Huron County Council made the decision to change the way Huron County Health Unit, Huronview, Children’s Aid, Social Services and library services were charged by the county, moving to a population- based tax model. September 27, 1995 One of the men responsible for a large theft from Bainton’s Old Mill in Blyth the previous July was handed 12 months in jail after pleading guilty to a number of charges associated with the theft. The Mississauga man stood accused of stealing a van from a Blyth home between July 25 and July 26. Then, in the early morning hours of July 26, a large number of leather jackets were stolen from Bainton’s. Police would later find the van in McKillop Township with the accused’s handprint on the outside of the van. The next day, police responded to a noise complaint at a Kitchener home where they found the accused along with 30 of the stolen jackets and a pickup truck that had been reported stolen from Logan Township. Police recovered approximately $10,000 worth of property as a result of that noise complaint in Kitchener. Brussels firefighters were out on the town at 1 a.m. on Sept. 20 with reports that the outhouse at the Maitland Valley Conservation Park was in flames. Brussels Fire Chief Murray McArter immediately deemed the fire suspicious and the police were called in to investigate. It was estimated that the fire caused $4,800 in damage to the structure, which had just recently been rebuilt after being set ablaze the previous Halloween. The Union Gas steel pipelines running through North Huron were now 100 per cent complete and being gassed up as The Citizen was being published on Sept. 27. Jim McBride, co-ordinator of the project for Union Gas, estimated that the Brussels lines would also be gassed up by the end of the week. September 24, 2009 Long-time member of the Blyth Fire Department David Sparling was named deputy-chief of the newly- amalgamated Fire Department of North Huron. Sparling would be one of two deputy-chiefs in the department. Sparling would oversee Blyth in his capacity as deputy-chief of administration, while Keith Hodgkinson would take on Wingham and the position of deputy-chief of operations. Hodgkinson had spent the last 20 years as a local firefighter, while Sparling had been a member of the Blyth Fire Department for 17 years before his promotion. About 15 petitioners met with an independent facilitator in Seaforth to discuss their thoughts on the process that led to the pending closure of Blyth Public School, among other local schools. Margaret Wilson was appointed to handle the appeal by the Ministry of Education. In Seaforth, she heard concerns from petitioners as well as a lengthy presentation from local pastor Ernest Dow, who was dubbed the lead petitioner. Wilson vowed to investigate the issue further after the presentation, saying she planned to visit Blyth Public School and F.E. Madill Secondary School in Wingham for additional research. Brock and Janis Vodden in Blyth and Rene Richmond in Brussels were all presented with their Citizen of the Year Awards. “The Bell Tolls” fundraiser show was set for Memorial Hall, welcoming Blyth’s own Elvis tribute artist Mike Lorentz and Juno Award- nominated reggae artist from Brussels Lyndon John to the stage. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. We are not responsible for unsolicited newsscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright A sad loss It was sad to hear, last week, that the Pine River Cheese and Butter Co- operative is halting production of its iconic cheese at its Ripley-area plant at the end of the month. The loss will be felt most by the 25 employees of the factory, but also by customers who had been loyal to the cheese that’s been made there for 134 years. Officials said the company had lost market share and its production costs were rising. As well, the company had never completely recovered from a devasting fire in 2010 that forced it to shut down for a year. It was the second fire that struck the company. In 1981 its original plant was destroyed and a modern plant replaced it in 1983. As well as the loss of a well-loved food product and a significant employer, the fact that a co-operatively-owned business has ceased is also disappointment, even though it was successful for a century and a third. It was one of the few remaining of hundreds of such businesses where local people invested together to solve their own problems with the manufacture and sale of their farm products. The world and society change, and with it the way business is done. Sadly, soon all that will be left of Pine River Cheese and Butter Co- operative will be good memories. — KR Elections aren’t sports Many political junkies, including many of the journalists who cover politics at the federal and provincial levels, unfortunately can’t help from treating elections as a game, much like a sporting event, instead the choice of the government of our country, or our province. Nightly newscasts on our television networks often seem to imitate the coverage of sports highlight shows, with the best plays and worst misplays of the day. Often a panel of experts is brought together to comment on which party and which leader won the day. We need scores, of course, so there’s daily public opinion polls and every tiny change in the relative popularity of the various parties becomes news in itself. Sports terminology abounds. Parties are neck and neck, as in a horse race. Party leaders, especially when going against each other in a televised debate, seek to knock a home run or strike a knockout blow. A party trailing in the polls may try a Hail-Mary pass. But if newscasters want to compare politics to sports, perhaps it’s referees or umpires who make the best comparison to political leaders. Party leaders must make judgement calls like umpires and referees and sometimes they make the right call and other times they make the wrong one. Few remember the right calls, while a wrong call is big news. Like game officials, political leaders are flawed humans and we can only choose those who seem to make the fewest mistakes. There’s only one poll that matters, the national election on Oct. 21. Until then, we need the facts of the different parties’ platforms and reality checks when some of those promises don’t add up. Treating the campaign as a game, with daily speculation about who’s ahead, or who’s gaining or falling behind, obscures the real need for facts about what the parties offer. — KR Young people need to be heard Last Friday, millions of students in 150 countries left school and marched in the streets to protest the lack of action by governments toward solving the climate change crisis. The size of the protests is a tribute to Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who undertook a one-person, three-week strike outside Sweden’s parliament just over a year ago. After the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden’s hottest summer in 262 years, she demanded that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. Thunberg posted a photo of her protest on social media and her crusade took off, with 20,000 students joining the protests by last December, then 1.4 million in March. By this past Monday, 16-year-old Thunberg was speaking to world leaders attending the Climate Action Summit in New York, saying she shouldn’t have to be at the summit, rather than being in school. She lectured them sternly: “You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams, and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.” The elders she was speaking to won’t pay the full price if they fail to take action to halt and reverse climate change. It’s Thunberg’s generation and generations unborn who will suffer if we make our planet unliveable. They have a right to speak up – more right than opponents who’ve demeaned her because she has Asperger syndrome. Unfortunately Thunberg, and the young students she has inspired to action, speak all too sanely about the crisis they face more than anyone. Some of their proposals may be overly simplistic but thank goodness they’ve been roused to action. Hopefully they shame their seniors. — KR &