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The Huron Expositor, 1985-07-24, Page 22EHuron ., XpOsl,tOr. SINCE 1860, SERVING THE COMMUNITY FIRST BLUE RIBBON AWARD 1985 HEATHER McILVy'RAITH, Editor Incorporating Brussels; Post 10 Main Street 527-0240 Published in SEAFORTH, ONTARIO Every Wednesday morning • The Expositor is brought to you each' week by the efforts of: Pat Armes, Bessie Broome, Marlene Charters, Joan Guichelaar, Gary Heist, Anne Hutt, Joanne Jewitt, Stephanie Levesque, Dianne McGrath, Lois McLlwaln, Bob. McMillan, Cathy Melady, Larry Till and Steve Walters. Member Canadian Community Newspaper Assoc, Ontario Community Newspaper Association Ontario PressalCPress Commonwealth Press Union International Press Institute Subscription rates:. Canada $18.75 a year (in advance) Outside Canada $55.00 a year (in• advance) Single Copies 50 cents each SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1985 Second class mail registration Number 0696 ' Good and horrible Anyone who feels confused over the state of the world can be forgiven. Recent events in different parts of the world have shown humanity's two distinct faces: one generous and kind and giving, the other foul, amoral and evil. The most striking example of the former has been the music industry's outpouring of love and money to the starving masses of Africa. Rockers are usually seen as gluttonous, self-serving despots. But the songs they've recorded, and the gargantuan effort of last month's Live Aid simulcast, have given th.e world a' new perspective on them. The principle mover behind the entire idea has been Bob Geldof of Ireland's Boomtown Rats. He has shown himself - and his contemporaries - to have not only heart, but courage: the courage to put themselves out and help those truly less fortunate than 99 per cent of their audience. Equally impressive in many ways has been the support offered by Toronto's Italian community. It is a community which has always been strong and unified, with good reason: it's the largest collection of Italians anywhere in the world outside Italy itself. More significant than their sheer number is their ability to build both moral and financial support when their countryfolk are in trouble. Such was the case several years ago, when a devastating earthquake wiped out a good number• of villages and lives. That same spirit of community returned earlier this month when a dam broke there, washing away much of the countryside. With characteristic speed, Toronto's Italians banded together and began organizing help. Their actions eased the lot of many survivors. That's the good side of the world. The positive face we'd like visitors to our planet to see. Unfortunately, as on the stages of classical theatres, there is also an ugly face, one that brings hatred and abuse. Representing that face is the South African government. Its cruel sadism and overt bigotry are a blight on the whole of human nature. Opposition to South Africa's official policy of racism, or apartheid, has become something of a motherhood issue. One cannot go wrong in criticizing it. The reason that is so is in this modern age, an "elected" government which systematically denies to 75 per cent of its citizens the right to participate in the affairs of state, causes in any thinking individual a sense of moral disgust that cannot be outweighed by any so-called justification. it would be naive and idealistic to say the South African government could take a lesson from the humanitarians mentioned at the outset. Hatemongers do not know the reason for their rage; they know only the object of their scorn is not worthy of full human status, and no amount of rational persuasion can change that. We can only be thankful that, when bigoted intolerance rears its horrible and frothing head, we have groups like Live Aid and the Toronto Italians to remind us of the good people can do when they set their minds to it. — L.T. Star Wars, and jobs You don't need a job when you're dead. Ronald Reagan's Star Wars proposal, or the Strategic Defence Initiative as it's called officially, is attracting interested countries with its promise of job creation. But make no mistake about it: The purpose of Star Wars is nothing short of enhancement of the Americans' nuclear power. Whether or not it would help with the dubious task of deterrence is irrelevant. It would cause a horrendous step-up in world nuclear tensions, which is the last thing any country should be trying to do today. The global peace movement is gaining strength. Mr. Reagan and his Soviet counterpart have agreed to meet in Geneva this fall. While disarmament may or may not be on the official agenda, it's a sure bet the whole world will be analyzing every syllable of discussion to measure its impact, or lack of impact, on the arms race. Ottawa should remist the temptation to lend any additional force to Mr. Reagan's unabated zeal for world domination. Star Wars is only the latest in an arsenal of tactics to allow him to accomplish that end, the likes of which haven't been seen since the "end" of the Cold War. In fact, SDI represents, if nothing else, a return to those Cold War beliefs and suppositions, which the world has sought to eliminate as unworkable for the past 20 years. — L.T. Send in the clowns Community