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The Citizen, 2005-02-10, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2005. Editorials Opinions Publisher, Keith Roulston Editor, Bonnie Gropp Advertising, Heather Armstrong & Capucine Onn The Citizen is puolished 50 times a year in Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $30.00/year ($28.04 + $1.96 G.S.T.) in Canada; $85.00/year in U.S.A, and $100/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: Monday, 2 p.m. - Brussels; Monday, 4 p.m. - Blyth. PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40050141 PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANCE PROGRAM REGISTRATION NO. 09244 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO CIRCULATION DEPT. PO BOX 152 acknowledge the financial support of BRUSSELS ON NOG 1 HO the Government of Canada through the email: norhuron@scsinternet.com Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs. Canada The Citizen P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. N0M 1H0 Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. NOG 1 HO Phone 887-9114 FAX 887-9021 E-mail norhuron@scsinternet.com Website www.northhuron.on.ca A°cna€sNA < Member of the Ontario Press Council We are not responsible for unsolicited newsscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright They’re our airwaves There’s still a television transmitter at Wingham that purports to be a television station but you’d never know it from what’s on the airwaves. The once-proud CKNX television has been reduced to little more than a repeater station for CFPL in London which in turn mostly duplicates the programming of The New VR in Barrie. Programming was discontinued at the Wingham station years ago with the promise that even though newscasts and programming would originate in London, there’d still be as much local news coverage as ever. Now there is one reporter for an area from southern Huron to Tobermory and anyone who wants to get an idea of what’s happening in the region from television coverage is going to be out of luck. No doubt executives of the parent CHUM-TV will argue they’re giving the best coverage they can given the economic realities but those “realities” are often profit expectations set at the top. CHUM is still happy to employ advertising sales staff lo suck as many dollars out of the region as possible; it just doesn’t want tc waste money in providing local content. It’s only following the same line of thinking that has seen newspapers like The London Free Press cut and cut and cut until it has become virtually irrelevant to the region north of the city that it used to consider important. Similarly the large chains that now own 47 per cent of the community newspapers in Ontario, see those papers not as the heartbeat of individually-important communities, but as profit centres expected to contribute to the overall profits of the parent corporations. But television is something different. If people don’t like what a newspaper is doing, it’s easy to start a competitor. Television and radio stations operate on the scarce public resource of the airwaves. Competitors can’t just start up, they must get approval of the Canadian Radio-Television Commission, the agency that’s also responsible for making sure stations live up to the promises they made in getting their licenses. The CRTC must take its responsibility seriously and either force license holders to provide proper service, or make them relinquish their right to run a station in a region like this. License holders don’t own the airwaves, we the people do. If the current license holders don’t want to provide the needed service, let’s find someone who will. — KR Our fawning media Canadians, it seems, are less enthralled by the so-called superiority of U.S.-style football than Canadians. More than a third more Canadians watched the Grey Cup last November than the Super Bowl last weekend. But you’d never know it from the attention given the games by Canadian TV. For two weeks in advance the hype for the American game just kept building. Stations tried to find any Canadian connection such as a back-up player for one of the teams who came from Toronto. Even the morning after, CTV’s Canada AM, after leading off one segment with a fawning story about a little-known American movie director who was so interested in the Canadian television show Degrassi that he made a guest appearance on it (it must be important then if an American liked it), it followed up with the Canadian maker of the mascots for both teams in the Super Bowl and a look at the U.S. TV commercials we’d been deprived of in Canadian Super Bowl broadcasts. Wouldn’t it De nice if our media were mature enough not to need to imitate what they see on screens south of the border? — KR Letter to the editor Looking Back Through the Years THE EDITOR, I wish. I wish they would stop their campaign against smoking and go after the real killer (alcohol). 