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The Huron Expositor, 1990-09-19, Page 2Huron � xpositor SINCE 1660, SERVING THE COMMUNITY FIRST locos poret lne fh. $rus &$ Post Published in s.otorth. Oest.rie t►Ary Wsdnasd.y Morning EO 11111111011. Eisner& M+•O+r tssAl'fatr OONNlT editor NEWS STAN: P.wd. Lilian SUMO o &tw d AOVIRTISINO. Terri-lyww 0.1. aASUP IROS . SUBSCRIPTIONS ACCOUNTING: ht Armes O4.Kwi. McO,.th Linde Pultenon Member Conadtan Coonnsunnv Pitowspoptw Aeon. Oolong Cornrnuntty Newspaper A*wc'attOI+ Ontor,o Press Council Conwnonw.oith Press Union IntSrnattortai Pr..s Institut, Subscrptwn Rotes Condo 'V 00 o rear in e0vanco Santo( Clttsens ,19.00 o rear M lessen ) Outstds Canada 'IA 00 a year. hi MINIMS stngi. Cowin `o cants each Sec u4,4.1 class mail rowsuation Number ObSlb WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 11090 MUM Editorial and Owlwsss Offices - 10 Msln Street. $..forth T.1.plwn• (1111) 1274240 Pas 127-0242 Mailing Address - P.O. Eco= 40. Seaforth. Ontario, NOK 151110 just go with it There are plenty of good, practical reasons to support the Seaforth Fall Fair this week. Pride in the community. Seeing Aunt Martha's pie take the red ribbon again. Showing the kids the animals. Supporting the efforts of the Agricultural Society Good solid reasons. But what about the real reasons? Recapturing the wonder of a chili. The sounds of the midway. The taste of that first coffee in the early morning light on the fairgrounds, watching the exhibitors ready their stock. That intangible something that keeps drawing a town through the fairground gates. The Seaforth Fall fair is the success that it is for many diverse reasons. It has come to town as faithfully as taxes for 145 years thanks to to efforts of a very dedicated group of people on the Fair Board. It is the culmination of months of planning, tireless work and seemingly insurmountable odds. But more than any one contributing factor, the Seaforth Fall Fair owes its growth and tradition to over 2,000 seperate factors. The people of Seaforth and area. `fog are the Fair. To the very young, the Fair is a culmination of sights, sounds and excitement. With each year, the Fair comes to mean a little bit more, and a bit more embroidery is added to the vibrant tapestry that makes up any faithful fairgoer's memories of the event. A chance to meet, to reacquaint, to relive the past. There is more than a little magic in the Fair. The Fair amounts to much more than just a mass of exhibits, livestock and a parade. Words like `tradition" and "community support" come to mind, but they slip too easily off of the tongue to fully capture the essence of the fall fair, any fair. Try to put your finger on what the fair means to you. Tricky, isn't it? But chances are that it will be enough to draw you to the fairgrounds this Thursday and Friday for the annual gala. Come to think of it, don't try to figure it out. Just go with it. See you at the Fair, Seaforth. RURAL ROOTS 1/-r by Jeanne Kirkby Polar Bear dis are fun for somepeopl twining and invited the suis ul. They drdn' t take up the: ulvsurttua, but rather stood on short takes photograptis of waves crashing over Oracle Mike. When he came out of Me water teal shoulders were blue with cold. 1 had brought ply of towels, but he couldn't ger fully dry In my life, u seems anything 1 look forward to uomea ata bad time. Tbls weekend nd 1 had guests from Germany, and the bat I could dei is pea thein Saturday with 'hello and how are you' between my sniffles, coughs aid sneezes. After a few beets my cold sub - Mad and 1 was able to =joy my compsay and have a good. if not just ply intentions, time with than. Three young Gorman girls (a Grace of my frsuad, Oriole Make, and her two friends) drove to Seaforth o see something other than a city. This was to be their 'top to the countryside'. They especially wanted to see Lake Huron because they were told it was such a big lake it is impossible to see the other side. To them Lake Huron was a sea. We drove to Grand Bend to see the 'sea' and Oncle Mike, un- daunted by the cold winds blowuig and frigid looking water, went Who's milking who? Last week a Huron County farmer expressed his feelings of frustration about some recent farm news. A new study had indicated that the 1990 average family farm income now nearly equals that of their urban neighbours. Why does this frustrate him? Well, the fine print of this study states that the majority of farmers, their wives and family members, depend on off -farm income to bring their total income to this level. "I always wanted my kids to come back to the farm", he commented ruefully. "I hoped that they would go to the OAC and come back and carry on the family business ... But now I'm going to encourage them to get an education and get out of here. You can't make a living at this any more; it's just a question of how long you can hang on". This man has a four year degree from the Ontario Agricultural College and compares his situation with that of some classmates who didn't farm and who now have other businesses, employees, winters in Florida and time off on the weekends. He works hard to pay high interest on thousands of dollars of capital investment needed to establish his food production "factory". His markets are uncertain and mostly depressed, and his working schedule is usually 70 to 80 hours a week on a diversified operation. He gets few holidays and can't just lie down when he's sick because someone must always be on deck to milk the cows. You