newspapers can and should support worthwhile local events. Such an event is taking place in Seaforth this weekend. The Al G. Kelly Miller Brothers Circus will be in town for two shows on Sunday. Proceeds will go to the Seaforth-Norway Hockey Committee, which will sponsor our midget team on its upcoming trip to Europe. One of the participants in the circus will be Expositor reporter Larry Till. He will spend the day as a clown, which causes some of us around here to wonder how we'll tell the difference from his every -day personality. He will work, eat and generally commune with circus people all day, in an effort to give the circus a wider base of appeal. It's in everybody's interest tocome out and suppbrt this venture. The town will benefit, the team will be grateful, and you might just have a good time. OPINION — Blowin' in the wind photo by Heather Mcllwraith Time for thinking Ten years can seem so long a time and so short a time, a blink in the history of the world, sometimes an eternity for an individual. Memories of 10 years were alive for some people at least at the recent opening night of Primrose School District 109 at the Blyth Festival. For the first time since 1979 James Roy, the man who made the Festival a reality was back directing a play and memories of another July night just over 10 years came flooding back, In a way, the fact James Roy had directed the play the fact there was a reception afterward in the basement of Blyth Memorial Hall were about the only similarities that existed. For one thing, at that reception 10 years earlier there was hardly anyone who lived farther than a dozen miles from Blyth. In 1985 many of the people present had not even heard of Blyth a decade ago, let alone about the fledgling theatre. Press was there from all over this time. No one but the local paper discovered the theatre for weeks that first season. Theatre people from across Canada were in that opening night audience this time, people from Toronto, Winnipeg and Strat- ford. - James Roy is now one of the leaders in theatre in Canada himself. A decade ago he was an unknown, a young director who spent his early life on a farm near Blyth, finished his high school at Clinton then studied directing at York University in Toronto. BEHIND THE SCENES by Keith Roulston Today he is artistic director at Manitoba Theatre Centre, one of the three or four most prestigious theatres in Canada, His wife Anne 10 years ago subsidized the theatre by keeping the pair eating through her teaching job in Toronto while they worked for nothing at the theatre. That first summer she did the administrative work for the theatre and personally canvassed the business people along the main street of the village to raise enough money to get the theatre going. Today she is better known to many people across Canada as Anne Chislett (she uses her maiden name for her writing to avoid confusion), one of the country's top playwrights and winner of the Governor General's Award for her play Quiet In The Land. She didn't get much chance to reminisce in her time back at Blyth, working 18 -hour days at her word processor on a screen adaptation for a movie version of Quiet In The Land which is possible in the future. She was also working on co -writing a play which may appear next year at the Festival. When she goes back to Winnipeg she faces .a series of deadlines for writing projects for theatres across the country. But perhaps the people who have come the farthest in the last decade are the people who make up the audience for the Festival. Local natives have gone from perhaps never having seen a professional theatre produc- tion in their lives a decade ago to being blase sophisticates today. Sets and costumes for the Festival today for one show cost about half the entire budget of that first year. Casts are huge by comparison. fighting is intricate. Top writers from across the country vie to have their plays produced there. Yet the Festival has made itself a tough act to follow and the audience seems to come saying: "All right, Ecve me something as exciting as Quiet In The Land"; "Give me something as exciting as "I'll Be Back Before Midnight". Standing ovations were once commonplace. Now it takes something truly remarkable to get people on their feet. And that is as it should be because when the Festival was begun there was a philosophy our own people deserved the very best. Now they keep challenging the writers, directors, actors, and technicians to deliver on that promise. The great modern bargain Garage sales are quite the fad these days. Many people make them part of their lives. They troop around town watching for hand -made signs and check the ads in the classified section. Drive around any small town and you'll see a cluster of cars, in front of a house. Must be a wedding ora funeral," you muse. Then you see a pile of junk with a -horde of human magpies darting around it snatching up bits, beating each other to another heap of rubble, like seagulls diving and screeching for a slice of french -fried spud. It's no wedding, There are no vows exchanged, except that you takes what you gets, "for better or for worse." It's no funeral, except for those who pay six bucks for something that cost three 10 years ago. It's a garage sale. This phenomenon