Along the Shore Line

Terrace Bay News, 5 Mar 1986, p. 4

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, March 5, 1986 Terrace Bay Schreiber Editorial The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by: Laurentian Publishing Sa Co. Ltd., Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. Single copies 35 cents =e | : : Subscription rates per year cn in-town -- $14.00 - To | ) EDITOR: 2.03 = 3 ee a ee Conrad Felber out-of-town -- $18.00 ---- ADVERTISING 5. 3 a ee a eee Gigi Dequanne Member of Ontario Community OFFICE Gayle Fournier Newspapers Association and The Gg Br ar. Wee a ore tee a SEG. ssi, pete TE Canadien' Congeuaiay NevGipepecs PRODUCTION MANAGER .......................-.0.0005- Mary Melo secscistion A aed Taxes are taxing Federal Finance Minister Michael Wilson has released yet another budget. There are no two ways about it...this budget is a bad one. Incredibly bad, reaching previously unheard of levels of badness. Well, maybe not that bad, but there is no way it can be called good either. Once again Canadian taxpayers, especially the middle class, are being asked to pay for the government's blunders _ with an increase in personal taxes. This has gone on long enough. Canadians are a patient sort, willing to do their share to help their country prosper, but there are limits, and Wilson's callous, narrowminded budget has reached those limits. Cochrane-Superior MP Keith Penner is right in saying that Wilson is using old solutions on new problems. In- stead of forcing Canadians to pay more taxes, the federal government should just spend less money. Even with Wilson's many cuts, government spending will still go up this year. It has. also been predicted that the deficit may also grow thanks to Wilson's reckless tactics. Little can be done about this budget now, but Wilson and the other Consefvatives now in power should be warn- ed...Canadians will remember this affront come election day : Before I get started, I would like to include an addendum of sorts to the col- umn of mine which appeared in this very space in last week's issue. It does séem that there is a place in the area 'to get those new photo licences, con- trary to what yours truly tried to tell you. Of course, I was obviously work- ing under a false assumption, but even when I tried to contact the Schreiber Ministry of Transportation office about this there was never any answer at the extension in question. Maybe I'll up- date this entire mess next week. There's something else about last week's instalment of my weekly mouthing-off which I should clear up. "Sade", for your information, is how you actually spell the name of that sup- posedly. famous (or infamous, to me) .black female singer, the one who pro- nounces her name "Shar-'day." And | I've figured out why I scribble for newspapers rather than bilking widows and orphans out of their life savings -- I'm not smart enough to be a lawyer. One of the sophisticated legal con- cepts I've never been able to wrap my rough, untutored mind around is the '"'not guilty by-reason-of" concept. Let us say a guy is arrested and charged with murder. A corpse had been found with its head bashed in. Accused was discovered with brain- splattered ball peen hammer in hand. Accused has written thirty poems, half a novel and an exclusive article for The Toronto Sun on how much he hates the deceased. Seven nuns, two airline pilots, a couple of NHL referees and a Supreme Court bailiff swear they witnessed the accused bludgeon the victim into the hereafter. So what happens when the.case_ comes to court? Somethinggthat looks like an overf- ed otter in a $600 three-piece stands up and intones: "Milud, my client pleads not guilty .by reason of ONE PROBLEM WITH OPTING OUT, JYERE'S NO PLACE ToGo |" the song of hers that I loathe is "Sweetest Taboo." Another one that is on the radio all the timé (or at least it seems like it) is "That's What Friends Are For" by a whole bunch of people. It was fine for the first 100 times, but now it's just gettin' on my nerves. Enough, I say, enough! Moving right along now (nice segue, eh?), we come to some news out of the News Office itself. I'd like to announce at this time that I've taken on an assis- tant, Tonya Zborowski, who just hap- pens to be a Schreiber high school stu- dent. She will be helping me out here in the editorial department until the end of the school year under a Work Agree- ment with the Ministry of Education. I just thought it would be nice to let all of you know this, as Tonya may be contacting some of you in the near future on behalf of this paper. The neat part is we don't have to pay her a cent. Slave labor . . . I love it! Ah, all kid- ding aside . . welcome aboard, Tonya. : There is more News news to repo: aside from the above. Many of you have commented and complained that this paper has been rather thin of late when. it comes to the page count. I guess most readers are under the im- pression that it is the amount of news (or lack of same) that determines the actual size of the paper. Well, I hate to hurt your balloon, but the reality is something else again: it's the amount of advertising that we get in any particular week that establishes the number of pages for that week's paper. This is true for just about all newspapers. The problem of late is that we haven't been getting too many ads. I could understand that if things were " generally slow, but I continue to hear commercials on the radio from Terrace Bay. and Schreiber merchants who don't pay for space in this publication. 