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~ Our 40th Page 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, Wednesday, January 29, 1986 Terrace Bay Schreiber . Editorial The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by: Laurentian Publishing Co. Ltd., Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. ADVERTISING REO a Aes FS a Conrad Felber Ss en nh a A ore ee Gigi Dequanne CECICE 3 8 AS aa Fs Ee Gayle Fournier PRODUCTION MANAGER pees aie Mary Melo Single copies 35 cents Subscription rates per year in-town -- $14.00 out-of-town -- $18.00 Member of Ontario Community Newspapers Association and The A Canadian Community Newspapers Ad Association. 8 ear Keen-eyed readers of the Terrace Bay-Schreiber News will notice a very subtle change in this week's issue. We have discovered that the News was first published on Nov. 24, 1946. This means that this newspaper has been publishing for 40 years as of 1986, which requires a change in the masthead on the front page. Therefore, this is now Volume 41, Number 4 of the News. We look forward to serving the Terrace Bay-Schreiber area for another 40 years, but to do that we need your help. Some of you may have also noticed that as of last week, the advertising deadline for this paper is now Thursdays at noon. With the exception of late breaking news stories that take place on Fridays and Saturdays, the deadline for the editorial department of the News is also pushed back to Thursdays at noon. All this means is that if you or your organization have a news release you would like to see published, it should be brought to the News office before noon on Thursdays to ensure that it appears in the following issue. This also holds true for our weekly correspondents and columnists. By the way, for those who are not sure, our office is located in the basement of the Post Office building on Sim- coe Plaza in Terrace Bay. Thank you for your support! Things That Tick Me Off (First in a potential series): (No. 1) Gasoline prices. Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. I'm not just talking about the exorbitant prices for gas in this area here (though I've always wondered why we are paying so much more for it compared to Nipigon, for example). I'm talking about a national crisis here, people! See, it's like this. Months and months ago, when they first took power, the federal Progressive Con- servatives promised Canadians that they would benefit from lower world oil prices. This was at a time when such prices were hovering in the $32 per barrel range. Now that the cost is down to an ex- tremely low $19.50 per barrel, you would think the price we pay at the pumps would go down too. Sorry. In- World's biggest and best in Well, here we are, right in the cold dead eye of a Canadian winter. It is some small consolation to know that (a) this is about as bad as it gets; (b) the days are getting imperceptibly longer and (c) the sun is getting ever so slightly closer with every frigid passing day. There now -- doesn't that make you feel better? Nah, me neither. Let's leave the Department of Wishful Thinking and blow this permafrost Popsicle Stand utterly. Come with me now to a land where parkas are taboo and head colds: unknown. Where people in short-sleeved shirts stroll hand in hand, drinking in the thousands of sensual delights that surround them. What sort of delights? Oh, live animal displays for instance -- everything from dazzling macawa to lions and even performing dolphins. Or perhaps you just wish to wander through the tropical flora or go for a swim or even a submarine ride on which you can watch shoals of tropical fish and an occasional shark drift by your porthole. -Hold_on, I hear you crying: -Just WHAT D0 YOU DO WHEN YOUR INTENDED TURNS OUT JO BE YOUR COUSIN stead, as you all know so very well, the charge per litre has been going up. According to recent statistics, gas prices are down in most places south of the border by at least three per cent, while up here it has gone up an average of 15 per cent over the past 12 months. The feeble excuse that the PCs have come up with is that they need the extra tax money generated by the higher prices to cover the huge deficit created by the previous Liberal government. Why don't they just ad- mit they like the extra cash, deficit or no deficit? Meanwhile, those of us living in Northern Ontario are stuck with outrageously high gas prices. This has got to stop, and now. Mr. Mulroney, are you listening? (No. 2) The Post Office. Things may change between the time that I write this and the time you actually read this, but as of last week a Post Office strike was still a possibility for next month. You can probably guess what I think about this threat, which we've heard so many times over the past few years. I have absolutely no sym- pathy for these potential strikers. If they feel they are not making enough money or whatever, they should get another job! I should point out before I continue that I have no quarrel with