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The Goderich Signal-Star, 1983-11-30, Page 5PAGE 4--GODERK 'I SIGNAL -STAR, WEIJNESl . NOVEMBER 30,1983 DAVE SY ES - e 2. Time stood still for a few brief seconds Sunday evening before the reality of the situation sunk in. The Toronto Argonauts won their first Grey Cup m over 30 years and suddenly the world .has changed. It will never be the same. Toronto will never be the same. Habitual denigration of the Toronto Argonauts and other Toronto big -league sporting endeavors, was a Canadian way of life. An institution that was a part of the very social fabric of this country. It was rather chic to be able to rattle off the latest Argonaut or Maple Leaf jokes. They may have been decidedly cruel jokes, but true nontheless. I have been a type of closet Argo fan over the years, 1 am able to profess now, but only because consistent humiliation plays on my sympathies. I could empathize with the members of the Toronto Argonauts football team, habitual losers, men who found a way Member: Second class mad registration number 0716 BL UE RIBBON AWARD 1983 THE NEWS PORT FOR GODERICH & DISTRICT SINCE 1848 Founded in 1848 and published every Wednesday at dederich, Ontario. Member of the CCNA, OCNA and ABC Audit Bureau of Circulations. Subscriptions payable In advance '28.98, (Bonier Citizens '17.98 privilege card number required) in Canada, '55. to U.S.A., t55. to all other countries, Single copies 50% Display. Notional and Classified'advertising ratite available on request. please ask for Rats Cord No. error, the effective ei®g spear occupiedctober 1, 1983. Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of typog ph' by the erroneous item, together with reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for but that belencs of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. In the event of a typographical error advertising goods or services ata wrong price, goods or services may not be sold. Advertising is merely an offer to sell, and may be withdrawn at any time. The Signal -Star is not responsible for the loss or damage of unsolicited manuscripts, photos or other materials used for reproducing purposes. PUBLISHED BY: SIGNAL -STAR PUBLISHING LIMITED/ ROBERT G. SHRIER - President and Publisher v DAVE SYKES - Editor S''#C1) DON HUBICK - Advertising Manager she P.O. BOX 220 GO HUCKINS 5T. INDUSTRIAL PARK f3ODERICH, ONT. N7A 4B6 FOR BUSINESS OR EDITORIAL OFFICES—please phon [619) 524-8331 Decide on local needs Last week, Goderich town council finally received its long awaited traffic study. A joint venture commissioned by the town and the Ministry of Transportation and Communication, the report was prepared by the M.M. Dillon Company and will be studied in depth by the works cornrnittee of council Monday, December 12. The works committee will subsequently make some recommendations to council. The study examined problems areas in town and offered low-cost solutions to alleviate those problems. There are some major recommendations in the report that will require a great deal of thought and others, no doubt, will be simply filed along with the report. But the traffic report, while it is thorough, will not relieve the debate surrounding a contested issue -traffic signals on Bayfield Road. In fact the report suggests that traffic signals are not warranted and further recommends that Bayfield Road become a through street by removing the stop signs at Britannia Road. The traffic, the consulting firm recom- mends, should be stopped east and westbound on Britannia Road. Much of what the report recommends is based on Ministry of Transportation and Communication guidelines. Guidelines are based on numbers, numbers are established after exhaustive research and field study and serve as a base or definitive starting point. But the numbers can't always be accepted as relevant to a particular situation. Every intersection is a poten- tially dangerous one and every municipality must make decisions on the placement of traffic signals with the best interests of the residents in mind. The report says traffic signals aren't warranted but that will not alleviate the fears some people have for the children crossing the street to go to and from school each day. The report says that the crossing guard is the best form of control considering the traffic and pedestrian flow. We do a lot keep our children from going to school because the prospect of them getting hit by a car exists. Rather, we teach them the best possible rules of safety, instruct them to proceed in a cautious manner and obey the instructions of the crossing guard. Also, we implicitly trust that the motoring public will observe basic safety rules as well and extend certain courtesies to school children. Ostensibly, the report caters more to the motorist than the pedestrian and there is a concerted effort on the part of the consultant to keep traffic moving in an efficient manner. Some of the recommendations have merit while others are based on cold and calculated formulas. There is a proliferation of four-way stops in the vicinity of the three elementary schools and Goderich and District Collegiate Institute. Some of them could easily be removed without damaging the safety of pedestrians or motorists. The consultant noted that the imposition of traffic controls tends to annoy the motorist to the point where they ignore the signals and create a potentially more dangerous situation than the one officials tried to correct. That theory has some merit but infers that the majority of the driving public is incapable of rational thought and bent on self-destruction. As long as there are traffic signals, they will be ingored or abused by a small percentage of