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Page 5, News, Tuesday, May 22, 1990 Malcolm - a high insurance risk There comes a time in every man's existence when, as much as he'd rather not, he must face the grim inevitability of death. Not me of course, I've already made arrangements to marry Shirley McLaine and become a matador in Madrid about an hour after my funeral service which I sincerely hope goes off without a hitch. Last week - and I'm not making this up, neither - a butch- er in England died with two last wishes in his will: he wanted to be cremated and he wanted a pro- fessional piano player hired to play Cole Porter's great hit "Every Time We Say Goodbye". He got most of his request, sort of. He was cremated and a pro- William J. Thomas fessional musician was hired but during the cremation ceremony the pianist, who brought. the wrong sheet music, played Cole Porter's greatest hit "When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes". Oh, I hate when that happens. So faced with hard, cold reali- ty I have resigned myself to the sad fact that after a rather tawdry life of carousing, staying out late and chasing immoral females - my cat Malcolm is probably going to die. This loveable little bugger, who has not had teeth since the Liberals were in power, (but, as he likes to say: neither have the Liberals!) is now 16 years old with parts falling off as if he was union-made in Canada. In human years, using the ratio of 7-1, this makes Malcolm as old as Roland Michener's driver's license and John Crosbie's jokes. So I called a local insurance company to get one of those huge policies on his life, the kind Roy Rogers got for Trigger and Imelda got for Ferdinand. The girl on the phone was a little confused, "Is Malcolm like your son, or what?" Thank God for bad grammar, I didn't have to lie. After 16 years, $6840 in food bills and $4348.56 in medical expenses - Malcolm was more like my son than a real son, if I had one and he was fat and acci- dent prone. In order to give me.a cost esti- mate she started down the list of questions on the insurance appli- cation. We breezed through date of birth and nationality. Marital status and present occupation came up: "single/spayed" and "recently retir Then it got tough. At "height in shoes" and "weight in ordinary clothes" I had to tell her I'd call her right back. Off the phone, I paced and Malcolm circled-"What to wear...what to wear?" I tried to continued on page 6 Trade-offs part of getting Sometimes we old-timey geese on the other side of the hill think it's pretty.damn unfair. What? What? The trade-offs, that's what. We no sooner get rid of the gut-cramping monthly Big M, then we're into the hot and cold flashes of the other Big M. We are traumatized all through our salad days by the hair on our legs and arms, then suddenly we ain't got no hair at all. The face that used to sink a thousand ships has now sunk itself into a ruin of wrinkles, bags and sags. The old bod, which was once the envy of our girl friends and the delight of our boy friends, has suddenly become a stranger who ae at the top, bulges in the Olga Landiak middle and balloons in the rear. The eyes that used to be deep pools of desire are now caged behind spectacles without which the world is just so much blur. The ears that used to be sea shells of perfection have turned into mechanical "rabbits" ears, booming in all the sounds of both God's and man's creations without discrimination. The teeth that were once our pride of pearly whites are now long-ago memories replaced by removable models leering at us out of their night-time glass of Water. The hemorrhoids which never used to be...but we won't go into that. It's too painful for words. And the bladders, too. They are now night-time nightmares. All that once-youthful vim and vigour and inexhaustible energy has now dissipated like so much hot air, and we're left huffing and puffing and wondering if the old heart is going to hold out as we slowly climb stairs we used to bound up two at a time. We looked forward to all those long, lazy days of retirement when we'd be able to indulge our hobby passions and, before you know it, the flaming passion has died down into a pile of ashes. Now that we've finally acquired some wit and wisdom with which to dazzle friends and family alike, suddenly no one wants to be bothered talking to us. older We've thrown the old bug-a- boo of "what will the neighbours think?" into the garbage can where it belongs and gained a lot 'of self-confidence, only to find there's nothing left to be self-con- fident about. No! Stop right there! There's a heck of a lot to be self-confident about when you get to be a Goldie Oldie: the mere fact that we've lived so long and got a lot of life's experiences under our belt and in the old headbone. Maybe the old bod is a little run down and in need of mechan- ical aids, but it's still what's up there between the two ears, rab- bits or not, that makes the trade- offs all worthwhile. Clancy has a case of T.0O. myopia AN OPEN LETTER TO: James Clancy President Ontario Public Employees Union 1901 Yonge Street Toronto, Ontario M4S 2Z5 Dear Mr. Clancy: This is in reply to your open letter dated May 3rd, sent to Premier Peterson and all provin- cial government employees repre- sented by your union. In your let- ter, you complain about the trans- fer of civil service jobs to com- munity agencies, municipalities, crown