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The sleepy, lakeside city of Port Colborne has been suddenly split by the-G-string, that thinly laced piece of silk that hangs between a pair of bouncing human buttocks. It used to be that trends origi- nating in the United States took five years to get to Canada but in the case of Port Colborne, Ontario and the state of Florida, travel time has been reduced to a matter of weeks. On June 21, 1990, the state legislature voted unanimously to ban the "thong" from its beaches and as of this week a neighbor- hood group from Port Colborne's east side have over 300 signatures on a petition to make the bikini type garment illegal within city limits. Provincial election unnecessary Forty million bucks worth of NOTHING. That's what we're going to have to fork up as tax- payers for this stupid election called by our premier for the 6th of September. A pure political ploy, that's all it is. With only three years into his mandate, with a comfortable majority in the provincial House, and yet Mr. Peterson is playing political footsies with us just to secure a Liberal stranglehold on this province for another five years. And making sure of it, too, by doing the dirty and calling it for these Dog Days of August when everybody and his dog is out at the summer cottage, abroad, or travelling the country from sea-to-shining-sea. Who the hell even wants to think of poli- tics in the summer, let alone be barraged again by party volun- teers going around banging on doors. Oh, clever, clever, Mr. Peterson. You sure know how to pick your time, don't you, to make sure we don't take too much interest in your conniving schem- William J. Thomas Page'5, News, Tuesday, August'14;.1990°."- Police hands tied by G-string It's a "Ban The Buns" protest movement pure and simple, a sort of "Neighborhood Won't Watch Group" if you will. The thong is made from less material than the last lincn hand- kerchief you owned. It has a pouch in the front for safe kecp- ing and two strings circle the waist to attach to a third string which then ... (boy, some days this job is tougher than eating snow peas with a tuning fork!) ... which then falls between the crack of human amplitude to hook up again with the pouch: Olga Landiak Okay, so try to imagine what Tarzan would look after his loin cloth had been mauled by a chcc- tah with too much caffcine in its diet. Writer's momentary lapsc: Jane: "Oooh Tarzan!" Tarzan: "Oooh Jane!" Jane: "Ah, Boy...here's four rhinoceros thumbs, go and see a movie." Tarzan: "Me go too?" The target of the pctitioncrs discontent is a fortyish man in their neighborhood who wears such a thong as he works around the yard, runs errands and walks his dog. The dog, according to eye-witness reports docsn't wear anything at all! Meanwhile back\in Mr. G- string's neighborhood (Can you say chilly cheeks, boys and girls?) the "thong-a-thon" march- es on. The petitioners are mar- ing. But hopefully there are suffi- cient numbers of us out here who are still madder than hell over that whole Meech Lake Discord thing to punch a hole in Mr. Peterson's little bag of tricks. I know, I know, that was a Fedcral issue, but its ramifications spread out like some nasty slime across the whole country and affected each.and.every province. We TRIED to make our voices heard re this whole English-lan- guage-only issue and what was really behind it, and yet dear Brian Baloney refused to even acknowledge there were strong dissenting opinions, and tried to the very last minute to shove that Quebec-favouring Accord thing down our most unwilling throats. Thank god, he didn't succeed, and it died the death it deserved. And yet, despite all this and all the outcries across the country and in his own province, lo and behold, I hear via news reporting that Mr. Peterson is going to STRONGLY push for minority rights this election! By which, one can only surmise in the light of the Screech Lake Discord con- troversy, that he means FRENCH minority rights. I'm pretty damn sure he doesn't mean Ukrainian minority rights, or Finnish, or Chinese, or Yugoslavian, or any other unheard, unsung ethnic group. out there. And Mr. Mike Harris of the Cons. (Yeah, who's conning who?) STRONGLY advocates exactly the same! So, all we need now is for the N.D.P.'s Bob Rae to. come out STRONGLY advo- cating the same thing - as did ALL parties in the Federal dispu- _ tation - and we'll have lost our precious votes for sure. What are we, the ordinary citi- zens, to do? This voting business is supposed to be our mandate to throw out the Party which does not fully represent us, but when we're bucking Party Line all the time, then our vote isn't worth a spit. So here we are, being forced to spend forty million of our hard- carned tax bucks just for the face! shalling support from people who consider Mr. G's nearly-nude appearances offensive while he maintains the garment is not only comfortable but perfectly legal for. the wearing. Their hands tied by the G- string. saga, the police so far agree with him, As little as there is, there's nothing on the books to ban it. And Mr. G's wife stands firmly behind him. However, according to those people who live on his street, firmly behind him is exact- ly where they