The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, Wednesday, January 15, 1986 Terrace Bay = The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednes- Schreiber day by: Laurentian Publishing Co. Ltd., Box 579, Terrace Bay, Single copies 35 cents C Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. comet jaar rates per year =f in-town -- $14.00 oo | EDITOR: = a ee eee Conrad Felber out-of-town -- $18.00 a ADVERTISING 32 3 SS ee eS Gigi Dequanne Member of Ontario Community Editorial CORP ICG a I Gayle Fournier PRODUCTION MANAGER oe Mary Melo Newspapers Association and The o A Canadian Community Newspapers Association. Please help us An open letter to our readers: We, the staff of the Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, do the best we can with the limited time and resources available to us. We are proud of our product but we would be prouder still if you would help us out. Although many of you do come in or phone us to tell us about an upcoming newsworthy event that you believe we might like to cover, there are still some people and events that are passing by unrecognized because no one has bothered to tell us about them. It could be anything: a Brownie Fly-Up, a fund-raising campaign, even something like the recent train derailment in Schreiber. The latter is a perfect example of this entire problem, because when contacted by this paper some time after the incident, a Canadian Pacific Railway spokesman thought we were not really "on the ball."' Sometimes the News does miss out on a worthwhile event because of a mistake on our part, but the derailment story was just not brought to our attention, though someone saw fit to inform the area radio station almost immediately . All we are asking you is, don't be shy! Give us a call, please. Our phone number is in the editorial page masthead above. We may have prior commitments when it comes to covering your story, but we'll do the best we can. We look forward to hearing from you. (The following opinion piece originally appeared as an editorial in this month's issue of Northern On- tario Business:) Women should not be relying on government to better their lot. They can do a much better job of it themselves. And when they score big, they can bask in the satisfaction of having realized their objective as a result of their own hard work, in- itiative and ambition. Let's face it, the Liberal govern- ment of David Peterson isn't con- templating the introduction of equal pay for work of equal value legisla- tion because of any sincere philosophical belief in the concept. ~ Like other political party leaders who have come face to face with the skilful politicking of women's "The thing I can't tell is whether cab drivers yield to each other out of fear or respect." (New York police officer, quoted in the New York Times.) Good point. Last month I spent seven days alternately hailing and dodging New York cabs and I'm still having flashbacks. While I wouldn't presume to know the answer to the cop's conundrum, I would, for those of us who live in gentler climes (and that takes in the entire world with the possible exception of downtown Beirut) -- like to offer a few obser- vations on the subject of Automobilus For Rentus; sub-species Hackus Manhattanus. First thing a rube on the sidewalks of New York notices is that the cabs are cheap and plentiful. This was a nice change from my cab-hailing ex- perience north of the 49th. From Toronto, for instance, where free cabs at rush hour are as common as unicorns. Nice change too from tak- ing a cab in Thunder Bay -- an ex- perience that only members of the Conrad section of the. Black family, groups, David Peterson has figured out that more than half of all voters are women. Power is the real reason behind this proposed legislation. And, so far, it looks like the feminists are doing a better lobbying job than business. Equal pay for work of equal value will end up being a_ stalemate. Legislation, we predict, will be adopted and some progress will be made -- particularly in the public sec- tor -- but when all is said and done, the name of the game will be doing the minimum for the maximum possi- ble exposure without getting the business community too fired up. Women's groups will be appeased, Peterson will stay in power and the business community will go on much as it has in the past. We submit that there are better ways to go about improving the lot of women than to settle for political tricks. Real progress can only be made through affirmative action. If a couple wants their daughter to take the world by storm and become a doctor or an engineer, then they can accomplish this through effective parenting. They can talk to the child, they. can give 'her a thirst for knowledge, and most important, they can show confidence in her. There is absolutely nothing that can stand in the way of such ambition. If the fami- ly, however, is not tuned into academic accomplishment and the daughter sees her future as one of flir- ting with boys, getting married and having babies, then it is not the employer of this individual who should make amends. If all of a sud- den, the attention of young women were to shift to nuclear physics and we had a shortage of typists, then typists would command more