can't argue with the girls in the ban! Last week the price of milk went up in some local grocery stores. A cheerful young man stacking milk onto the shelves told me that the farmers got a raise, and he obviously thought that they deserved it. The price increase of $2.50 per hectolitre for milk used in the fluid or table market was the first raise since May 1, 1988. It brings the total amount that a milk producer receives for one litre of this milk to almost 57 cents. Since May 1988, the Consumer Price Index has risen by more than 9.6 percent. If you were working for Ford of Canada, earning a base wage of almost $ 18.00 per hour, enjoying excellent employee benefits and good vacations, without any capital investment in land or machinery, seed or fertilizers, would you be ready to go out on strike as they arc now? If you won a raise of 4.59 percent, which is what this raise works out to for dairy farmers, would you accept it without any side benefits? Probably, if you liked the job. But it gets more complicated. What if, when you accepted this raise, your hours were cut back by five percent? Would you feel you were going uphill or sliding back? As of August 1, the Market Sharing Quota (MSQ) has been converted to kilograms of butterfat instead of litres of milk. This means that a producer can no longer rely on breeding and management techniques to ince^.ase his production, but can only expand by buying more quota. The Ontario Milk Board gives the reason for this change as the fact that surpluses of butter are piling up over the acceptable level of 12 million kilograms stockpiled, to a high of close to 18 million kilograms. They also cite the consumer's preference for low fat products in this age of "body cense io usness" . The net effect is that while the farmer gets an increase in his payment per litre, he will sell less due to a lower butterfat based MSQ unless he buys more quota. When Article 11 of the GATT agement is threatening the very existence of the dairy industry in Canada. why would he want to increase his vulnerability by a greater investment in quota? in the gmcery stores that have not yet added this increase-, one litre of homogenized milk sells for $ 1.47 and a pound of butter costs s urn to page 17A • or warm. That evening we spent a few hours at the Green's Hotel and my friends and 1 just loved tate place. The guts made thou own party and spoke German and English with anyone who would listen. Somccxcc at the bar er Wit each of the girls a toe -shut andthey posed for photos by the pool table wearing their new attire. Sunday morning carne and 1 felt no better. I bundled up in warm clothing and, with me looking like a well -wrapped mummy, we went to the beach at Bayfield. That mor- ning the girls had decided they were going to go into the sea. The winds were Wider than the L THINKING by Sura Oxford y before and I just knew the water would be even colder. Uncle Mike was first to the water. 1 acted as a towel rack and let everyone drape their towels around my shoulders, and 1 could still feel that cold wind blowing through my 100% cotton amour. The girls stood on shore and watched Oncle Mike and debated whether they should go in to join hun. They decided they would honour their morning vow to go in the water and got ready for the swum. Despite the fact they had brand new Queen's Hotel tee -shuts they could have worn, they made a mad dash into the sea dressed like good German girls - in only their under cants. Wow, I thought to myself, even if 1 was wowing a full length fur bathing suit and felt so healthy I could swim faster than a barracuda, 1 wouldn't go tow that water an a day Wee this. The sight of the blueing frolicking frauleans and Oncle Mike u1 the water made me pull the towels tighter around myself. After the dash into the sea we headed to a cafe and ordered hot chocolate so the swimmers could warm themselves, then we returned to Seafoath. Late that night they piled into their car and drove back to Kitchener, and 1 know all the way back the car would be filled with the sounds of sniffles, coughs and sneezes. • ;ca4 . ..a •.• ••cin The roughest note of them all Have you ever sat down to read a really good book, and had such a good time reading it that you didn't really want to get to the last chap- ter? Reading the last chapter can sometimes be a bittersweet thing, and so can writing it. This is the final chapter that I'll be hacking out here in Seaforth, and as far as these Roughnotes go, it's one of the rougher ones. A number of months ago, a cohort from Goderich was talking about writing his last column when he was leaving the Signal for a paper in Owen Sound. "I don't like mushy farewell columns," he growled into his beard. "I refuse to write one." The next week, there on the editorial page of the Signal -Star, was a farewell column as large as life. His hands might have become possessed or something, but chan- ces are good that he took a final look around at his home and knew that he just had to say something. I balked at the idea of a farewell tome myself, but I know that there are a lot of people out there that I won't get a chance to say 'goo- dbye' to before I head off to British Columbia on Monday. I'll count myself lucky if I have a chance to scratch my nose between now and Monday. We set a date of October 1 to get on the road to B.C. Surprise! A job offer. Surprise again! Starting Oc- tober 1. I didn't exactly see my life flash before my eyes, but I saw the next seven days scream by in a blur of