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The Wingham Advance Times, 1995-07-19, Page 4tiChe Wind= nbibante -Mimeo Published each Wednesday at: Box 390, 5 Diagonal Road, Wingham, Ontario Phone (519) 357-2320 Fax (519) 357-2900 J.W. Eedy Publications Ltd. ' Second Class Mail Registration No. 0821 We are: Jim Beckett — Publisher Audrey Currie — Manager Cameron J. Wood — Editor Norma Golley — Ad. Sales Stephen Pritchard — Comp. Jim Brown — Reporter Margaret Stapleton—Reporter Eve Buchanan — Office Louise Welwood Office Member of: OCNA CCNA The Wingham Advance -Times is a member of a family of community newspapers providing news, advertising and information leadership. Letters Policy All letters to the editor must bear the writer's name, telephone num- ber and address. The Advance -Times wel- comes letters. We re- serve the right to edit, but will endeavor to preserve the author's intent. Deadline for letters is Monday before 10:00 a.m. Some exceptions may apply. Fax: 519-357-2900 or mail to: P.O. Box 390, Wingham, Ontario NOG 2W0 Editorial Viewpoint o declaratjon he . decision by the Town of Wingham to cease making any declarations of special , weeks comes both as an issue of interest, but also an issue of paranoia. Several communities in Ontario have hopped on the band Several on of not making g special event week declarations following an incident involving the Mayor of Hamilton, Bob Morrow, and the organizers of a Gay Pride event. Morrow would not make a declaration marking a week in honor of the homosexuals' event. The , event., he defended, did not represent the interests of his constituents. The homosexuals filed suit and won their case on discrimination grounds. They said Morrow and the City of Hamilton had made declarations in past marking other events and had no reason not to declare their week. Morrow gained support — and popularity — throughout the city and the province. His municipal government fought back by passing a motion to remove the declaration policy from the books. Hamilton no longer will designate weeks as belonging to special interest groups. Of course, the argument of Morrow and the municipality is solid: no. preference will be given to any special interest group, and therefore no discrimination. Basically, everyone loses. Tragically, this has been the trend of modern times. The rise in power of special interest groups in the province has over-ridden common sense and created a sense of paranoia among citizens and government. When a special interest group professing Gay Pride Week can successfully win a suit against a politician, things have gone beyond normality in Ontario. The losers in the deal are not these special interest groups that will continue to come out of the closet regardless of whether a government will declare the week officially, but rather the more mainstream groups that rely on this kind of promotion for success. The Big Brothers and Sisters, Heart and Stroke, Fitness Canada, Participaction Ontario, service clubs, the list goes on at great length. And now, Wingham has joined the trend. Council, like all others before, is simply trying to prevent this kind of thing from happening in our community. To say this move is sad is an understatement. The media, no doubt, would relish a decent controversy in town; and the public and the groups they support must endure our municipality's new found paranoia when it comes to dealing with special interest groups. The decision by council was not unexpected; but unfortunate. We were hoping that our municipality had both the common sense and the guts to stand up to certain special interest groups and say "You're time has past. These declarations are for those who treat them responsibly." — CJW OVA', ? '':` r mem .w, t .te a enstmw Geography and good samaritans. Thankfully, we weren't hit as hard as other parts of Huron in last week's storm. And thankfully, we have shown we can be there for others. with Margaret Stapleton JULY' 1948 The largest building boom in years for Wingham is seeing many houses being erected. In ad dition to 50 war -time houses, an- other 32 houses are either just completed or in the process of construction by private individu- als. The first prize for swimming style and general ability in the wa- ter in Wingham has gone to Willis Walpole. Joy Cowan was second and Jean Irwin, third. The mass x-ray survey of the people of Huron County has been completed with a splendid re- sponse from the citizens of every part of the county. The fight to rid the county of tuberculosis is con- tinuing and the efforts of all those involved to this end are appreciat- ed. The new Wingham Fire Hall of modernistic design is a credit to the town. George Porter, son of Mr. and Mrs. D. B. Porter of Wingham, has been awarded the Lions Club Scholarship for general proficien- cy in the entrance class of Wing - ham Public School. JULY 1961 Don Messer and his famous "Islanders", known to millions in Canada and the United States through their weekly television appearances on the CBC network, will be one of the feature attrac- tions at the Wingham Lions Club's annual Frontier Days next month. Work is progressing on four new houses in the Pleasant Valley area. Homes belonging to Scott Reid, Reg Bitton and Dave Bur- gess are started and the founda- tion has been dug on John Crew - son's site. Mr. and Mrs. G. W. (Bert) Armstrong