The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, Wednesday, June 10, 1987 errace 4 Everyone's a Canadian Canada Day is rapidly approaching and with it will be a celebration of our country's varied peoples. As we get closer and closer to our birthday, let's take this time to reflect on a part of our past that helped to create what we have today. Canada's population expanded rapidly in the early 1800's. Thousands of immigrants came from England, Ireland, and Scotland, especially after the War of 1812. Political problems multiplied. French Canadians resented the English-speaking newcomers. Many French descendants in Lower Canada believed the British government wanted to destroy their French- Canadian heritage. Upper Canada also faced serious political problems. Church leaders, merchants, and landowners formed a group known as the Family Compact, which controlled the colonial government. According to World Book, the Compact used public tax money to support Church of England schools even though many Upper Canadians belonged to other religious groups. Revolts against the colonial governments of Upper and Lower Canada broke out in 1837. Rebels in both colonies fought to end British rule. The rebellion failed. But the uprising caused events that eventually resulted in the uniting of Upper and lower Canada. to offer me the position." Quote of the Week "I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous - MARK TWAIN Arthur Black RO ee ee oe in ae NE ae Re eg eo Gayle Fournier nn CEE Betty St. Amand Association The Terrace Bay-Schrelber News is published every Wednesday by: Laurentian Publishing Single copies 35 cent Schreiber Co. Ltd., Box 578, Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. - Subscription rales tale alle | | Second Class Malling Permit Number 0867 in town $14.00 cn elites 656 oe es a a SS ae I Ken Lusk out of town $18.00 -- | Member of Ontario Community Newpapers Association and The Canadian Community Newspapers Gou Letters to the editor idly \ {" Wl i a Drivers please slow down Letter to the editor: As a concerned parent I write this letter to plead with all the drivers in town to PLEASE slow down. We live on a corner lot and the street traffic is somewhat heavy. I have two young children who have been taught to look both ways when crossing the street and to beware of cars when riding their bikes. However, ~ children's minds are often preoccupied and on occasion they do not concern themselves with the traffic. I do not claim that all cars going by are breaking the speed limit but many are driving too fast to stop in time to save an accident. Please, drivers of Terrace Bay, be aware of the chil- dren crossing the street and Our own calendar up-to-date enough By Arthur Black Here comes a trendy, up-to- date couple toting a faddish, life- in-the-Eighties kind of notion -- Maurice and Molly Freedman of New York believe it's high time we revamped the calendar. "Thirty days hath September...' may have been good enough for the Middle Ages" says thoroughly modem Molly, "but it's not good enough for the Modern Age." The proposed Freedman calen- dar would feature 11 months of 30 days each. At the end of the year they'd slap an extra five days on the tail end of December to make up the 365. In Leap Years, December would be 36 days long. ~ Sounds logical, I guess...and it's certainly sensible enough -- but it's hardly new. We've been down this road before. The ancient Mayans unveiled their notion of a calendar about 500 AD . Actually they came up with two of them: a religious calendar of 260 days and an agricultural one of -- wait for it - 365 days. Sharp chaps, those Mayans. They calendar into 18 months of 20 days each, with the five odd days tossed in at the end. Just like the Freedmans, but 15 centuries earlier. Calendar meddling goes back father than that. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar scrapped whatever it was Romans had been tacking up on their walls ani replaced it with his version. Never a victim of exces- sive modesty, Caesar named the new calendar 'Julian' and dedicat- ed the choicest month (July) to himself. When Caesar Augustus came ' along, he wanted his own month too. So he took one called "Sextilus' and remanded it 'August'. Alas, August had only 30 days - one less than July. But hey! What's the point of being Emperor if you can't patch up minor problems? Augustus shift- ed a few months around until August had 31 days -- incidental- ly reducing February to 28. The Julian Calendar had a pret- ty good run. It was used by most Western nations for more than to the showers in the Middle Ages. Its replacement, the Gregorian Calendar, more closely matches the seasons and it deliv- ers a year of exactly 365.242 days. But. we Westerners are still greenhorns in the calendar busi- ness. Muslims use a calendar that dates from 622 AD. Hebrew and Chinese cultures have calendars that were old when Caesar's toga was held together with diaper pins. If I had to choose, I'd go for the ancient Chinese calendar -- if only because the names in it are so evocative. It divides the year into 24 seasonal segments, each about two weeks long. These Chinese "months" have names like "Spring begins", "Excited insects", "Great heat" and, in the second week: of. what we call September, "White dew." Of course our so-called mod- em methods of marking time are fairly venerable and exotic too, once you peel the veneer of famil- iarity away. of the week. Three of them are named after planets (Sun Day, Moon Day, Saturn's Day); the other four carry the names of Nordic gods (Tiw's Day, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, Freya's Day). As for our months, Janus, Februa, mars, Maia and Juno were all Roman gods deemed by Caesar to be worthy of the appellation Deity of the Month. What? No centrefold? We've never been very adept at changing calendar systems. Back in 46 BC, Romans had to endure the longest year in history. It crawled along for 445 days, while Julius Caesar tinkered and toyed and fine-tuned his all-new calen- dar. There were more foulups when Britain switched from the Julian to the Gregorian in 1751. They skipped from March 25th right to April 4th to compensate for an eleven-day error that had accumu- lated over the centuries of using the faulty Julian Calendar. The following year, when the United States jumped on the PL ne <i a Pd tte at a a ee ee ae .s & playing nearby and drive with their safety in mind. Nancy Baxter 5-9121 Washington actually nudged his birthday ahead 11 days so that he wouldn't miss out on the party. Obviously, messing with he calendar is a very dicey business. Near as I can figure it, we've finally weeded out the vagaries of the hydra-headed beast. We've whittled it down so that we only have on screwy day -- February 29th -- every four years. That's not too bad, considering the headaches other cultures have had to contend with down through the years. My advice to Maurice and Molly Freedman -- forget it. Take on quantum physics, organ trans- plants or advanced cryogenics. Tackle space travel, world peace - even Via Rail. But leave our cal- endar alone. We've probably neve had it so.good. Se et SR ee hare Pek be + 8 0 4