the local Post Office. The front counter clerks are all very friendly and I'm sure the behind-the-scenes workers all do their very best. I draw the line there, though. I could understand this whole strike threat if the Post Office was doing a good job on a national basis, but let's face it. Things are not getting any bet- ter. If anything, the situation is get- . ting worse. Postage costs to the consumer have skyrocketed without a corresponding change in the service provided to us. Here's just one example. A friend of mine living in Pennsylvania told me that a letter of mine to him was postmarked Jan. 3 and was received on Jan. 12. Not too bad, eh? Well, on the very same day he also receiv- ed a letter from Germany which was postmarked Jan. 6! Something is clearly amiss. My suggestion would be to make all Post Office employees part of the company. Make them shareholders, even. That way they would be finan- cially encouraged to_work harder to reap the rewards of success. It is ob- vious that higher postage charges are not doing the job alone. (No. 3) Swear words. I'm sick and tired of hearing the same ones, day in and day out (I'm sure you know which words I am talking about). Don't you think it's high time for new curses? I'd like to help out in that regard. Here's one you can try out . 'fnetz." It sure sounds nasty. Who knows? We may start a trend. Don't like it? Well fnetz! where is this tropical Eden we're go- ing to? Antigua? The Greek Isles? Puerto Vallarta? Nope. Edmonton. As in Alberta. And no, these are not the looney ravings of one more Canuck thrashing through the ter- minal stages of Cabin Fever. You can find all of the aforementioned in Alberta's capital -- in a phenomenon called the West Edmonton Mall. The Mall covers more than five million square feet and provides jobs for 15,000 Edmontonians. Customers have 20,000 free parking spaces to choose from, after which they can enter the Mall by any one of the 57 entrances. Once inside they find 836 shops including | 1 department stores. You can buy anything from a gourmet breakfast to surfing lessons to a Chrysler New Yorker (Yes, there's even an auto dealership under the mall roof). Visitors can also take in ex- travaganzas ranging from an haut- couture fashion show to a full-scale sword battle aboard a Spanish galleon. Its promoters have dubbed the West Edmonton Mall 'The Eighth Wonder of the World'. That may be laying it on a bit thick -- but not much. It is accurate to say there is nothing quite like it on this planet. As a matter of fact, the only complex that even comes close is:the self-styled "world's largest" -- the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, Califor- nia. At a little over two and a half million square feet, it's not even half the size of West Edmonton Mall. Guinness Book of World Records please note. The Mall created by four wheeling-deeling sons of an Iranian-Jewish rug merchant by the name of Ghermezian. So far, the Ghermezian family has pumped more than a billion dollars into their pet ~ project and they're not finished yet. Still to come is a 360-room luxury iotel plus a five-acre solarium that vill feature a sand beach, live, sway- ng palm trees, an Olympic-class div- ing installation and a lake with ar- tificial waves up to 16 feet high -- the better; to surf your way through an was conceived and. Canada Alberta blizzard. Does the West Edmonton Mall work? The 440,000 visitors who pass through its doors each week seem to think so. They come not just from Edmonton 'and environs, but from Manitoba, British Columbia, the U.S. -- even Japan. To be sure, not everyone is smit- ten with the West Edmonton Mall. The city's mayor dismisses it as an economic aberration. He doesn't think Edmonton will be back on its feet until the oil business gets back into gear. Then too, Edmonton mer- chants who are not among the 836 shopkeepers within the Mall are understandably cool towards it. They claim the West Edmonton Mall has destroyed downtown shopping. Well, suburban shopping malls tend to do that alright, and I suppose the largest shopping mall in the world would demolish existing shopping patterns more thoroughly than most. On the other hand, I doubt very much that Japanese or Californian or Manitoban consumers would buy plane tickets to experience the thrill "of shopping in downtown Edmonton. This year West Edmonton Mall ex- pects to receive four million tourists. I had a friend from the Maritimes who worked in Edmonton for one year, then quit his job and moved back. I asked him why. "'The winter' he said: He told me that once, walking to work on a bone- chilling Edmonton morning, the sole of one of his shoes....broke. Just cracked in two. "I decided"' he said, "'that any place cold enough to kill a shoe was no place for me." I suggest a corollary: Any place cold enough to kill a shoe is the perfect location. for the world's largest, indoor, heated shopping mall. I think any red-blooded, runny- nosed Canadian could get behind that.