announce the engage- ment of their eldest daughter Mary Alice to Harold Smits, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jan Smits of Vol- kel, Holland. The marriage will take place in August. The unusually rainy season has been the means of providing a lit- tle extra pleasure for those who have taken to the Maitland in their boats. Heavy rains, too, have pro- vided enough flow to keep the water fresh in the swimming area below the dam. JULY 1971 The demolition of the old Mo- ses Brown factory on Alfred Street is underway. Workers are busy removing debris from the west side rear. Harold Smits has been appoint- ed shop foreman at C. E. MacTav- ish Ltd. in Wingham. A reception and dance was held in the Women's Institute Hall, Belgrave, in honor of newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Dave Medd, nee Sharon Payne. "Project Sweep", a Maitland Valley Conservation Authority plan to clean up river banks and other areas which could lead to water pollution, has been under- way this week at Wingham. Brian Deyell, Inno Dubelaar and David Morrsion piled stones at the river bank in Lower Town to prevent erosion. JULY 1981 Five students at the F. E. Ma- dill Secondary School have been named as Ontario Scholars for having 80 per cent or better in Grade 13. They are Debbie Sjaar- da, Lynn Miller, Kathy Under- wood, Marilyn Kieffer and Faye Ann Forster. Several "Indians" performed a much-needed rain dance last Sat- urday in the Wingham Western Hoedown parade. On the warpath were Audrey Currie, Anna Goo- dall, Jane Burke, Peg Bateson, Shirley Kaufman, Berle Elliott, Mary Williatns and pianist Louise Swanson. Freedom ahead of safety TORONTO '-- Mike Harris has put so-called personal freedoms ahead of saving lives on highways -- and shown he has a short memory. The Progressive Conservative pre- mier almost as immediately as he got in the driver's seat has abolished photo radar, which a New Democrat government brought in last August to catch speeding drivers who cause many accidents. Hams insisted he has seen no evi- dence that photo radar has improved highway safety, but his windshield needs a good wash. A transportation ministry study found that in the first five months of photo radar the proportion of vehi- cles travelling faster than the speed limit dropped between 15 and 42 per cent at six sites and those travelling at much higher speeds dropped even more dramatically. Deaths on high- ways last year decreased from 752 to 634, although restrictions on new drivers and more airbags in cars also were factors. Photo radar also has been shown to reduce speeding and lives in many jurisdictions. Photo radar has flaws. Because it does not stop cars, tickets are sent to owners who may not have been driv- ers, but should take some responsi- bility. Photo radar also does not detect drivers committing other offences such as tailgating and changing lanes without signalling, but has never been held out as a complete cure-all. Harris will try to deter speeding and the other offences by having more highly visible police cruisers, which obviously is worthwhile. But he could have these cruisers as well as photo radar, which has proven ef- fective. Photo radar also can catch 50 speeders in the time it takes a cruiser to pull one over and write out a tick- et, so it is much more cost-effective and Harris has just won an election promising to save money. But Harris had made it one of his Commandments to scrap photo radar from the moment the NDP an- nounced it and his mind since has been closed. The Tories argued accu- rately that the NDP brought in photo radar partly to make money. But they railed particularly against photo radar on ideological grounds, calling it creeping socialism, sig., Brother, totalitarian, °twellian (al- though it operates in high -Tory Al- berta) and an infringement of per- sonal rights. These criticisms echoed those many Tories made when fastening seatbelts had to be forced on a Con- servative government in the mid- 1970s. Premier William Davis said he would make fastening mandatory af- ter studies showed it saved lives. Bu; he ran into a roadblock of many of his own MPPs and supporters, who complained it was 'insidious govern- ment control' and told of relatives lives saved because they were not wearing seatbelts. MPP Jim Taylor warned ominous- ly 'if the government climbs into the car, it will be climbing next into the bedroom and who knows where that may lead?' As the 1975 election approached, the Davis government put itself reverse and said that while fastening seatbelts undoubtedly saves lives, it,' would not make it compulsory be- cause too many were against it and instead they would educate people to, wear them. But then the Tories lost their majority, the Liberals intro- duced a private member's bill to, make seatbelts compulsory which had N'DP support and a new Tory transportation minister, Jim Snow, rushed in a law to make them com- pulsory, saying the public was now more inclined to accept. A year later Snow was boasting his seatbelt law had caused ai 'dranfatic decline in the number MI drivers and passengers killed.' If the Tories had been allowed to stick to their credo that rugged indi-'' vidualism matters more than high- way safety, a lot of people would not be alive today -- how many lives 1 will be lost because today's Tories' scrapped photo radar? 4