Page 4, News, Tuesday, July 30, 1991 Editorial Tel.: 825-3747 : The Terrace Bay - Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT 2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspaper Association This space is my space, this space is your space Every week I fill up this space with my view of things. The topics range from local issues to national issues and often include subjects such as, environment, education or safety. Readers occa- sionally make spoken comments about my work - the most com- mon being, 'it's too long.' I completely agree but I do have a prob- lem. This space is put in the paper as a forum for fair comment and opinions. If The News received more of your fair comments and opinions you would not have to read so much of mine. The space has to be filled and better you than me. Oh - I will still need the top section of this column but the rest of it is yours for the asking. A letter to the Editor can cover any topic or issue that might be of interest to the public. We will not knowingly print false, libelous or anonymous comments and reserve the right to edit all letters. This is only done to legally protect our- selves (and others) from libelous situations. A topic that should be of interest to everyone is the upcoming Municipal Elections, set to take place this November. Now is the - time to express your concerns, complaints, ideas and hopes for the next three years. Municipal government is the government closest to the people and has the most immediate and direct affect on our lives. If you want to be heard you should speak out about the issues future councils and boards of the area should address. Everybody has an opinion at election time. Send yours to Box 579 Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0 or drop it off at the office. Robert A. Cotton Babysitting demands a sense of responsibility Dear Editor, sitter and friend until 9 p.m. What happened to responsi- She then got dropped off at the ble babysitters? Sitter's parents home so the sit- On Saturday night I had a babysitter for the evening. I left my home at 7 p.m. under the impression that a friend of the sitters was coming over to watch movies. At 11.20 I phoned to see how things were going. There was no answer. I went home - No one was there! Feeling panic stricken I pro- ceeded to go to the sitters par- ents house where I found my daughter. I took my daughter home with me. I later found that my daugh- ter had gone cruising with the ter could go to a dance at 12 midnight. The sitter showed up at my house asking what was going on. I explained to her she should have been babysitting in my house - not galavanting around town. If I wanted my daughter out all night I would have taken her with me. How many other parents have been victimized by irresponsible sitters? And to top it all off she expected to get paid. Suzanne Gauthier Terrace Bay Celiac: an unknown disease Dear Editor I am President of the Thunder Bay and District Chapter of the Canadian Celiac Association. One in 2,000 Canadians are afflicted with this disease. A Celiac cannot tolerate the gluten in wheat, rye, barley and oats, therefore they must be on a strict gluten free diet for their entire life. Se This disease is not familiar to many people unless they have it or know someone who does. Many Celiacs, like myself, have suffered for months, even, years before a diagnosis has been reached. There is a support group for Celiacs and their families. Heather DeCal Terrace Bay F PMDUSHGM x. i. «ise. cocci eae. Sandy Harbinson Singl 50 cents incl. 2 ; GST. Subecristion tates: Advertising Mogr............... Linda Harbinson CNA $18 per year /seniors $12 -- ECitOF.......cccccccccccccccecccscececeeee Robert Cotton oO (local); $29 per year (outof Sales Representative..............Lisa LeClair cn au iia tadius) $8818 US. "aamin, Agst.....<-... aes Gayle Fournier <4 Add GST to yearly subs. Typesetter........:..ccicccccescccees Kelly Moore 1, ca : ES s ZO-Humams The assumption that psychocultural traits and capacities are determined by biological race. The notion that one's own ethnic stock is superior. Those are a couple of definitions of racism, culled from two different dictionaries lying around my house. I thought I ought to double- check because I was beginning to doubt if I knew what racism really was. It's a term that gets thrown around with great frequency these days -- and all the : accuracy of a Phil Niekro knuckleball. I've heard a member of Phil Donahue's audience call him a *% racist. I've heard picketers fling the same charges at Brian Mulroney, General Schwartzkopf and the entire nationstate of Japan. ae Well, why not? It's a virtual | hand-grenade of an epithet. Call somebody a racist and they're immediately put on the defensive. Gone forever is any debate over the merits (or otherwise) of the accused's position -- he or she is going to be much too busy proving that they don't own any slaves or pay dues to a secret Aryan Nation cult. Ask Dr. Jeanne Cannizzo. She's the curator who last year mounted the Jnto the Heart of Africa exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum. The exhibition was comprised of artifacts plundered by white soldiers and missionaries sent to Africa. Into The Heart of Africa did not make white imperialists look good. Alas, it did not whip, scourge and castigate them sufficiently for the taste of its detractors. Dr. Cannizzo made the political error of showing history as it happened not as it Ought to Have Been. The exhibition was picketed, as was Dr. Cannizzo herself. Activists invaded her lectures to shout obscenities at her. They blockaded her residence. They hounded and besieged her out of her job and into a nervous breakdown. As Dr. Jeanne Cannizzo about the smear power of the shout "Racism!" -- if you can find her. She's on indefinite sick leave. I wish it was possible to reincarnate : Well, we may be outa' the Woods -- now to get back on the Arthur Black fairway He Cost: os ; rminology Shakespeare, Milton, or William Blake. I'd love to hear what they make of the current carnival. Mind you, they'd require a police escort. Shakespeare, Milton and Blake belong to that most repugnant of literary legions -- they are Dead, White and Male. There are professors that actually teach that all of Shakespeare's writings, from Hamlet on the battlements to Falstaff under the table, are irrelevant and reprehensible because Shakespeare is a Dead White Male. : : Which is a devastating triple barrelled shotgun blast -- better even than calling someone a racist. "Dead" -- hat's the ultimate in ageist slurs; "male" is nakedly And slamming : for being 'white"...isn't that, umm, Racist? It's a virus that's spreading. ; Last month the Toronto Humane Society announced its proposed new restrictions for members. People who will no longer be permitted to join the society include: rodeo promoters, circus performers, animal researchers, breeders and their spouses. Oh yes and sport hunters, trappers, most farmers and slaughterhouse workers would be turned away as well. Any native who makes the mistake of working in the summer as a guide, hunts moose or deer with his or her tribe -- or who in fact, defends aboriginal hunting and trapping rights -- would probably be excluded. Which is virtually to say: Indians need not apply. But then I wear a fur trimmed parka, used to hunt groundhogs, own a couple of Ian Tyson (old bronc rider) albums and still have a porcupine- quill-bordered place mat from a restaurant in Muskoka. Guess I can't join either. I don't know how meetings of the Brave New Toronto Humane Society will work out, but I'll predict one thing: They won't be crowded.