drivers. But before council makes decisions on the whether or not to impose traffic signals at certain intersections, it must not let MTC criteria be the deciding factor. The traffic study merely provides additional information, the decision must be based on local needs and conditions. Amore visible force If the Goderich Police Department was aspiring to maintain a higher or more visible profile in the com- munity, then new yellow cruisers will go a long way towards achieving that goal. The Goderich Police Commission recently announced that it would make the switch to yellow police cruisers. The Commission has authorized the purchase of a new cruiser, which will be yellow, and the when the second cruiser is traded, its replacement will also be yellow in colour. The Ontario Police Commission has stated that yellow cruisers are more visible in the community and act as a deterrent to would-be violaters of the law. Hopefully that theory will apply locally when the town force switches to yellow cruisers. But, at the least, the police will be more visible. to lose against all odds. They were the Charlie Browns of Canadian football and professional sport. Their fans, a most faithful but oppressed group of individuals, epitomized and carefully fostered that loser image. One could not ascribe to or become an Argonaut fan. They are born. There are certain inherent qualities in those fans and they can be spotted from a distance. An Argo fan is the guy who always trips on a crack in the sidewalk on a crowded street and looks behind him to determine what it was that tripped him. If an Argo fan went to a black tie affair (doubtful) his shirt tail would be untucked at the back or his shoe lace undone. That's the kind of image projected by hapless fans. But the victory by the Argonauts Sunday did much more than shatter a Canadian way of life. While it may have given thousands of delirious, crazed and impaired fans cause to gather on a major Toronto street in the thousands and burn, destroy and pillage public and private property, it had other more sobering effects. If the Arno -Note are now winners, then their victory has rendered much of existing Canadian folklore useless. They were the epitomy of ineptitude but now have risen to the heights of glory. Is nothing sacred anymore? How could we, as a nation bent on destruction and failure, allow this to hap- pen. There ought to be laws. The Argos were, however, imaginative, creative and innovative. They always found a way to lose against almost impeccable and unbeatable odds. But even in the Face of such adverse conditions as an impenetrable and confortable lead, they found a way, a means to lose and suffer the indignity of senseless defeat. Those were the Argos everyone lolved to cheer for. And it seemed, like a fairy tale, that the futility would somehow last forever and remain a Canadian standard. Something to tell the kids and grand- schlldren about. Fittingly an era has come to an abrupt end and for fans and sportswriters the transition will be a most difficult one. It is now, however, inconceivable to cheer or even give fleeting consideration to another inept group of men. For a brief moment, as the Argos desperately clung to a one -point lead, there existed the possibility of another last-minute loss. I expected it to happen. Certainly, if they cared for our cultural heritage or had a sense of history they would have ineptly permitted the BC Lions to beat them on the final play of the game. A bizarre play that would have no chance of success against any other team in any other game. But, it was not to be. The Argos and their fans are winners. There is, of course, always the Maple Leafs. Reluctant participant DEAR READERS This is one of those days when people deserve a chuckle. All of us (well, some of us) have en- dured the confusion of traffic accidents and tried to summarize on those pitifully inadequate in- surance forms in a few words or less, exactly what happened. The following was published by Tilden, Canada's foremost home-grown car rental business, for internal distribution. Tilden ap- parently picked it up from an Alcan publication, which got it from heaven knows where. In any event, these are summaries actually submitted when police asked for a brief statement on how a particular accident happened: + Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have. + The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intentions. + I thought Kiy window was down, but found it was up when I put my hand through it. + I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way. + A truck backed through my windshield into my wife's face. + A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. + The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him. + I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment. + The gentleman behind me struck me on the backside. He then went Lo rest in the bush with just his rear end showing. 