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Page 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, Wednesday, May 28, 1986 Terrace Bay Editorial The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Co. Ltd., Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. PRODUCTION MANAGER MOS ie ee Ps Conrad Felber ADVERTISING |... ee ee a Gigi Dequanne CON en ss ey ee Gayle Fournier pies: "ome Mary Melo 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 Association. We made it! It will be probably be referred to, years from now, as the Fire of '86, or the Fire That Almost Was, but a week after it happened, it is still being considered one of the most frightening things to happen to Terrace Bay for quite some time, if not all time. This wasn't the best of years for the community even before that forest fire on May 21, what with grim tidings out of the Kimberly-Clark pulp mill and all, but even so, the fire demonstrated that the people of Terrace Bay and area can stick together to overcome just about any pro- blem or obstacle, natural or man-made. It could have been a disaster. Ask the people of Cobalt to the northeast about fires, and they will tell you some tragic tales indeed. But that town has survived, and so will Terrace Bay. They have been thanked elsewhere in this week's issue of the News, but some very special people deserve all the appreciation we can give them for turning a potential cat- nt into an interesting story we will all tell our grand- child ren. To town Fire Chief Ed Stachiw, Police Chief Russ Phillips, their staff and volunteers, and everybody else who pitched in and did their share: Thanks! By Conrad Felber The traditional Felber Luck con- tinues...all of it bad, as usual. Here was the biggest news story of the year in Terrace Bay (obviously I am refer- ring here to the forest fire last week), and where was I? Out of town, rac- ing back after hearing about the trou- ble on the radio, only to get a speeding ticket for my efforts (the things I go through for you, my readérs). Anyway, this is my way of explaining to you what happened on Wednesday and why our news cover- age of that fire does not exactly meet my high standards. But now that I think about it, the actual thing I want to talk about this week is that speeding ticket and the ridiculous laws we have in this ridiculous province of ours. A limit of 90 kilometres per hour on the open Black N' Whit By Arthur Black Reporter to lottery-winning farmer: "Tell us sir, how are you going to spend your million dollars?" Farmer: "Well, I reckon I'Il just keep farming 'til it's all gone."' That joke might be a lot more humorous if it wasn't quite so close to the grim truth. These are gloomy days for Canadian agriculture. Farm markets are soft, farm equip- ment is expensive, and the land prices are out of sight and rising. And the boys in the three-piece pinstripes are, as always, waiting at the end of the driveway for their kilogram of flesh. Most Canadian farmers are in deep trouble. That's a blunt fact that even our Prime Minister -- who normally won't touch a blunt fact unless it's served in a waffle sand- wich -- admits. But having acknowledged all that... could someone please ex- plain what in the name of Eugene Zzz| WORLD scxool LZ IN KEEPING WITH ADVANCEMENTS IN THE FIELD, TODAY WE WILL PRACTISE CHUNNEL HIJACKING / highway in Northern Ontario is a travesty and a shame. I felt this way before, but now I am even more con- vinced that something has to be done. Those Southern Ontario politicians just don't realize the incredible distances we Northerners have to travel if we can't afford to jet around everywhere like they do. It seems 90 kph is a completely arbitrary figure, and it could easily be increased to 100 on most portions of the T-C highway. Even that would still be pretty low, but I just might be able to live with it (though I'm not sure about my car...it always seems to be chomp- ing at the bit, with the potential to go up to 200 kph). I hope they at least consider it, especially since one MPP recently began a campaign which echoes much of what I've said above (maybe he got a speeding ticket too!). But enough of that. Now we come to this whole business of extending the sale of beer and wine to corner grocery stores. Those who were re- cently polled (and we all know just how painful that can be) about this were almost exactly evenly split on the issue. Well, to be perfectly hon- est, I can see both sides, but if it comes down to a vote, I would have to say "yea" to ending the monopo- ly of the Brewer's Retail Stores. A news release from Alcohol and Drug Concerns which I received this week failed to change my mind. In it, a letter from TOC ALPHA (Tak- ing On Concerns About Life, People, and Human Achievement), a provin- cial youth group, was quoted. The letter expresses the fear that chang- ing the way beer and wine is sold in Ontario will have negative conse- quences for young people. "Youth unemployment will in- crease because grocery stores selling beer and wine will not employ those who are under 19, destroying one of the prime job markets ," the release claimed. I doubt this, because these youngsters could always work else- where in the store. But, onwards. 