don't want to be, especially when he bends over to pick up the newspaper. "Twin Cheeks" not a highly rated show in their neighborhood. Legal mooning or the ultimate continued on page 6 political satisfaction of one man and one Party who have already decided to still go against our wishes as far as these minority rights are concerned. Mr. Peterson and his provincial cohorts can twist that around to mean anything they want in try- ing to buffalo us that that applies to all of us, when we know damn well it means French and English only. Especially when we've got the fine (?) example of a person being unable to gcet.a Government Civil job in this province because of inability to speak the French language staring us right in the So, what's a body to do? Vote onc lot of beggars out just to be faced with another lot equally as bad? What a moder day demo- cratic dilemma! It make me feel that separating N. Ontario from tax-cating S. Ontario might still be the best idca around. Then we can deal with our own lot of beg- gars instead of those Tarrana-the- Terrible ones. Muzinihbeegey of Sandy Lake Robert Kakegamic squats cross-legged on the well-kept lawn behind his house, overlook- ing a wide, slow-moving river in this isolated native community, 500 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. In a calm, low voice, Kakegamic expresses his concern for the environment, pointing at trees on the opposite bank of the river. "I think we'd like to see things the way they used to be. You see some of the trees over there, especially the birch trees. They used to be beautiful birch trees. But look at them now, they're dead. It's prob- ably the acid rain." Robert Kakegamic was born out in the wilderness he's pointing to, on a trapline, in 1944. He shared some of his bitter child- hood memories - desperate loncli- ness as a very young child during two and a half years at a tubercu- losis sanatorium in what used to be called the City of Fort William - later, harsh treatment and racist slurs in a residential school in Kenora. But he doesn't let any of that bitterness or loneliness come out in his paintings. Instead, he concentrates on positive portray- NORTHERN INSIGHTS als of the natural world - a world he sees deteriorating around him. "I'm not really into spiritual- sim, not really, like Morrisseau or some others that really get into deep spiritual legends and all that. What I try to do is paint what I see or hear, like birds or trees. Like most of my paintings, you see stumps, things like that." Seven other artists from Sandy Lake have joined Kakegamic in a group, called Muzinihbeegey. Roughly translated, that Oji-Cree word means "artists group". It was set up "to encourage and pro- mote the artistic work of native people from all over northwestern Ontario, with a special emphasis on Sandy Lake": Muzinihbeegey's first exhibit was in the Thunder Bay Art Gallcry by Larry Sanders until mid-July, and has now moved on to the "Ontario North Now" Pavilion on Toronto's waterfront. All the members. of Muzinihbeegey learned from, or were influenced by, two men who have become legends in the world of Indian art: Carl Rae and Norval Morrisseau. Rae and Morrisseau were at first ostra- cized by the elders of Sandy Lake, because they were putting down on canvas in too great a detail, legends and stories the elders believed should only be passed on through oral traditions. But that attitude has changed, as Rae and Morrisseau gained recognition, and some financial success, selling their work in the south. This second generation of Sandy Lake artists is more accepted in their home town than Rae or Morrisseau. But there's still a strong tension evident among the eight painters - a ten- sion between those wanting to depict legends, and those who just want to paint nature in all its splendour. Bart _Meckis paints only nature. In his stidio, he showed mc a painting in progress - a red fox on alert, about to run off, with tall green trees and a brilliant yel- low sun in the background. , "I know basically what I'm going to do already in my head, ch, before I do it. This one, I wanted to do a painting of this fox here, and the forest in the background, and the sun, but it never works out exactly the way I had planned." Ail seven artists say they work like that - conceiv- ing the painting mentally, reshap- ing and reforming it several times, before putting a brush to canvas. That methodology lead to some anxicty by gallery offi- cials, since, when they inquired -- about the artists' progress, they were told the artists were "still planning" - and had no sketches or "first drafts" to show ahead of time. Art critics originally classified Morrisscau and Rae as "legend painters", then changed the cate- gory to something the critics called "the woodland school" when the artists spent time on nature, and the interaction of man with nature. But the artists them- selves reject any "label". Another member of Muzinihbeegey, Joshim Kakcgamic, says each artist has a distinctive style. A pair of his paintings are in the travelling exhibit, called "REBIRTH". In the first paint- ing, a very troubled soul weeps profusely. In the second painting, that troubled soul has been reborn, as the dove of peace. continued on page 6