1 drove into a + In my attempt to kill a fly, telephone pole. By Joanne Buchanan SHIRLEY KELLER + I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I reached an in- tersection .a hedge sprang up obscuring my vision. I did not see the other car. + I had been driving my car for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had the ac- , cident. + The accident occurred when I was at- tempting to bring my car out of a skid by steering it into the other vehicle. + I had been learning to drive with power steering. I turned the wheel to what I thought was enough and found myself in a different direction going the opposite way. + I was backing my car out of the driveway in the usual manner, when it was struck by the other car in the same place it had been struck several times before. + I was on my way to the doctor's with rear - end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident. + I was taking my canary to the hospital. It got loose in the car and flew out the window. The next thing I saw was his rear end and there was a crash. + As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident. + To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in . front, I struck the pedestrian. + My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle. + An invisible car carne out of nowhere, struck It has been reported by United States Government sources that within the next few weeks (as a Christmas message? President Ronald Reagan will announce a massive spending program to "develop the arsenal of exotic space weapons" to which he referred earlier this year when he made his "Star Wars" speech. It appears that e weapons scientists and military planners found that after all there are no unsolvable technical obstacles to Mr. Reagan's concept of laser and beam weapons in space. The price tag put on this new spending on killing equipment is between $18 -billion and $27 -billion over the next six years. Predictably, according to a Reuter's report from Moscow, the Soviet Union has promised to respond with new weapons of its own, if the United States powers take the arms race into space. How many billions in funds will be blown on that program is not predicted. I tried to absorb this news against the backdrop of some shattering reports which had reached me earlier. One is from the Club of Rome (an international think-tank) dealing with the looming crisis in the world's food supplies. The other one is the 1982 annual report on World Military and Social Expenditures prepared under the sponsorship of several private U.S. organizations, the Rockefeller Foundation among them. Here are a few of the jolting and heartbreaking findings: The cost of one new nuclear 'submarine equals the annual budget of 23 developing countries with 160 million school-age children. In a world in which one billion people lack the most basic necessities of life, the total military expenditures reached more than $660 -billion (U.S.) a year, i.e. approximate- ly $1.3 million a minute. These are 1 ': 2 statistics. The expenditures for the "Star Wars" preparations are still to come. The global stockpile of nuclear weapons in 1982 was the equivalent of 16 billion tons of TNT. By comparison, three million tons of munitions were used in the Second World War and 40 to 50 million people died. These are some of the items in the report - some of our realities. How is it possible that the obscenity of these realities fails to disturb so many of us? The two superpowers glare and hiss and by adding weapon to weapon become prisoners of their own ex- cesses. By mindless and uncritical submis- sion we become accomplices in the planning of crimes against the inhabitants of this planet, no matter on which side they find themselves. There is a dangerous impulse on this con- tinent to see world events as manifestations of good and evil and to think of policies in terms of crusades. Thus a great many deep- ly complicated situations and motivations are often rendered too simple, too pat, too mesmerizing, too seductively on the side of virtue. President Reagan has identified the Soviet Union as the root of all evil, although historically evil has been rather more wide- ly distributed long before the United States and the Soviet Union even existed. If it were not so sad, it would give a good laugh to remember the unmentionable that during the Second World War the Soviet Union was a good friend and a trusted ally of Americans and Canadians alike and that at the Yalta Conference in 1945 it was Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin who "divid- ed the world" in perfect harmony. If com- murlism has changed at all, it must have been for the better, because Stalin's terrible purges died with him. For myself, I am equally disturbed about such real and near things as the Royal Cana- dian Legion's refusal in London to share with peace groups the cenotaph area of a public park. It worries me even more to hear that three Lucknow area school prin- cipals (one of them a Christian school) regard the theme "peace" as unsuitable and "too political" for the children to write about as their Christmas offerings. In our world, flirting with the total destruction of a new kind of war - has peace become a shameful word? The answer does not come from Moscow or Washington; it really starts with ourselves. my vehicle and vanished. + I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat, I found that I had a fractured skull. + 'I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the roadway when I struck him. -+ When I saw I could not avoid a collision I stepped on the gas and crashed into the other , car. +- The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran over him. • + The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth. + I saw the slow-moving, sad -faced, old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car. + I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows. + The accident happened when the right front door of a car came around the corner without giving signal. + The telephone pole was approaching fast. I was attempting to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end. + I saw her look at me twice, she appeared to be making slow progress, then we met on im- pact. -a- No one was to blame for the accident but it never would have happened if the other driver had been alert. 1 was unable to stop in time and my car crashed in to the other vehicle. The driver and passengers then left immediately for a vacation with injuries. ELSA HAYDON 1