'Of course, it is none of my business where you as businessmen (and women) spend your advertising budget, but need I remind you which group is the first to complain when area residents go shopping in Thunder Bay instead of staying home? Don't you detect a certain amount of hypocrisy here? Besides, I can't understand why anyone would prefer the fleeting mo- ment of TV or radio advertising over the permanence and easy reference of ads in newspapers. All I am asking the business com- - munity of our coverage area is to con- sider what's going on here. I am not about to tell you that this paper is about to go under, but even so we could still use your support. Believe me, you will all benefit from this as much as we do, if not more. This blatant commercial message has been brought to you by yours truly alone, by the way. Although I am in the news department, I would still like to see all facets of this business thrive. After all, it's the ads that pay our bills around here . . . and my paycheque! Thanks for listening. insanity." My problem is with the word 'guil- ty.' I figure if | cream somebody with a hammer, then I am guilty of cram- ing that person with a hammer, no matter what my mental state might have béen at the time of the creaming. Our system of jurisprudence sees it differently... and I've never been able to understand why. But that's okay -- I've never understood f-stops, metric conversion or slam dancing either. In any case, I'm not the only one who's in the dark about our legal system. Here's an "amended fable" that I received in the mail last week. "Once upon a time, there lived a little girl called Little Red Riding Hood. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fruit to her Grand- mother. A wolf, 'lurking in the bushes, overhead the conversation and decided to take a shortcut to the Grandmother's house. The wolf disposed of the grandmother, then dressed in her nightgown and jumped into bed to await the little girl. Little Red Riding Hood arrived, but soon became suspicious. The wolf tried to grab her, but she escaped and ran screaming from the cottage. A wood- cutter, working nearby, heard her cries, rushed to the rescue and killed the wolf with his axe. All the townspeople proclaimed the wood- cutter a hero. But at the inquest, the following emerged. 1. The wolf had never been advised of his rights. 2. The wildlife federation determin- ed that the wolf was a sub-species, might be endangered, and hence should have been accorded more consideration. 3. The woodcutter had made no war- ning swings before striking the fatal blow. 4. The Animal Lovers Association submitted that killing a wolf with an axe (as seal pups with clubs) was cruel and unusual punishment, and that the woodcutter should have adopted a more humane method of dispatching the wolf. 5. The Citizens Liberties Association stressed the point that although the act of eating Grandma may have been in bad taste, the wolf was only "doing his thing" and thus did not deserve the death penalty. A schoolfriend of Red Riding Hood testified that she was "a bit of a tease,' and a neighbor of Grandma's gave evidence that Grandma had "oc- casional male visitors'? and may have behaved in a seductive manner. The Forest Bar Association con- tended that the killing of the Grand- mother should be considered self- defence, inasmuch as it could be reasonably assumed that Grandma had resisted, and might, given the op- portunity, have killed the wolf. On the basis of these considera- tions, it was decided that there would have been no valid basis for charges against the wolf. Moreover, the woodcutter was indicted for assault with a deadly weapon, with more serious charges under consideration. Several nights later, his cottage was burned to the ground by a person or persons unknown. One year from the _date of "The Incident at Grandma's"' her cottage was made into a shrine for the wolf which had bled and died there. All the village officials spoke at the dedication, but it was Red Riding Hood who gave the most touching tribute. She said that while she had been selfishly grateful for the woodcutter's intervention, she realiz- ed in retrospect that she had over- reacted. As Red Riding Hood knelt and placed a wreath in honor of the brave wolf, there wasn't a dry eye in the forest." i As I said, the 'amended fable"' ar- rived in my letter box last week. The best hing about it is the letterhead on the note that came with it. The let- terhead reads: "Morris Cherneskey Q.C, Barrister and Solicitor."' A lawyer laughing at his profes- sion. It's almost enough to renew one's faith in the species.

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