money . Or if a young woman who cared more about boys than pursuing an educa- tion changes course in midstream, ap- plies herself, becomes an ad- ministrative wizard and ends up the running the company, then good luck to her. If her employer doesn't want to pay her more, and she's the hot shot she thinks she is, she could pro- bably do better elsewhere. The employer may learn something from losing her. The alternative is to have the government step in and enforce the abstract concept of equal pay for work of equal value. How do you think the employer is going to feel knowing that the government has forced him to pay x amount of dollars to one of his employees? Confronted with a situa- tion like this, a lot of business peo- ple will simply throw in the towel and say to heck with it. "'Let David Peter- son create jobs."' Perfect fairness will not be achiev-' ed by waving the magic wand of equal pay for work of equal value. The handicapped will still be crying for jobs, Canadians of ethnic origin will still be washing dishes for peanuts, taxi drivers will continue barely scraping by and unionized workers will continue making more than their non-union brothers and sisters. No political party can legislate complete fairness or absolve the in- dividual of his or her own individual responsibility. The Liberals would be wise to forget about this ill-conceived legislation. oil-soaked sheiks and federal Cabinet ministers can afford. You can spot New York cabs easi- ly as well. They're all canary yellow, and each one has a black steel rosette about six inches across punched right into the hood. This is called a Taxi Medallion, and every cab that picks up street fares must have one. There are fewer than 12,000 medallions in the city and New York hasn't issued a new one since 1937 -- which means that anyone who wants to own a cab has to. buy so- meone else's medallion. Last year New York mayor Ed Koch suggested putting another 1,200 medallions on the market, but the city fathers smothered the idea. For some reason, New York -- wretchedly excessive in just about every other category -- is curiously coy on the question of is- suing more taxi medallions. There no question the city could use more cabs. Its parking is horrendous, the traffic jams legendary, and the transporta- tion alternatives -- wheezing buses and a subway system that makes you feel like you've. dropped acid --.are too horrible to contemplate. All of this means that taxis -- and consequently taxi medallions -- are in big demand. Why? Because owning and operating your own cab in New York is a licence to make money. Providing you live. To make a buck in New York traffic is to drive hard and fast. And no one does it harder and faster than New York's cabbies. I don't believe they ever take the heel of their hand off the horn -- or the heel of their foot off the gas pedal, come to that. They just put 'er to the floor for the duration of your ride, tapping the brake with the left foot when things get a little too hairy even for them. New York cabbies force their heaps into pockets and squeeze through fleeting gaps that would make A.J. Foyt wet his asbestos racing suit. And they do it with a studied, nonchalant arrogance that can only elicit feelings of awe for the out-of-town passenger. Between whimpers. You want to know the kicker to this story? I mentioned a few paragraphs back that anyone. who wants to own a New York cab has to buy a medallion from someone who's get- ting out of the business. You would think, given the terrors of the profes- sion, that shell-shocked cabbies would be skimming their medallions off the Brooklyn bridge like frisbees -- or perhaps giving them away, along with the lifetime services of their firstborn child, for sweeteners. Guess again, chum. Know what the going rate for a New York taxi medallion is? One hundred thousand dollars. Per. New York cabbies call it owning the tin". Nowadays there are only two basic classes of people willing or able to buy a medallion: immigrants and Yuppies. The immigrants are of the young, hustling variety who don't mind putting in the 15-hour days or putting up with the life-threatening risks of the business. The Yuppies are usually money-heavy lawyers and dentists looking for a good invest- ment. (They don't drive the cabs themselves, you understand. Plenty of minimum-wage desperados around . to take care of that.) The first person to pay a hundred grand for his medallion belongs to the former category. He is Stanley Chung, a 30-year-old owner-driver who emigrated from Hong Kong 10 years ago. Stanley doesn't consider driving cab a life sentence. He says he's already been offered $5,000 more than he paid for his 'piece of tin'. He plans to hang on for a couple of years and, if the price is still going up, he just may sell out. "'There are better things in life,"' says Stanley, 'than driving cab in New York."' Lord, yes. Fire walking comes to mind. Or maybe smearing oneself with chicken blood and going for a snorkel in some piranha-infested stream. A stuffy American politico by the name of Calvin Coolidge once defin- ed work as: "The prerogative of in- telligence, the only means of manhood and the measure of civiliza- tion. Savages do not work."' All of which tells me that cool Cal