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EDITOR ADVERTISING The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published Co. Ltd., Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. Se ee ees as es ee Conrad Felber a ees oes os Se ee ee Gigi Dequanne GERGCE 355 ee Sr ee ee Gayle Fournier every Wednesday by: Laurentian Publishing Single copies 35 cents Subscription rates per year in-town -- $14.00 out-of-town -- $18.00 Member of Ontario Community Newspapers Association and The Canadian Community Newspapers Safe, not sorry Everything always happens to the other guy ... until it finally happens to you. This is why Operation Identifica- tion, a program being run by the Terrace Bay Police Force, _is such a good idea. Under the program, an engraver would be loaned to you by the police for free, along with an Operation Identifica- tion Record Sheet to record the serial numbers and model numbers of your valuable items at home. You would then engrave your Social Insurance Number on these items. Once your items have been marked, you would return the engraver to the police station and receive a number of program stickers to be placed at the entrances of your residence. Doing all of this is supposed to discourage theft of valuables from your house and other locations. It also pro- vides an easy way to identify property that is stolen. The police believe that if you are fully protected by Operation Identification, you will less likely be victimized. Of course, this is a deterrence program, not a security program, but even so it would still be worth your while. Why not contact the police about it today? After all, it's better to be safe than sorry. When a fellow says "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing,"' it's the money. (Kin Hubbard) If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you only have to look at those to whom he gives it. (Maurice Baring) When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. (Voltaire) Yep, you guessed it. This week money is my beef, my complaint, my gripe. Well, not really money all by itself, but rather (as the Bible says) the love of money. First of all, let's look at the whole issue of doctors and their demands for extra-billing, over and above what the Ontario Health Insurance Plan pays Blue jean craze is fading "'Blue jeans? They should be worn by farm girls milking cows!" Yves St. Laurent. "The jean is the destruction. It is the dictator. It is destroying creativity. It must be stopped." Pierre Cardin. Well, I guess Messrs. St. Laurent and Cardin must be exchanging designer-coordinated, Cheshire cat smiles these days. The object of their disaffection -- jeans -- are on the fashion ropes and fading fast. To be chic in the sixties and seven- ties, and even into the early eighties, all you needed was a pair of well- worn jeans. Everybody sported 'em... or could if they felt like it. I remember Peter Gzowski, who was then coming off a very rough ride as host of a nighttime TV show, vow- ing that he would never again take a job where he couldn't wear jeans. Back then, that qualified as a rather "HONEY, IS THERE SOMEONE ELGE ?" *:3%; RECENTLY (IARRIED PRODUCTION MANAGER....................-. Se) ae Mary Melo eeccichon _-- pe ||| |) Ss A 4 them. To an extent, I can almost see where they are coming from. Those in other professions, like lawyers for example, are able to charge just about as much as they want without having the government looking over their shoulders (or their financial records). But there's always Legal Aid and other avenues for those who can't af- ford these hot-shot legal eagles. What guarantees do we have that each and every doctor in the province won't decide to extra-bill their patients if they are given the go-ahead to do so? Thank goodness the government is giving the red light to the whole idea. Besides, I have always thought the medical profession was just that ... a profession. Here's how John Haynes Holmes defined that word back in 1938 (and it still applies today): "A profession ... a group of men voluntarily under pledge to an ideal which supersedes all money con- siderations.." (Editor's italics) Of course, the doctors will tell you that their demands have nothing to do with money. To them I offer Kin Hubbard's quotation on the subject, which I included at the start of this week's column. Three paragraphs ago I said the Ontario government was doing a good thing in banning extra-billing. Well, when it comes to the issue of public financial support for separate schools in the province, they are about to do a bad thing. Hey, you can't blame the Roman Catholics for asking, but I am still amazed to this day that the previous administration under Premier Bill Davis actually agreed to the request. Even more incredible to me is the lack of public outcry on this issue. See, public schools are called that because they are supported by public funds. Separate schools are not call- ed separate for nothing, but now the government is going to start funding them too, with our tax dollars. Don't they understand that this establishes a precedent? Tell me, what is to stop other schools, even private ones, from now asking for and receiving government subsidiza- tion? A whole slew of new schools may spring up like mushrooms all over Ontario once they get their of-. ficial funding: the University for Bud- ding Buddhists, School for Seedy Sikhs, or even Accomplished Ac- countants Academy. It'll never end! The floodgates are open! On the other hand, no-questions- asked cash from Queen's Park might | be a good idea. I can see it now: Con- rad's College for Comely Co-Eds (male students need not apply). Okay, © Mr. Peterson, where's my money? nifty comment. Nowadays, I'm not sure everyone would understand what he was talking about. Jean sales are down. Way down. Canadian retail sales have plummet- ted from 30 million pairs a year to 20 million over the past two years. Levi Strauss, the U.S. jeans giant, shut down 22 of its factories over the past two years. Wrangler has closed nine U.S. and two Canadian factories. Remember Jean Junction? Used to have 77 outlets across Canada. The company went bankrupt two years ago. What's killing the blue jeans? The very thing that made them popular, I suspect -- their universality. In a book called The Language of Clothes, Allison Lurie wrote "In blue jeans... you couldn't tell an auto mechanic from a millionaire. Jeans identified _you with an entire generation, not a particular group, race, nationality or sex. But the rich don't want to blend in with the working class, anymore. The rich want to stand out."' Well, I suppose. Except that I don't detect any general drift toward tux- edos at one end of the inconie scale and potato sacks at the other. Seems to me that everybody's generally moving toward a floppy melange of sweat and suits, baggy sweaters and droopy drawers, all lashed together with a bewildering rat's nest of leather straps, Velcro strips, loops, drawstrings and what look like lef- tover swatches of war surplus parachute rigging. I don't know exactly what you would call the new popular clothing style; all I know for sure is that for the first time in about twenty years, popular fashion is not built around the old five-pocket, copper-rivetted, away 14-ounce blue denim jeans. That's the other contributing fac- tor to the jeans' demise, I figure -- somebody tried to gussy them up. Suddenly jeans became pre-shrunk, pre-faded, pastel-color, low-rise, high rise, decorative seamed, zip pocketed. Designer jeans with names like Gloria Vanderbilt scrawled across the butt? Give me a break. Real jeans aren't supposed to be fancy. Real jeans are the pants that you have to wash three times before they'll bend at the knees. Real jeans are the ones that shrink and curl and fade and finally fondle your imperfect body like a second layer of skin. Real jeans end up fitting their owner bet- ter than the most skilled Saville Row bespoke tailor working with all the finest silks and satins of the Orient could hope to match. at's what real jeans are about. And I've got a hunch they'll still be around somewhere long after the Brooke Shields and Girbauds and Marilyn Monroe abberations have been consigned to the rummage bin of fashion history. William Hervey thinks so too. He's the president of Wrangler Menswear Division of Blue Bell. Hervey says 'people always come back to basics... there is no more practical piece of apparel than a pair of cotton denim jeans. They give you a good, free feeling of comfort." I'm with you, Bill. And by the way, I just phoned the producer of Morningside, the CBC National Radio Show that Peter Gzowski hosts these days. Sure enough. Gzowski's wearing jeans.