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The Citizen, 2003-08-13, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2003. PAGE 5. Other Views Come on, it’s only a game! ■y JT Then it comes to sports I am not 1/1/ particularly interested. Generally V F speaking, 1 look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury. - Fran Leibowitz At the risk of having some rabid reader track me down and bite my ear off, I’m going to go out on a limb and confess that I’m with Fran. I don’t care much about sports. Curling is a yawnfest, football is confusing, basketball is a freak show, soccer is a snoozer and baseball is about as dynamic as a sermon from Preston Manning. Hockey? 1 haven’t been excited about hockey since Bobby Baun scored a game winning goal on a broken leg - and THAT happened when dinosaurs walked the earth. So I don’t follow sports. The downside comes when some guy sidles up to me at a barbecue and mutters, “Did you see that three pointer by Kaleem Kerjabberwong last night?” I don’t know if he’s talking about golf, badminton or the All-Irish Invitational Hurling Playdowns. The upside of sportsphobia? I don’t have to dicker with unsavoury scalpers or sit glued to the boob tube for hours on Sunday - I save a bundle of dough and tons of time. Plus, it’s good for my health. It means I will probably never suffer from ESAD. End of Season Affective Disorder, doncha know. A British psychologist claims increasing numbers of British soccer fans are coming down with it. “Football fans clearly hold a deep-rooted relationship with their team” says Doctor John Castelton. “The (end of the season) could This MPP should get a medal An opposition MPP who helped a reporter get inside a jail and expose its appalling conditions has been subjected to the full weight and majesty of the Ontario government when he should have been given a medal. Dave Levac, the Liberal critic on correctional institutions, was asked by The Toronto Star to assist in getting its reporter in the Don Jail here, after several judges substantially reduced sentences they gave defendants because of the hard time they had awaiting trial. One judge called the jail an embarrassment to the Canadian criminal justice system and another said it is a medieval, brutal place far below what a civilized society should provide. Levac pointed to the judges’ criticisms as evidence conditions were dangerous to prisoners and staff, and to the public because convicted criminals are being put back on the streets early. However he was unable to stir much interest in the opinions of a backbench MPP. The Progressive Conservatives’ ministry of public safety and security refused the reporter admission, ostensibly because of the threat of spreading SARS, and Levac, who as an MPP has a right to visit, agreed to take the reporter and a member of his own staff in with him. Levac told another of his staff to let the jail know he would arrive with “two people,” which the aide passed on as with “two assistants.” and the jail did not ask if either was a reporter, because it had no reason to, and none ot the three visitors volunteered it. All passed scrutiny for SARs and went in. fhe reporter wrote the building reeked of vomit, urine and grime and there was an incessant, mind-numbing din of hundreds of prisoners yelling and banging. Arthur Black cause an existential crisis. Fans will feel a void, or loss.” Doctor Castelton has been instrumental in setting up a helpline in Britain which grieving footie fans can dial up to hear recorded football-game sounds such as goal celebrations. Alternatively, I suppose, those fans could Get A Life. If the absence of sports is bad for your health, it’s not surprising that the presence of it might be good. Back in 1998 when the French soccer team won the World Cup, 26 million French fans who were watching went nuts. But one Frenchman didn’t join the delirious nation-wide celebrations. Doctor Frederic Berthier of Nice was hunched over his computer, crunching medical data. He discovered that on the five days leading up to the final against Brazil, an average of 33 French males died each day of heart attacks. But on game day, only 23 men croaked coronarily - a decline of 30 per cent. Same thing for French women - heart attack deaths dropped from an average of 28 a day pre-World Cup, to only 18 on the day of the game. The doctor’s conclusion: the heart attacks dropped because the joy of winning relaxed people. “Decreased activities and/or euphoria before Eric Dowd From Queen's Park “Prisoners stand on each other’s shoulders to hoist themselves up against the bars,” she wrote, “just to get a glimpse of the sky in little windows.” Cells meant to sleep two contained three and sometimes four prisoners, with the extra occupants sleeping on thin, smelly mattresses on floors on which toilets often overflow. Bigger holding cells were jammed and one inmate was shouting T can’t breathe.’ The reporter’s visit has turned out to be crucial to the public’s knowledge of conditions in the jail, because public safety minister Bob Runciman has argued the judges did not go inside and relied on second-hand information. Levac suggested mildly in the legislature the jail’s conditions are “nothing to write home about” and urged the province to build a new one. The conditions the newspaper described are difficult to defend, so Runciman focused on shooting the messenger and accused Levac of maintaining a Liberal tradition of putting prisoners’ rights ahead of everyone else’s. The minister went to the extremes of saying the Liberals want jails with golf courses, riding stables and pool tables and attacked Levac for taking the reporter in, calling it a fraud, abuse of an MPP’s privileges and “beyond belief.” The Tories asked the legislature’s integrity commissioner, former judge, Coulter and after the game could result in less stress” he theorizes. Of course, the catch-22 is: your team has to win. The doctor didn’t report any statistics about heart attack frequency back in Brazil. I don’t think we should put a lot of stock in either the French or British findings. If supporting a losing team was mortally dangerous, the streets of Toronto would be deserted. The Raptors reek, the Blue Jays play like ruptured ducks and the Maple Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since Champlain sailed up the Humber. But the sports fans - in Toronto and elsewhere - carry on. Sports teams may falter and fail, but the true fans never say die. They also never forget. - as George Wylie discovered recently. George is a bricklayer today, but he spent his glory days as a striker for the Watford football team. His greatest moment on the pitch: the goal he scored in a match against Plymouth Argyle in the 1984 FA Cup semifinal. It was the only goal of the game and Wylie booted it in. It meant victory for his team and elimination for the Plymouth Argyles. Last month - 19 years after the goal - a total stranger walked up to Wylie at a building site, sucker-punched him to the ground, chewed off his ear and whispered “Plymouth” into the other one. The doctors managed to sew Wylie’s ear back on. Which is good. He not only looks better, he’s more able to hear other ‘fans’ sneaking up on him. Always helpful to remember that the word ‘fan’ is just an abbreviation. The proper term is ‘fanatic’. A.Osborne, to investigate whether Levac in helping the reporter into the jail breached the code of conduct laid down for MPPs. The commissioner found inevitably the MPP was part of a plan to pass the reporter off as a member of his staff and thus did not meet standards required by parliamentary convention, although he added this was merely an error in judgment and deserved no penalty. The Tories are refusing to let go and are complaining that Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty was behind the whole thing. They used a minion to sneak his Toronto Star friends into a jail which proved again what they have been saying that he is “not up to the job.” Levac clearly got the reporter into the jail by allowing it to believe she was on his staff, although he never specifically said so. But most voters will believe it was a minor deception that was justified and government can lock up a lot of things but not their right to know. Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letter^ brief and concise. Bonnie Gropp The short of it The serenity zone There is only one thing wrong xyith a holiday, like all good things it must come to an end. And mine, which like most flew by with relentless speed, was amazingly, refreshingly good. It began as planned by re-affirming the bonds of family, visiting and socializing with siblings and parents. It ended in blissful solitude and quiet lakeside, the perfect way to recharge the batteries and get this girl back in top order for work. My cottage retreat is the ideal summer idyll, as picture perfect as it is stress relieving. The lullaby of a gentle surf eased me into slumber each night, then awakened me softly each morning when I was ready. After six days, one could not help but feel ready to take life on again. It was my serenity zone. Co-incidentally, it was while on vacation that I discovered a magazine article discussing serenity zones and the need for each and every one of us to find ours. The secret step to making serenity happen and keeping stress at bay, it said, is to stop thinking of time for one’s self as a treat. Instead we should look at it as a long-term investment in ourselves. Everyone knows that stress is unhealthy resulting in everything from headaches to high blood pressure. Yet, few will actually make the alterations in lifestyle to alleviate some of the problem. There is no question that people today are stressed. Adults are striving to balance career and family, which for babyboomers often includes not just our own children but assisting with the needs of aging parents. Distance frequently separates us fiom loved ones, making the ability to keep in touch, to extend help, even more challenging. Young people too are facing nore pressures with greater competition for higher education and increasing costs associated with inivers'ty and college attendance. Let’s face it, most of us feel as if we are running in circles. There is too much to do and too little time in which to do it. But do we actually have less time than those generations before us? Surprisingly, it would seem the answer is no. According to a study people in the 1960s actually had 33.9 hours a month of free time, while today the average person has 38.7 hours. What has made the difference, however, is the distribution. Three decades ago, several hours in a Saturday could be dedicated to relaxing, indulgent pursuits. What has changed, is that our free time comes now in snippets, five minutes here, 10 minutes there, which makes for less effective use. The other downside of this is that even should you use the few minutes of spare time, the task that is looming at its end will seldom be far from your thoughts. At least such is the case for me. There is always that other load of laundry to throw in, a meal to plan, bills to pay, and on and on. These reminders insinuate themselves into my thoughts making any attempt at relaxation invalid. But last week, miles away from outside influence, from the telephone, the workplace, the television, I filled my eyes with a view of sky and water, my ears with the music of lake and birds, my mind with bocks. I was calm and relaxed. And then it was Monday and reality. Such a shame my serenity zone is so far away.