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" Page 5, News; Tuesday, July 31; 1990 Mailbox baseball - knock it off There's a group of young guys from the Wainfleet and Port Colborne area, nice kids really, who because of the pressure and competitiveness of organized sports have invented their own game called "Mailbox Baseball." It's a two-man sport in which one guy drives up to your rural route mailbox and his partner, through the open passengeér-side window smashes your mailbox to smitherenes with a baseball bat. The guy with the Louisville Slugger is the designated hitter and the guy behind the wheel is the designated driver. They play late at night in the name of rural recreation since no William J. Thomas "Porky's" movie has been released this summer. They appear to be healthy and well-adjusted young adults in every respect except that when their heads pass under the rotating x-rays of C.A.T. scanner, dark, cavernous holes, much like the photographs we're receiving from the broken Hubbel space Telescope, appear where their brains would otherwise be. Not unlike glue-sniffers in the big cities, these kids have suf- fered long-term damage to their central nervous system from inhaling vast quantities of methane gas directly from herds of dairy cows which they look upon as role models. We of the The Rural Route Mail Box And Ratepayers Association are quite philosophi- cal about this wanton destruction of our personal property because if the boys are playing mail box Baseball then at least they're not 'hanging out with a rough bunch of drug-addicted, twice-convicted felons known as their parents. You see , it's not the children's fault, It's not as if they had a choice being born into a tightly- knit clan of country folk who migrated north after appearing in the movie Deliverance in which Burt Reynolds had to kill two of the male members with a cross- bow after they had unconsenting casual sex with his best friend Bob. Deliverance was a movie that proved inter-breeding (also called "roll your own" in New Brunswick) produces children with three rows of teeth but damn, can those kids play a banjo! Mailbox Baseball has taken the process of familial evolution one step further confirming that although the products of inter- breeding have the mental capacity of really big boogers, they can, if properly trained, drive and swing a baseball bat. continued on page 8 No special privileges for anybody I am getting just a little fed up with Mr. Larry Sanders and his 'Northern Insights' column re cer- tain subjects, particularly his lat- est entitled "English Only Dividing Heartland". Talk about LACK of insight, this article only goes to prove it. Mr. Sanders is still way off the beam re the English-only problem which, thank god, was a con- tributing factor to the demise of the infamous Meech Lake Accord. Why can't he, and others like him, understand what is really behind this controversy? It's NOT a matter of language only. It is the principle behind it - this yprinciple.being that, if we-are going to live with each other as Canadians FIRST AND FORE- MOST, then no one ethnic group can be favoured legislatively above any other. We ALL have to abide by the same rules and regulations and laws which gov- erm ALL of us, or else we go on continually fractionising this country with 'special status' things which don't mean a damn any- more. Mr. Sanders is always taking issue with the rest of us when it Are you afraid of getting old? Are you afraid your children will have to put you in some "home" - a place where basic. needs for food, shelter, and health care are taken care of, but where you're otherwise forgotten? A place where you might as well be dead - since you've already been writ- ten off as "useless" by society. Or maybe you're already "old". Statistics Canada's 1986 census says 11% of Canadians are over 65. By the year 2,000, that num- ber will climb past 15%. In only 20 years, there will an astronomi- cal 20% of the population over 65! I've just met a group of very determined older ladies who know all about those trends, and won't let themselves be ware- housed in some seniors' home. These ladies are modern pioneers - trying to create a precedent for themselves that might also be a model for the rest of us. They're the Barrett sisters of Dorion. Dorion is a sleepy agri- cultural township 40 miles east of Thunder Bay. The Barrett sisters Olga Landiak comes to promoting the causes of either the dear (?) Quebecois French or our equally dear (?) aboriginal Indians. I, for one, am getting sick and tired of his beat- ing the same drum at our expense. It is not a matter of objectivity or compassion or any other such Christ-like attributes to view their claims in the way he always seems to be doing, but the fact that he appears to believe they are entitled to these claims which are false, false, false. The Indians emigrated to this country just like every other ethnic group, only perhaps a little earlier; they were not originally born here. So much for that 'aboriginal' claim. As for the 'founding' French, what, pray, did they 'found' except their own commercial greed in the fur trade of the time? Just like the English, but it was the English who defeated them at the Battle Queenston Heights, or am I as wrong about that as the 'aboriginality' of the Indians? I know of no other point in the mad history of mankind where the defeated were accorded the