packing, phone calls, visits, pet vaccinations, laundry and maybe munching a cracker or two somewhere along the line. Remember how proud I was back in February when I did all of my packing in three hours, moving from one apartment to another? This must be some sort of nemesis. Somewhere out there, The Imps of Packing are having a real hoot, watching me pull my hair out. But somewhere between now and the flinging of the final crate into the truck, I would like to have a ROUGH NOTES by Paula Elliott chance to say 'ciao' and thanks to everyone in Seaforth who made this the year that it was. YEAR! At the risk of killing a cliche, it does seem like only yesterday that I pulled into town in the creeping blue hor- ror, the '79 Chevette from Hell. (The little dickens is looking for good home, by the way...) To all of you who offered compliments and words of en- couragement over the past 12 months, a big, fat 'thank you'. Somehow, people just seemed to know when I was having the longest day of my life, and how to turn that day around with a smile and a hello. Everyone who has picked up this paper with any regularity has gotten to know quite a bit about me over the year. You've heard me bel- lyache about a Christmas that came and went too fast. You suffered the trials of 'parenthood' with me when I acquired Beatrice the Wonder Dog. And you got airsick right along with me when I brashly volunteered to take an aerial photograph. Thanks for coming along for the ride! Whenever I have diddly-squat to say for myself, I can ramble on for hours. But when I have something really important to say, words are hard to come by. Final chapters come too soon in good books. And writing this final chapter in Seaforth has taken me by surprise, too. But the end of one book means the start of another, and I'll be looking forward to seeing what this one has in store for me. It's been good to know you, Seaforth! Golfer sinks hole-in-one...on wrong green SEPTEMBER 19, 1890 The new tountain donated to the Mr. James Graves has painted a very attractive advertisement on the Agricultural Grounds fence for Mr. Robert Willis, which does credit to his artistic skill. He can beat the Burdock Blood Bitters' artists all hollow. The town streets are having the annual coat of gravel laid on. The Listowel Banner says: There is a rumour than a farmer in an adjoining township, who was taken before the court and fined for sen- ding skimmed milk to the cheese factory, lay in wait watching his can on the stand and caught a young man in the act of skimming the can. He is said to have knocked down the cream thief with a club and nearly choked him to death. Dressyman and two others, the last of the Riel rebellion prisoners, have been released from the Stoney Mountain Penitentiary. SEPTEMBER 17, 1915 Mr. J.G. Crich, the artist, former- ly of Tuckersmith but for some months past of Stratford, has located in Toronto as most central tor the practice of his pntifession. town of Clinton by Miss Smith of Toronto, has arrived there and will be erected on the market square at an early date. It is an attractive one. Two thrashings last week prove that Huron County has yet to be beaten for growing wheat. Samuel Gray, of Ashfield, threshed 517 bushels of excellent wheat for ten and a half acres and Neil McKenzie of the same location, threshed 410 bushels from ten acres. "See our exhibit of Columbia talking machines at the Seaforth Fall Fair, get our prices or better still. get one for your home. Beattie Bros., Seaforth." SEPTEMBER 20, 1940 Playing the ninth game of golf in his life, Jack Wright of Seaforth won a niche in the golfers' hall of fame when he shot a hole -in -one at the Seaforth Golf and Country Club. The only thing that prevented him from receiving the material things that usually accompany such a feat was the fact that it was the wrong hole. Accompanied by Ralph McFaddin, he drove from the No. 4 tee, only to see the ball go into the cup on No. 6 green, nearly 300 yards distant. f IN THE YEARS AGONE from the Expositor Archives Tanned by two weeks under can- vas nearly 100 men of 'D' co. Middlesex and Huron regiment returned to town on Sunday by ial train from Thames Valley Camp. A transient near Beechwood, north of Seaforth, amused the suspicion of the residents on Mon- day evening. He was seen before dark but when people or motors a he quietly disappeared. He was seen eating food from a bag at the side of the mad. Two constables from Goderich searched barns and vacant houses, but failed to k)cate him SEPTEMBER 23, 1965 The first baby to be born in the new Seaforth Community Hospital arrived Thursday, two days after the ital opened. She is the daughter of IS and Marie Hick ne ll of R.R 5. Seaforth Three years of planning were culminated by the official opening of the New Christian Education building of Hensall United Church Sunday afternoon. Reverend Arthur Higenbotham, chairman of the Huron Presbytery, performed the dedication. Good weather of the early part of last week allowed the threshing of spring grain to be almost completed. About 20 percent of the bean harvest has been completed with above expected yields. Only the odd silohasbeenfilled -cornis maturin slowly. Wet weather of the last few days and high humidity have slowed harvest of crops. it was a long -remembered oc- casion when Duff's Church, Wal- ton, marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of the congregation over the weekend. Former members and friends of the church returned to Walton from points Goers On- tario a