corporations, or the private sector. There may be some merit to your concerns about those transfers, if they cause a decline in service to the public. I particu- larly agree with your concern about psychiatric patients being, to use your words, "dumped out of psychiatric hospitals", without a corresponding increase in com- munity-based support services. But you lump into your argu- ment the transfer of civil service jobs to the north, calling us "unknown cities". That comment made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It also severely weakens your overall argument about privatization and cutbacks. You didn't write the letter to me, but I got a copy from a friendly but somewhat unhappy northern civil servant. Asa northerner freer than my friend is to speak publicly, I feel com- pelled to respond. Mr. Clancy, you owe all residents of northern Service 'NORTHERN INSIGHTS Ontario an apology for your nar- row-minded, Toronto myopia. You are supposed to represent the entire province, not just those who live and work south of Willowdale. Yet you ask the Premier, "How would you feel if you were one of the 6,000 Toronto employees who live in fear that their jobs will be uproot- ed and moved to an unknown city?" You are referring there to the promise of Treasurer, Robert Nixon, in his recent budget, to transfer 6,000 more jobs out of Toronto over the next seven years. That's in addition to the 1,600 jobs that are already mov- ing north. Not all of those 6,000 additional jobs are coming north. Some are going to eastern Ontario cities like Cornwall. Why are you or the members you claim to speak for "living in fear" of living and working some- where else other than Toronto? You make it sound like we are Siberia, and nasty Premier Peterson is the Ontario equivalent of Stalin, sending people off to prison camps in places like North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, or Cornwall. by Larry Sanders Distorted thinking like that must result from a severe, advanced case of Toronto myopia - believ- ing that where you work on Yonge Street is the centre of civi- lization, and beyond the bound- aries of Metropolitan Toronto lies only wilderness, black flies, and hillbillies. Toronto myopia is a severely disabling disease, Mr. Clancy, causing very distorted views of the world. But there is a cure, and the disease is not fatal, but you must venture outside Toronto for acure. There are several "norths" in Ontario, Mr. Clancy, just waiting for you to discover. To name only two, there is the cultural mecca of Callander, just south of North Bay, infested, not with blackflies or hillbillies, but with world-class painters, car- toonists, writers, and artisans. Then there is Thunder Bay, where I live, that long ago ceased to be just a collection of grain elevators and has evolved into a diversified cultural and economic mosaic. We also call ourselves "The Sports Capital of North America", not because we have perennial losers like your Toronto Maple Leafs, but because we have actual world and national champions - in curling, skiing, swimming, hockey, and ski jump- ing. Now I don't want to mislead you, and let you think I'm one of those "northern boosters" who ignores real problems. We do not pretend we live in paradise. We recognize that we have environ- mental problems, unemployment, not to mention racial and linguis- tic tensions. But those kind of problems are not unique to the north. You have similar issues facing you in Toronto. Where we differ, Mr. Clancy, is our mentali- ty. We are not afraid of new places - we explore them all the time, and relish in it. That will- ingness to explore new territory, test out different ideas, is a much more creative and exciting way to live than your Toronto myopia. That makes us freer to try new approaches to those problems. You should try it. Your letter talks about hus- bands and wives who are afraid of a transfer, because they both hold jobs, but only one spouse has a job being transferred. That is a real issue, on a personal level. But I have been told by provincial government spokespersons that, because the transfers are volun- tary, the spouse in that situation would not be forced to move. If I have been misinformed, and Peterson really is busting up fam- ilies, then put your case that way. Don't reject the entire policy because there are human dimen- sions to it. Consider,' if you can, the idea of living somewhere else other than Toronto. If you're really concerned about strengthening the family, then consider the merits of the northern lifestyle. Are there not some merits to living in a smaller centre, where you can, if you wish, come home for lunch? Where you don't have to spend four hours a day commuting, on top of your regular eight hours of toil? Where you don't have to make $1,000 a month mortgage payments on an overpriced piece of real estate, jammed in on top of too many other neighbors? | Northern lifestyles are not per- fect, but there are thousands of us who choose to live here, instead of your version of paradise, in the Golden Horseshoe. By moving offices out of the Golden Horseshoe, Peterson is following the sage advice of a provincial advisory committee on Resource Dependant Communities, chaired by Dr. Bob Rosehart, the President of Lakehead University, which brought down its report in May, continued on page 6 OPO PE ENE ES TEE ELLE LLL LL TELE TEE TES ELLIE ERLE LE LELT IEE IEEE EI OLE RS LD EEE EDL ATEA