'Because Brewers Retail and LCBO outlets sell only alcohol beverage products, they are proficient at recognizing and challenging minors,"' they added. To this I can only say one thing: HA! "Proficient" indeed. I can't tell you how many times I have been asked for my ID at such outlets (and I'm 20mumbie mum- ble years old now) whereas folks I know to be 16 or 17 in the line behind me get off scot-free. Underaged drinkers have been able to get their booze with little problem in the past, and that won't change much if booze is sold in stores. We are not talking A about easier accessibility here, just more accessibility, which is a com- pletely different thing. That system seems to work in Quebec and the rest of the world. Why must those 19 and over in Ontario be treated like children? It's almost enough to bring a man to drink! Whelan young Felix Weber is up to? Mister Weber is a slim, soft- spoken 21-year-old who left his native Switzerland a year ago to take up resident in Canada. Why? To become a farmer? Does he have relatives in Canada? No. Does he have extensive experience in North American agriculture? Nope again. How about the language... surely he « at least speaks English? Not really. What Felix speaks is a Swiss- German dialect that doesn't make a lot of sense to anybody outside of the rural area of Switzerland he hails from. There are plenty of German-Canadians -- even a good- ly number of Webers -- in the area of Southwestern Ontario Felix Weber now lives in, but the German is only distantly related to Felix's native tongue. Felix might have saved himself a lot of lingual grief by just staying home and helping out on the fami- ly farm, but the principal crop en- couraged by Swiss bureaucracy ap- pears to be Red Tape. Swiss agriculture is so hogtied by quotas and market restrictions it makes farming in Canada look like pioneer homesteading. Then too, Felix did have one other asset when it comes to farm- ing in Canada: a Canadian farm. Five years ago his family put up the bucks to buy a large dairy operation in Listowel, Ont. Felix has been preparing to take it over ever since. He hasn't moved in just yet. He's been too busy learning English and farming -- the English through a course at Conestoga College in Waterloo; the farming by means of slopping hogs as a hired hand on a nearby farm. He plans to be on his own spread by early summer, planting and ten- ding 200 acres of corn and conver- ting the existing dairy barn into a facility suitable for hog production. A cynic might dismiss Felix Weber as just another green kid looking at the world through a rose- colored tractor windshield. After all, it's enough of an uphill grind for born and bred Canadian farmers who inherit their operations and grow up as part of a farming community. How's an immigrant lad who speaks neither official language going to make it -- especially when he's several thou- sand miles from kith and kin? Well, Felix may have family help soon. He has a younger brother cur- rently going through an agricultural course back in Switzerland. When he gets his diploma, chances are he too will emigrate to Canada to work and live with brother Felix. Felix certainly hopes so, but he's not banking on it. He's made up his mind that, in the black or in the red, with his brother's help or singlehandedly, he's going to make a go of it. That's just the way his kind approaches life. Felix Weber is a member of that increasingly le Mar- co Polo, Charles Lindbergh, Marie Curie, Terry Fox -- who decides ear- ly on what he or she wants to do in life and then goes ahead and does it. never mind that the rest of the world stands by cluck-clucking and titch-titching. Never mind that con-' ventional wisdom holds that it "Just Isn't Done That Way"' -- they believe. And that's enough. Felix Weber is a believer, and he's prepared to suffer for it. He says in his newly acquired and still thoroughly fractured English that he expects to just scrape by for two or three years, after which "I hope it will come a better time."' A little shaky gramatically, perhaps, but clear enough to earn a fervent "Amen" from every farmer in the land.