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Page 4, News, Tuesday, March 20, 1990 Editorial 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 Fax (807)-825-9233. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. Tel.: 825-3747 vies Single copies 40 cents. | Publisher........... A. 'Sandy' Harbinson -- ubscription rates: per . . year / seniors $10 (local), Office Managet.............Gayle Fournier $27 per year (out of 40 mile News Editor................. Angie Saunders Sr radius); $36 in U.S. Advertising Rep.......... Sheryl A. Knight ae Get your hip- waders out boys! Have you stepped out of your car or off your front step into three inches of water in the last week? Have you driven your car into the driveway and found it stuck up to the top of your hubcaps in a messy slush of water and snow? Or how about wading through the streets and sidewalks to go pick up a litre of milk? Well, after I picked up myself a pair of hip-waders, I still decided to stay indoors most of last week. I wish old Mother Nature would bring some snow for snowmachining or else some sunshine so we could all hit the beach. The road conditions, this time of year, are slippery with all the snow melting, due to the light rain we've been having. So make sure you slow down when driving or you'll end up sliding off the road or worse... into a snowbank like I did last weekend. I guess I could blame it on these treacherous Ontario roads since I'm used to driving on the flat prairies. Hitting the snowbank though, was my fault for driving around a comer just a bit too fast. The Terrace Bay Police Force was on the scene in no time. The officer was very courteous and understanding about my situation, I was very happy about this because I had heard the Ontario police were about as friendly as pitbulls. Well, I have no doubts whatsoever about the efficiency of local police now. I guess I'll just have to stay out of snowbanks this weekend. Angie Saunders "You OVERSPENT, SO YOU CUT BACK QUR Atlowance ?" Yj, / / A) "| pon'teez iT /" Letter to Editor "Correcy !" French Immersion has negative results Dear Editor, Parents for French brochures are full of untruths! There are not only full of untruths, but fail to print the negative results of early French Immersion. French promoters are aware of the "Swain Report", "A Decade of Research", Ministry of Education, 1981, and they are aware of the "O.1.S.E. Report" (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), and of the "trite Report", (Funded by the Ontario Ministry of Education, 1986 over 7 years). They do not print the whole truths from*these reports. For example, they refer to the Swain Report as affirming the benefits of Early French Immersion for children. It actual- ly states on page 45 and I quote,"a major problem in evalu- continued on page 6 So these four boisterous guys, these...louts, in their cheap flashy suits and hair ' down over their collars, come roiling into this very posh penthouse floor office which happens to belong to the marketing manager of EMI Records. They are laughing and wisecracking and generally behaving in a fashion ob- noxious enough to get them turfed out of a dockside pub. Their chances of favourably impressing the assembled recording industry moguls must be deemed...remote. God knows how they got past the receptionist. They have (of course) a demo tape that they know the record men are going to love. The marketing manager takes the tape, gives the vagabonds the old don't-call-us-we'll-call-you routine and shows them to the door. When the door hisses shut there are great rollings of eyes among the stogie-smoking executives lounging around the office. Kids these days. Honestly. Ho hum. Another unmagical moment. The punk quartet might have been dazzling and attractive and captivating. They weren't. The record executives might have had an intuitive hunch about the kids. They didn't. The demo tape might have been a blazing work of un- deniable genius. It wasn't. Three of the four top executive music producers at EMI did the marketing manager a favour by listening to it. They all agreed that it stank. And the fourth executive music producer? Well, he was on holiday. So ends another non-chapter in the history of human evolution. For every great flowering of human endeavour, there must be an awful lot of seed that falls upon stony ground. Think of the mouldering bones of all the sailors whose ships disappeared over the Western horizon before Columbus went and came back, proving it could be done. Think of the near-misses in history--the skipper of the PT boat 108; the unsung heroes of the Charge of The Heavy Brigade; the martyrs who gave their all to take the Bridge on the River Ken. Spare a thought for our own Gordon Lightfoot and his perfectly good singles that never quite enjoyed the success his other records did. I'm thinking of hard-to-find numbers such as--Canadian Pathway Trilogy, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzpatrick and Black Day in Early April.. Non-chapters in the history of man Spare a kind thought too, for Doctor Dionysys Lardner. Dr. Lardner was (and I'm not making this up) a professor of natural philosophy and as- tronomy at University College in London during the early 1800's. He is primarily remembered for his exquisitely argued and eminently rea- sonable assertions that high speed rail travel would always be impossible, as passengers, unable to breathe, would suffocate. The doctor also poo-pooed the possibility of any steamship ever crossing the Atlantic since it would require more coal than it could carry. Somewhat later, a scientist by the name of Simon Newcomb harrumphed to the press that the ages-old dream of heavier-than-air flying machines was just that--a dream--"impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible." Professor Newcomb made that pronouncement in 1901, about 18 months before a pair of brothers named Wilbur and Orville made famous a place called Kitty Hawk. Ah, yes, History in her perversity, makes it easy for us to be spectacularly wrong. Such as the schoolmaster who labelled little Tommy Edison retarded. Or the Munich schoolteacher who warmed a ten-year old student "you will never amount to very much". A student named Albert Einstein. Such as the musical tableau I mentioned way back at the beginning. Remember? The music moguls vs. the four louts? Well, the louts were loutish alright--but they were also persistent. When they heard that three of the company's top music producers hated their demo tape, they didn't slink away with their tails between their legs. They insisted on playing it for the fourth music producer--the one who'd been away on holidays. A fellow named George Martin. And that's how the Beatles got their first record contract.