resembles a mini - auction -sale minus the auctioneer. The garage sale allows the proprietor (often abetted by some of his neighbors) to get rid of SUGAR AND SPICE by Bill Smiley all the useless items overflowing the garage, the tool -shed, the basement and the attic. It sometimes brings in two or three hundred dollars to the vendors, and the garage -sale groupies go home all excited because they have bought a three-legged chair, a horse-drawn sleigh, an umbrella with only one spoke missing, or six paperback novels for a dollar. One of my contemporaries, an habituee of these bizarre events, was more than a bit thunderstruck when he found at one sale that he could buy text -books from our school, duly stamped as such, dirt cheap. He remon- strated with the owners, pointing out that the books belonged to the school and had been stolen by their children, but they'd have none of it. They wanted cash. So much for human nature. These were taxpayers who had helped buy the books their kids had stolen, and now wanted to sell them back to the system so that other kids could steal the books they were still paying taxes for. May I disagree for a moment? Kids do steal books. Regularly. They don't consider it "stealing." It's just taking something from a big institution. That's not stealing, according to about 50 per cent of them. It's just like dad not declaring something on his income tax or mom ordering a dress from Eaton's, wearing Continued on Page A6 Good guys and bad guys My son has very rigid ideas about good and bad. He knows bad guys are the ones who steal and beat up on innocent people. That seems reasonable. What bothers me, is he feels the "good guys" are the one who beat up on the bad guys. I have tried to explain that sometimes it depends on how you look at the situation. I may not be the right person to teach my children the difference between right and wrong. i seem to be having difficulty deciding on some current issues. A couple of recent court decisions are bothering me very much. Two men I dislike were recently conA'icted of wilfully promoting hatred. At first I was glad to hear of their convictions. Their anti-Semitic viewpoints and their willingness to share their horrible ideas were very distasteful to me. Both Mr. Zundel and Mr. Keegstra seem to be narrow-minded intol- erant bigots. i was particularly pleased when Keegstra, a high school teacher was fired from his job. The duty of a teacher is to present facts and theories to their students and allow them to learn to make their own decisions on the theories. Keegstra failed in that duty. He used his profession in order to spew forth distorted beliefs and present them as facts. I am uncomfortable with one aspect of the situation. Both men appear to have been convicted because of their beliefs. They may be wrong in those beliefs, but they should have the right to hold them. I would find it distasteful to have either of those men as a COUNTRY CORNER by Larry Dillon neighbor. That would be preferable however to punishing every person who held different views than the "official" ones. Pm not the only one who is uncomfortable with the convictions. The foreman of the jury which convicted Keegstra offered to help pay the fine. He said "I feel Mr. Keegstra should never have been brought to trial, i don't believe matters of expression of opinion should ever be brought before they. courts". Now his attitude confuses me. He votes for a conviction, then says the conviction is wrong. A free society must allow citizens to form their own ideas or it will destroy itself. There was an attempt made in Nazi Germany to rigidly control attitudes and beliefs. This was part of the insanity that led to the war. It didn't work- Now we have people who refuse to believe in the German atrocities being persecuted. The extended debate, in Zundel's trial, over whether or not six million Jews were killed was ridiculous. The man obviously believed that six million was an exaggera- tion. Most of -us cannot even visualize a group of people that large. The tragic fact was that there was even one person put to death because of his religion, Zundel can o. challenge the number all he wants to. We don't care about the actual figure. We care that such a horrible thing was permitted to happen at all. i don't like either Mr. Zundel or Mr. Keegstra and I detest what they stand for. I like it even less when my beliefs force me to stand up for them. It is wrong to persecute a person for stating and arguing for his own beliefs. If we do so we will ultimately develop a society where only official political and religious beliefs are acceptable. Citizens will be afraid to question them. That is more distasteful to me than living in a society where we have the occasional Zundel or Keegstra. Those men should not have been convicted. They have the right to hold beliefs different from ours. Disagreeing with popular opinions does not make a man a criminal. Right and wrong are elusive concepts. I am trying to give my son some guidance. I have been unable to explain how a person carrbe right and wrong at the same time. A boy who is just a few days past his sixth birthday would rather watch some television hero bash in the villain's face than listen to his ancient "father attempt to explain moral philosojhy. A