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Page 4, News, Tuesday, September 11, 1990 --EE Editorial Tel.: 825-3747 vrernsssscnss The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2WO Tel.: (807)-825-3747 Fax (807)-825-9233. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. The voters are still the boss A healthy surprise A lot can happenin a, month. That is probably the best way to sum up the provincial election which has given the New Democratic Party a majority government. A victory that has surprised most citizens of Ontario, including those who voted and ran for the NDP. The people have spoken, and have decided to give the NDP a chance. However, the way some people are reacting shows disrespect for the voters, and democracy. The behaviour of these people also reflects the behaviour of sore losers. Colyne Gibbons, president of the Thunder Bay branch of Canadians for Greater Government Accountability is one who has reacted in this way. He was quoted as saying, "I don't think the people of Ontario realize just what they have done." He also predicts that taxes will skyrocket and investment dollars will flood out of the province under the NDP. His comment of, "It's going to be a dreadful catastrophe" is an overdramitization of reality. The situation in Iraq could turn into "A dreadful catastrophe", the Ethiopian famine was "A dreadful catastrophe", World War II was "A dreadful catastrophe". A five-year democratic mandate to the NDP, if things go bad, will be a rough ride. It is preposterous to say that an NDP government will bring either certain disaster, or unending prosperity and happiness. In all likelihood, it will be neither, but nobody knows. The so-called "new voter volatility", reflected by the surprise results, is good for the democratic process. Politicians have now been reminded that they have to listen, not just to opinion polls, but to the feelings, concerns and ideas of the people. If the voters made a mistake last Thursday, they. can change the government within five years, and learn from their mistakes. However, no matter what happens, it is a victory for democracy, if for no other reason than to remind the politicians of who the boss is. It may have also helped to remind a lot of fed-up voters that they are still the ones who hire and fire the governments. Publisher............. A. 'Sandy' Harbinson . CNA eee cena cents, Admin. ASSt...-.- Gayle Fournier ca year / seniors $10 (local); News Editor................ Angie Saunders A $27 per year (out of 40 mile Ad Representative.......... Halyna Worth eae radius); $36 in U.S. Ad Managet................ Linda Harbinson re Reporter/Phtogr........... Monica Wenzlaff oe ya (WE'RE HERE AS OBSERVERS, PICKING UP A FEW POINTERS OF EFFECTIVE . BLOCKADING ! == -- = | Letter Dear Editor, Royson James of our Toronto Star (Aug 18) describes the grow- ing problem of Toronto's trash and the understandable refusal of many towns to dig dumps for our city. Surely, the issue of dumps is just a symbol of a deeper social malaise: the consumer society which worships a vicious cycle of production, rapid consumption, and then waste. The more rapidly the wheel goes around, the more profit is made. It has become fashionable to mock the environmentalists as naive and antediluvian. The Christian Science Monitor (Aug . 10) reports that a grade six class in New Brighton, Minnesota recently boycotted plastic trays in their cafeteria. Are they naive? Or, are they simply wiser than their teachers and parents, whose generation was encouraged to spend and consume without thinking of the future? Premier Peterson said in Whitby on August 17th, that the record of Ontario on the environ- ment is "one of the most progres- sive in the industrialized world." Like much of his campaign, this is cosmetic, hopeful rhetoric. Mr. Peterson should visit Scandinavia, where environmen- tal groups have successfully slowed the nuclear power indus- try, especially after Chernobyl in 1986. Will no other party present the voters, and their children, with an environmental agenda for the future? Yours truly, Valdiinrens Valdi Inkens And the black flies, the little black flies, Always the black fly no matter where you go, I'll die with the black fly a- pickin' my bones In North Ontario-io Venerable Canadian song lyric We're on the downslide side of. another summer, no question about it -- but that's not so bad for humans. The approach of autumn means no more than an extra blanket on the bed for you and me. It's the kiss of death for bugs. Yep, all those nasty little critters with stingers and buzzers and feelers and altogether too many legs are just one hard frost away from meeting their maker. I am not a bloodthirsty man, but the thought of billions of man- eating bugs clutching their hearts and falling flat on their carapaced backs fills me with' joy unalloyed. DIE, you little #*@*#&'s! I'm delighted to knaw that T'll never cee von again,.and so is the back of my neck. If there is a heaven, and if I ever get there, I hope there's a Question Period. I can't wait to ask the Chief Product Control Officer why he or she thought a planet (already infested with a surfeit of lawyers, politicians and the incipient threat of hemmorthoids) needed such a bewildering variety of insects with a taste for human pelt. Because it isn't just black flies that want to jump our veins. It's mosquitoes and deer flies and horse flies and mites and gnats and beer begs and noseeums -- all, all of the vampiric persuasion. And in some parts of this country -- everything north of Tecumseh Road in Windsor, Ont., -- they hover in clouds, nay, galaxies just waiting for some fat, pink, warm-blooded creature in Bermuda shorts to blunder by. Why so many of them? And what do they do for lunch when they don't have my body to fight over for drilling rights? I can't prove it, but I suspect if you peeled back the lichens that blanket the floor of Canada's boreal forest you'd find countless tiny, gothic, Frankensteinian castles each no bigger that a good sized Canadian bugs not that bad evens Out. Arthur Black mosquito welt. And I bet if you could peer into the darkest vault in the miniature dungeons beneath each of those castles, you'd see row after row of eensy-weensy coffins lining the walls. That's where the bugs live. In those coffins. Just imagine 80 kazillion dwarf Bela Lugosis wearing deely boppers. Until I, like a fool show up for a camping trip or a barbecue. That's when the bug lookout rings the dinner gong, 80 kazillion tiny coffin lids slide back and the bugs come after me, buzzing their blood-curdling battle cry: "SOUP'S ONNNNNNNNN!" It's not that grim everywhere in Canada of course. Insect intensity varies greatly across our Dominion. | The mosquitoes that wait in @ ambush along the shores of Ungava Bay for instance, are the Exocet missiles of the biting bug world. They make mosquitoes that live and prey along the American border look like limp-mandibled pantywaists. Folks in Vancouver on the other hand, love to skinny-dip in their hot tubs out on the deck, airily remarking that they "have no mosquitoes to worry about." Yeah, well, they've got Bill Vander Zalm too. Everything In any case, it could be worse. We Canucks could be living in Equatorial Africa, watching a Goliath beetle trying to Have His Way with the family Volkwagen in the driveway. Goliath beetles are as big as your hand, tipping the scales at nearly a quarter of a pound. And I've heard tell of a water-dwelling insect: that inhabits certain South America rivers. In between hosts, that is. This critter prefers to live in the urinary tracts of mammals dumb enough to urinate in the river. The bug is extremely heat sensitive, and small enough to home in on and swim up, the urinary tract of larger animals, including humans. The bug lodges in the urinary tract, using spiny fins that open up like an umbrella to keep him there. The pain, I am told, is in livid technicolor. On second 'thought, Canadian bugs don't seem half bad.