same status as the conquerors, but per- haps one of Mr. Sanders' Lakehead U. history professors can correct me on this. So, in the light of these two false claims, why are the rest of us STILL being made to feel guilty over eroding 'aboriginal rights' or sup- posed loss of French language and culture? I, for one, refuse to accept this guilt any longer in any way, shape or form. Especially tax-wise. My Ukrainian parents came to this country without anything, and sweated it out like the rest of the immigrants to build their place in it, and accepted all the "Bohunk' slurs thrown at them while they struggled to gain a working knowledge of the English language thrust upon them by economic necessity. In the meantime, in the privacy of their homes, clubs and schools, they ferociously kept up their own language, culture and tradi- NORTHERN INSIGHTS tions, without one cent of govern- mental assistance. In other words, they made their painful way into the mainstream of Canadianna without a murmur or a bleat about losing this or that, or being hard done by. ALL were in the same boat, and they struggled their way through it to pass on this inheritance to us, their chil- dren and grandchildren and great- grands. I am quietly proud of my Ukrainian heritage, but I am equally proud to be a Canadian FIRST AND FOREMOST, and I will not have my Canadian rights trampled upon any longer by eth- nics of any stripe who are DEMANDING special status, though they've married, had chil- dren and grandchildren, and lived all over Canada, they've always considered Dorion home. Three of the six are currently living in Thunder Bay, one in nearby Nipigon, and two are right in Dorion. All six want to establish the family retirement home in Dorion. Dorion is close enough to all the services in Thunder Bay to offer a grand place to retire: peaceful country living, with_the city not far away. Besides, Dorion is the place they love. One of the Barrett sisters, Eleanor, puts it this way: "We ran around these roads in our bare feet before there was any black- top on them. We watched the by Larry Sanders trans-Canada being cut with hors- es and scrapers and saws and axes, before they had machinery and that kind of thing. We belong to this place. Our roots are here." The Barrett sisters are not rich. Four of the six are widows. They range in age from 62 to 78. They're living on old age pen- sions, as well as some modest incomes from company pension plans. They all own their own homes now, or have recently sold them. They're free of debt, but not wealthy either. Much like most of us will be when we reach our golden years. What the Barrett sisters want to do makes a lot of sense in today's aging Canada. They saw Pon a> te 1 citizen homes, and decided they wanted to do everything they could to avoid that for them- selves. One of the sisters, Millie, says "People who are persuaded one way or the other to go into senior citizens' homes suffer terri- bly from a feeling of obligation and not being free any more, not being in charge of their own lives, and it has a terribly bad effect on them." Instead, the Barrett sisters decided to build their own senior citizens' home. They incorporat- ed as a family corporation. Their dream was to put up six two-bed- room units, with a common room/library everyone could use. The whole place would be on one special schools, special laws and special privileges above and beyond the rest of us. We are not the second-class citizens - they are, and I'm sick, sick, of bleed- ing hearts like Mr. Sanders trying to push their cause down our most unwilling throats. His own study of statistics should have more than proven this stark fact to him, but he prefers to push them aside and give us more flowery bushwah about "I hope they share my enthusiasm for the diversity of humanity." As long as there-is humanity alive on the face of this earth, we will ALWAYS have those igno- rant slobs of racial intolerance, religious bigotry and linguistic isolationism with us, but most of us are more than willing to live and let live PRIVATELY: When it comes into Public tax-paying sector, however, then it's a differ- ent story. So, Mr. Sanders, we may share your enthusiasm for the 'diversity of humanity' here in Canada, but we do so only up to the point where we share and share alike. No special privileges for any- body! Now, what's so hard to understand about that???? The Barrett sisters of Dorion wheel chairs. In such a place, they could help look after each other, but still maintain their pri- vacy and independence. They wouldn't need government assis- tance to operate the. place, although they thought some fund- ing might be available to help defray the construction costs. With this rather naive plan, they proceeded to buy land - two acres of undeveloped property right in the heart of downtown Dorion. They paid to have a well dug, hired a lawyer, paid an archi- tect to draw up detailed plans, and convinced the township council to rezone the lot as "multi-unit residential". So far so good. But then they ran into a big problem with construction costs. The quotations from sub-contrac- tors came back at over half a mil- lion dollars! The Barrett sisters are convinced the price was so high because the architect's plans said "senior citizens apartments". Thus, the contractors thought there was government money behind the scheme. When they continued on page 6 Pe ee ee es as ee ee ae