Gateway to Northwestern Ontario Digital Collections

Terrace Bay News, 19 Mar 1991, p. 5

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All The : World's A Circus Page 5, News, Tuesday, March 19, 1991 Life, Aceoraie To "Baba" You're running ten minutes late because the dog gorked on the living room rug. It was the first thing you saw this moming and it made you pass up the carrot cake. Then you dropped your car keys in the snow, broke the scraper on the windshield ice, sat in that one inch drift that always manages to blow onto the driver's seat before you can close the door and, looking through open windows, you managed to manoeuvre the car out to the street, just in time to be buried by the snow plow. You get to work sweaty and soggy and when the new guy says "Good Morning," you tell him you : hope his hamster hangs himself on his "whirl-a- wheel." You're having a bad day. But how bad? Everything is relative. Your daytime nightmare may be another person's dreamday. Look around. Take solace as the seagulls of fate drop their smart bombs on the foreheads of others. If you think you're having a bad day, Coach Tom Watt of the Toronto Maple Leafs just got word he's to attend a meeting with the general manager and board of directors at 5 p.m. today. The man's terrified. Rumor is, they want to renew his contract! Talk about bad days, yesterday Senator Pat Carney laid out $125 in cash to join the Nutri/System Program, only to get home and find out the milkshakes don't come with cheeseburgers and fries. Bad day? Former Toronto outfielder George Bell found out this week that the Dominican Republic National Steel Company in Santo Domingo are now bankrupt and out of It's bad day season William J. business. Not only did George have money invested in this steel company, they manufacture his gloves! Nobody but nobody had a day as bad as Reverend Jim Bakker. After receiving 42 years in prison, the disgraced American evangelist suddenly had his sentence thrown out by an appeals court and he was set free. But when he got to the gates, true to her word, Tammy Faye Bakker was waiting for him! And Bill Ballard, the heir-not-so-apparent to Maple Leaf Gardens, had a really bad day this week. Laboratory tests brought into court prove that that ticket scalper claiming to Thomas _ be his brother is definitely not biologically related to}: Bill. That was the good news. That bad news_is that further testing indicates Yolanda Ballard is! And that Saskatchewan farmer that's been following Anne Murray around for over a decade is a broken man today. Yesterday he got a real close look at Anne and it was a devastating revelation. All these years he thought he was tracking Arthur Murray. And life is now bowl of cherries for Saddam Hussein these days. Still trying to claim victory-in the Persian Gulf War, Saddam has been seen running up and down the main drag of Baghdad waving a Publishers Clearing House envelope with his name on it that states "You May Already Be A Winner!" As if that's not bad enough, yesterday the Iranian in charge of painting the Iranian Air Force logo over the Iraqi Air Force logo on those 100 or so fighter jets Hussein sent across the border for safe keeping, continued on page 12 Migoodness, the response to the K.P.K. (Kitchen Party of Kanada) is almost overwhelming! People have been stopping yer ole Baba on the Streets, in the stores, telephoning, sending wires and faxes (is there such a word?), all begging to learn more about the Kleanest Party in Kanada, and dying to become Members. Well, no, not actually. - I cannot tell a lie but, much to my surprise, people have been saying how dearly they-wish there was such a Party around with such a Klean Plank that they could vote for in the next Federal Election. Well, dear friends and readers, yer ole Baba could wish for the same thing, so, in carrying our fantasy a little further, I have come up with a Konstitution. 1. The K.P.K. will, collectively and individually, endeavour to be klean in morals and principles, especially in political dealings with people of the country. 2. Membership will be open to any Kanadian, native born or naturalized, sufficiently adult in their thinking (to be gauged by skill-testing questions at voting time), regardless of age, sex, colour or creed. Which reminds me. Yer ole- Baba made a huge boo-boo in the first essay re the K.P.K. when I advocated calling it "The White Party" as an alternative. A very bright soul pointed out to me the very racist conotations of THAT, and I hereby categorically state that no such slurs were meant. "White" in this case, applies to the cleanliness of morals and principles and has nothing whatsoever to do with the colour of anybody's skin. Just had to make that abundantly clear before somebody started burning crosses on the lawn of Olga Landiak More about the KPK the Senior's Complex where yer ole Baba _ resides! On with our Konstitution. 