1 never heard of a person having a smoke, getting in a car, driving and killing somebody. I never heard of someone having a smoke and it changed their mood that they would do and say things that they didn’t really mean. Wc used to have Temperance Halls, and a Sunday set aside in our churches with a special speaker telling the danger of alcohol. Now 'John Barleycorn’ has them all silenced. I wish we had a 'Jesus’ to drive Monsato out of his temple. Farmers arc growing crops with chemicals with yields unheard of years ago. Athletes are using chemicals and it wins races. Is it a good thing? If you take the governors off a steam engine it will tear itself to pieces. Nature has governors too and we are taking them off and we are paying the price. Children born with defects. The number of young people with cancer and diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate. There are joint problems and weight problems. Crime is on the increase. This same-sex issue that is currently in the news wouldn’t be a problem 100 years ago when people had good food and had to work hard for a living. We are drugging our land, we are drugging our animals and we are drugging ourselves. The only way for a change is for you the consumer to say we don’t want our food produced with chemicals. We want it produced naturally, the way God intended. Grant Snell Feb. 11, 1948 Fisticuffs stole the show in a home-and-home series between the Blyth and the Goderich Midgets. On both occasions the young players “threw the code of ethics which promotes goodwill among neighbours, to the wind and engaged in a first-class demonstration of the pugilistic arts.” A spirited political campaign was fast drawing to a close in the Huron by-election as citizens of that riding prepared to go to the polls to elect a successor to the late Dr. Hobbs Taylor, to represent them in the provincial legislature. A.L. Kernick resigned as president of the Blyth board of trade. Action was fast and furious as a member of the Blyth Fire Department awoke at 7 a.m. and mistook the ringing of the town bell for the fire bell. He “sprang into his fireman’s clothes, and with a quick glance out the window, he covered the intervening distance between his home and the fire hall in nothing flat.” In the meantime the town foreman, who rang the bell, ambled down to the fire hall and arrived just as the firefighter was about to start the engine. A short conversation straightened things out. However, it had been that glance out the window that did the trick. Someone at Vodden’s Bakery had stoked up the fire and the black smoke that mantled the sky made a perfect illusion for the sleepy fireman, who later reportedly stated, “I though the whole main street was on fire.” Feb. 8, 1950 A concert of local talent was being held as part of the ceremony for the re-opening of the Brussels town hall. Specials at Grewar’s Groceteria included Spic and Span, 25 cents and Crisco shortening, 37 cents. Entries were being invited for the Beaver Oats field crop competition sponsored by the East Huron Agricultural Society. Playing at the Regent Theatre in Seaforth was The Judge Steps Out, with Alexander Knox and Ann Sothem. Featured at The Capitol in Listowel was Every Girl Should Be Married starring Cary Grant, Diana Lynn, Franchot Tone and Betsy Drake. Feb. 2, 1972 Members of the Brussels school volleyball team won the championship. Team members were: Juanita Smith, Dianne Willis, Maxine Watts, Colleen White, Laverne Mason, Fern Elliott, Mary Litchty, Helen Idzik, Lareen Barbour, Colleen Raymond, Norma Smith, Janice Draper, Brenda Kingsley. Murray Hoover was president of the Brussels Agricultural Society. Mrs. Harold Bolger was president of the women’s section. Society secretary-treasurer was Ed Martin. Feb. 7,1973 Belgrave District Credit Unit celebrated 20 years of service with a banquet and business meeting. Members of the Huron County Federation of Agriculture were told that the priorities of Canadian society were wrong. The reeve of Eldersley Twp. quoted from an article in The Toronto Daily Star, which showed that the tin apple juice is sold in costs two cents more than the apple juice. He said that out of every $10 spent on food, less than $4 went to the farmer. A grant of $400 was given to the Morris Twp. Federation of Agriculture by Morris council. Memorial Hall was to be probed from top to bottom in hopes of seeing it renovated so that it might be used again. Ten tins of Heinz tomato soup were selling for 99 cents at Stewart’s Red and White Food Market during their 28th anniversary sale. Other specials were three packages of facial tissue for $1, a five-pound bag of apples for 59 cents and Hostess potato chips for 59 cents. The Singing Sisters performed two concerts, one at the Westfield Fellowship Hour and the other at Huron Men’s Chapel, in Auburn. Fancy goldfish were 39 cents apiece at the opening of The Fish Bowl in Lucknow. Feb. 5. 1986 There would be no more burning of household garbage at the Grey Twp. waste disposal site. While most local people hardly noticed, southern Ontario felt the shocks of an earthquake, that measured 5.5 on the Richter sale. It was centred beneath the American shore of Lake Erie about 50 kilometres north-east of Cleveland. Post office customers in Blyth, Auburn, Walton and Londesborough would no longer receive Saturday postal delivery under a new policy. Feb. 4,1998 Blyth fire department’s rescue van was to be equipped with a defibrilator. With a view that bigger is not better Brussels councillors selected the option of two municipalities for North Huron over one large one. The talents of Josie MacDonald, a Blyth Public School student, won her a walkman as one of 25 children across the province to capture honours in the Create a Reading Song Contest, sponsored by Troll Books. Hullett boys team won the volleyball tournament. Members were: Jeff Carter, Chris Rooseboom, Mike Bean, Rob Archambault, Daryl Overboe, Eric Jarrett, Billy Finlay, Thomas Bolinger. Greg Bechtel, Andrew Schaefer, Chris Lammerant, Jeremy Blake.