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The Huron Expositor, 1995-09-06, Page 1Briefly ,v) .t AGRICULTURE A plow with a long history finds resting place. see page three FALL FAIR Eight candidates vie to be Fall Fair Ambassador. see page 14 Hot but no record Perhaps the humidity made it feel hotter than it really was. This summer has been warmer than average but temperatures didn't come close to topping the record summertime high of 41.1 C degrees set in 1918. The highest the mercury has soared so far this sum- mer was an official 35 degrees on July 14, accor- ding to Environment Canada in London. Temperatures averaged 21 degrees from June to August this year, about two degrees higher than normal. London has also had about 37 fewer hours of sunshine than is normal for this stage of summer. The London weather office issued more air advisory warnings this summer than last. Hay site could be host to IPM A Dashwood -arca property in Hay Township is the county candidate as a poten- tial site for the 1999 Inter- national Plowing Match (IPM). It is owned by Earl Beck- er.The farm, a concession north of Dashwood and a 10 -minute drive from Grand Bend, has two phone towers nearby and access to piped water from Lake Huron. The executive of the Huron County Plowmen's Association, which selected its candidate site last month, will pitch for the Becker property at the IPM's annual meeting next February. A Grey Township proper- ty owned by Joe Semple was the arca association's second choice. The International match has been held in North Huron on three occasions previously. South Huron has never hosted the event. Ciderfest returns to historic site Egmondville's Ciderfest will be held on Sunday, Sept. 24 this year. The 23rd renewal of the annual fall event at the historic Van Egmond House in the vil- lage will be from 12 to 5 p.m. and feature a flea market, cider and sausage making, tea -cup reading, horseshoe pitching and other entertainment. All proceeds go to heritage restoration work. INDEX Bill Thomas...p. 4 Years Agone...p. 5 Sports...p. 6 "Your community newspaper since 1860...serving Seaforth, Dublin, Hensall, Walton, Brussels and surrounding communities." GREGOR CAMPBELL PHOTO LOCAL COMPUTER NETWORK OPENS - Larry Dillon of Harpurhey has been appointed Executive Director of the HOMEtown Community Network, a non-profit community service organization that hopes to help Seaforth and surrounding counties to better get out of the starting blocks for the coming era of rapid technological change. Training camp crucial for NHLer He feels confident but far from secure. Seaforth's Dave McLlwain feels he will be behind management's 8 -ball when the Ottawa Senators open their National Hockey League training camp in New York State Sunday. Although only two points shy of 200 career points, and with only three more lamps to light before he similarly hits the 100 -career -goal plateau in what will be his ninth NHL season, the slick and speedy local forward is more concerned about simply holding on to his job. McLwain's production plum- meted dramatically on the ice last season, with five goals and six assists, and a plus-minus figure of -26 in 43 games. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure the implications of these numbers for management of the Ottawa franchise, which floundered with the NHL's worst record last season. The Senators only won five of their first 35 games and were absolutely abysmal in other team's rinks. "I'm confident but training camp will be crucial," McLlwain says. "For the team and for myself it was definitely a disappointing season, with me coming off a good season the year before." In his eight seasons with six NHL teams Dave, a centreman or rightwingcr who is now 28 - years -old, has scored 97 goals and 101 assists in 478 games, while accumulating a trifling total of 286 penalty minutes. He started in Seaforth's minor system, played two seasons for the junior Centenaires then won a walk-on spot with the junior A Kitchener Rangers before being traded to North Bay where he made the OHL's second all-star team in 1987. He represented Canada on our national junior team and was selected by the Pittsburg Pen- guins, their ninth choice and 172nd overall, in the NHL's 1986 entry draft. His suitcase was his best friend in 1991-92 when he played for four teams and was traded three times. "Unacceptable" is how Dave describes his plus-minus last year. He says in one early stretch he was -12 in a five - • game span, and once you get in the hole like that "it's tough to chip away and get that back to respectable numbers." The statistic is particularly galling for McLlwain, because he earned a reputation as an efficient