3. The Leader of the Party will be only a figurehead spokesman for the Council of Twelve Wise Ones who will make up the government and make the decisions and policies. 4. These Twelve will be chosen by an Appointing Committee of qualified Citizens whose sole purpose will be to search out the wisest, sanest, most sensible and honest people in the country no matter what sex, status in life, education, race or creed. (Hopefully, this way, we'll get some really good people instead of voted pigs-in-pokes!) 5. Abolishment of costly cumbersome Opposition Parties. 6. Abolishment of equally costly and cumbersome Senate. 7: Abolishment of costly, cumbersome Civil Service. All public services will be put up for tender and bid to Private Enterprise. Maybe then we'll get more efficiency and a whole lot less horrifying waste when there is no longer a public pork barrel to be dipped into indiscriminately. 8. Abolishment of Taxes. Ah, what a lovely thought, and why not? If Private Enterprise takes over more individually, but hopefully it will force-us to take back more of the responsibility for, looking after and taking care of ourselves and our families, instead of always and a day depending on governmental (meaning, tax-payer's monies) will drop considerably, but that should be a morale and character builder id not a calamity. Wealthy = private continued on page 6 EVERYTHING, maybe it will cost us} Last year, you may remember the story I told you about Jim Hillsinger. Hillsinger owns a fancy five-star hotel in Sault Ste. Marie, but his idea of the north's economic future does not start and end with tourism, as his critics have suggested. ° Rather, Hillsinger has been campaigning for a new understanding of the global importance of northern Ontario wilderness areas. He told the timber management hearings in Sault. Ste. Marie "in the year 2025. as land becomes scarce in this world, as populations explode, as our borders are assaulted by people who want to find a place to live, land is going to be extremely important. And therein lies a lot of the economic opportunity for northern Ontario." Hillsinger wants northerners to find new ways to work together to make resource planning decisions - to seek consensus solutions, rather than confronting each other in the courts, or at environmental hearings dominated 1 by lawyers. Hillsinger seems to have a convert: our Attorney-General, and the MPP for Rainy River riding, Howard Hampton. Hampton spoke recently to the annual meeting of the Friends of Quetico Park in Atikokan. His topic was "the future of parks on Ontario" - a strange subject Supreme Court of Canada last May, which ruled that native people have a clear aboriginal right to fish and hunt for food for their own consumption and for ceremonial purposes, "as long as conservation principles are respected." That ruling has been broadly for someone who is not the Minister of interpreted by both George Erasmus, Natural Re- NORTHERN the Grand sources, Of Chief of the the Minister Ey INSIGHTS: Assembly of responsible by Larry Sanders First Nations, 'for native and by Bud affairs. Wildman, Ontario's Minister of Natural Hampton rambled on for over an hour, explaining the dilemmas facing the NDP government. After six months in power, the NDP seems to have started getting a grip on at least what some of the questions are. When it comes to finding answers, Hampton pleaded for a consensus approach that sounds very much like Hillsinger's. At the top of Hampton's list was aboriginal rights. He described the Sparrow case, brought down by the Resources and Native Affairs, to mean that native people in this. province could pretty well fish and hunt anywhere they wanted - including in protected wildemess areas like Quetico Park - with no fear of prosecution from white man's laws. Hampton says the Sparrow ruling was very similar to one brought down by the Supreme Court in the United States, when it ruled that native people in Michigan and Wisconsin could fish Another plea for new partnerships and hunt at will anywhere. Hampton says this is the kind of ruling you get "when you leave things totally to the courts to decide. I think what the Supreme Court of Canada is trying to tell us as Canadians, both native and non-native, is that we'd better sit down and work out rules that work for all of us. If we don't, then the Supreme Court of Canada will indeed decide for all of us. But the decision that they give us, none of us may like." Instead, Hampton called for co- management agreements - agreements worked out with everyone with an interest in a resource, native and non- native. These agreements would set out local priorities for conservation and development, as well as the rules for exercising those rights. As a constituency-based politician, Hampton also made it clear he's been spending a lot of time listening to interest groups. According to Hampton, all those groups are saying 'continued on page 13

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