and deadly penalty - killer his first season in Win- nipeg back in 1989-90 when seven of his 25 goals came short-handed. He shared the NHL league that season with Steve Yzerman, then still an NHL superstar. A LONG SEASON "I can't blame last season on the lock- out. I ended up get- ting hurt quite a bit earlier in the season. "One bad hit that really rat - tied me, cut me for 18 stitches on my face and I ended up really hurting my collarbone. I tried to play through it but it was hindering my play and it actually made things worse. "I wasn't getting involved the way I should be," McLlwain says. "You have to get involved and get in the comers. I wasn't doing that and I struggled. I think the more I wanted to play the worse things got. Maybe if I had taken the time to let the injury heal properly....?" He says it ended up being "very tough mentally"and "a long three -and -a -half months." See McLlwain page 6. Harpurhey man heads new computer network London is about an hour away from Seaforth as the car flies. But electronically speaking it is closer to Tokyo. And it would be easier for a Seaforth student using a com- puter on the Internet to take a course coming from Moscow than, say, the University of Waterloo, a mere 50 minutes away. Aberrations such as these abound for rural Ontario, which risks getting stalled in the starting blocks in this time of rapid technological change. These are problems, caused by the differentials in long- dstance telephone rates, the HOMEtown Community Net- work hopes to confront and solve, and started tackling in Seaforth and a five -county surrounding area last week. Larry Dillon of Harpurhey has been appointed Executive Director of the community communication and information networking system. He is a well-known local lawyer, agriculture and business consultant and former farmer. HOMEtown has 500 mem- bers right now, about 50 working hard to establish a basic instantaneous information system, that will tie into the emerging global web. The system all began with rural librarians. Forget about the glitz. These people are not talking about state of the art graphics that re- quire computers that will do everything but brush your teeth. The network is finding it hard enough controlling costs at its outset, and so earn a toehold for this region in the tomorrow of technology that is coming for us all. A $492,000 grant from Ontario was frozen with the recent change of government. That left a huge hole in the organization's budget and left its future up in air, and dependant upon the evolving vision and drive of true believers such as Dillon. HOMEtown is "not slick or fancy," he says. "It is a non- profit community service or- ganization. What we offer is a basic information and com- munication system." All this is Internet stuff might as well be Greek to many. "If you took all the books in the Seaforth library and tossed them in a grain bin - that is how the Internet is organized," Dillon says. The instantaneous infor- mation is all out there somewhere, but finding it then separating the wheat from the chaff, according to one's own individual needs, is a learning process. "You don't need a $15,000 system to use HOMEtown," Dillon explains. "It can be easier to use than my VCR." The organization is a "virtual office", with mailing address in Arva, the executive director working out of his home near Seaforth and the network tied into computers in London, soon to be at Fanshawe College. HOMEtown serves a population of over 600,000 in Huron, Oxford, Middlesex, Elgin and Perth, including the cities of London, Woodstock, Stratford and St. Thomas. "It provides a unique oppor- tunity for this area to redevelop its regional perspective by promoting community develop- ment within the region..and ensures it is represented in the world-wide web of community networking," the press release announcing Dillon's September 1 appointment states: "HOMEtown's major tech- nological partner in this phase of development is Inter*Com Information Services Ltd., a southwestern Ontario Internet provider base in London." To see HOMEtown live here in Huron dial through your computer modem, 679-3909 and log in as "guest", using the password "hometown". Perth County residents may access the local network by dialing 284-0787. SIGNING SOME JERSEYS - Dave McLlwain's Hockey School ended for another summer in Seaforth last week, and there was no shortage of autograph hounds when the star of the show signed autographs on the final day, McLlwain, and eight-year NHL veteran who has played with six teams, starts training camp with the rest of the Ottawa Senators In New York State on Sunday. He's hoping to have a better season this year than last.