The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, Wednesday, August 6, 1986 Tehrelser 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. VOPRICE. i Go. eS ee ee eee Gayle Fournier phy ae sees Mary Melo Single copies 35 cents Subscription rates per year in-town -- $14.00 ERROR. i ee ee Conrad Felber out-of-town -- $18.00 Joan Greenwood Member of Ontario Community Newspapers Association and The Gua Canadian Community Newspapers Association. News news Vacations may come, and vacations may go, but the news goes on, or in this case, the News goes on. You see, unlike some other community weeklies, this newspaper does not stop publishing for an issue or two during the summer months. We would not wish you, our loyal readers, to be deprived of your News, so we will continue, in our perpetual quest, to bring you the best in news each and every week of the year (except Christmas!). However, even superhuman editors need a break once in a while. Therefore, this week regular News editor Con- rad Felber was away for seven fun-filled days while his replacement, the very capable Tonya Zborowski, a graduate of the Schreiber campus of Lake Superior High School, stepped in to take over during that period. Our thanks to Tonya for coming through when need- ed. We hope you appreciated her efforts, on display in this week's issue, as much as we appreciated her work here at the News office. Things are now back to normal, though, as Mr. Felber has returned, so once again all complaints and compliments should be sent to him. Our address and phone number are included at the top of this page. Thanks for your support! By Conrad Felber "'Mary mother, we believe, that without sin you did conceive; teach, we pray thee, us believing, how to sin without conceiving." (Anonymous) Last month I received some mail which rather disturbed me. It was a copy of The Interim, Canada's "Na- tional Pro-life, Pro-family" monthly newspaper. From front to back it was filled with all sorts of strident pro-life propaganda and anti-abortion rhetor- ic. It was this which got me to think- ing about the entire abortion issue (hence the opening quotation above). It's not that I am dead set for one side or against the other, though when it comes right down to it, I suppose I am pro-choice. For example, I do not think every pregnant woman has the right to waltz into a clinic to get an abortion just because they can't be bothered to have a child at this point By Arthur Black Since I'm Island-born home's as precise as if a mumbly old carpenter, shoulder-straps crossed wrong, laid it out, refigured to the last three- eighths of shingle. Well, Prince Edward Island's tidy, for sure. PEI poet Milton Acorn got that right. All those emerald-green potatoe fields neatly divided by red clay roads. Tidy houses, tidy hamlets, tidy barns and tidy mounds of lobster traps -- heck, even the dairy herds look tidier than you average mainland Holsteins. It really hits you hard when you hail from a big, brawny province like Ontario, sprawling as it does all across the middle of our coutry like some ungainly centrefold. Ontario's the antithesis of Prince Edward Island, which Milton Acorn describes as "a red tongue in the fanged jaws of the Gulf". Last month I got to spend an en- tire week in Prince Eward Island. That might not be long enough to do Europe or New York or Rio, but it's S&H WET iia LAS in their lives. I agree that there have to be extenuating circumstances for an abortion to be granted: potential physical or mental danger to the mother, severe family financial dif- ficulties, and so forth. You can see that I feel abortions are sometimes necessary (but not as a retroactive means of birth control) and therefore that choice should still be included as an alternative and not completely outlawed, as some pro- lifers would have it. Making abor- tions illegal would cause desperate women to take desperate actions. I should also add that others, like those in the Moral Majority south of the border, are against abortions, yet at the same time they are also against social programs which would help women to raise their (no doubt un- wanted) children. Oh, sure, these mothers could always give their child up for adoption, but they still have to carry the kid for nine months and pay for the hospital bill somehow. Abor- tion may be an easy answer, but then so is just telling a future mother "You must have your child!" without any regard to the potential consequences. I agree that after a certain stage of development in the fetus, it would be murder to do an abortion. But if you accept the premise that all abortions are murder, then that would make abstinence negligent homicide, be- cause in both cases a human is denied the right to live. If we are going to make abortion illegal, then we must outlaw chastity as well! Of course, this brings up the here- tofore unmentioned religious factors. Allow me to correct that oversight, starting with God's commandment to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Genesis 9:1). Now, I must confess that I am no theologian, but as God's request was directed at Noah, I believe it was only meant to include Noah, and not our future world. Remember, Noah and his family were told to "replenish" the earth simply because, following the Flood, the planet was empty. Since then, we've succeeded in achieving a global population of five billion. That sounds like "replenished" to me. But what if we are still supposed to uphold that commandment today? The Pope will tell you that the Roman Catholic Church is against abortion and birth control because of God's order to go forth and multiply, and both birth control and abortions would circumvent that law. I don't understand this interpretation. The Bible doesn't say that we should do nothing but multiply, because other- ills wise we would just be making babies 24 hours a day (not a bad job for us guys, but hell for women!) instead of working, and eating, and loving, and sleeping, and watching TV. I could go on about this, but I've run out of room. However, if you would like to see an opposing view published, send your letters to me here at the News office. I'm looking forward to hearing from you...really! sufficient time to get a penetrating look at PEI -- after all the place is on- ly about 150 miles long and 20 miles wide on average. Number of non- tidal lakes and rivers: one and one respectively. Number of cities with 'populations exceeding 100,000: zero. The population of the entire pro- vince is only a little over 120,000 -- which is to say about the same as the city of Thunder Bay. But I'm beginning to sound like a Texan here -- YOU CALL THE PIS- SANT CHUNK 0' DIRT A PRO- VINCE BOAH??? HAIL, BACK HOME WE GOT RANCHES BIG- GER 'N THIS!"' : I come to praise Prince Edward Island, not to bury it under the layers of Upper Canadian snottiness. Besides, the place has one precious resource that I haven't mentioned yet. Its people. To take the ferry from the Cana- dian mainland to Prince Edward Island is to travel back in time. Remember when life was kind of slow and amiable and you could greet a stranger on the street with a smile and a wave and not worry about peo- ple wondering if you were weird? Well, in Prince Edward Island it's still like that. I don't think I heard a snarky work or a raised voice in the entire seven days I spend on the Island. I can't recall hearing the screech of brakes or the braying of a car horn either. The Islanders I met -- from the clerk in the Liquor Store to the Premier of the province -- were friendly, courteous... and so doggon- ed innocent that I had to keep pin- ching my arm to remind myself that I wasn't living through and episode of Ozzie and Harriet or The Brady Bunch. Don't get me wrong -- the people of Prince Edward Island are not characters our of a Walt Disney movie. I spent the week in a cottage belonging to an ex-rumrunner. Clovie Perry is his name. He's 80 years old and packs a pacemaker beneath his boney chest, but his eyes are bright and his wit is quick and he loves to dig out his scrapbooks and jaw about the good old days of dodging Mon- tie patrol boats and American G-men. There are other Islanders I'll never forget. Such as Anne Thurlow, a woman I'd known only over the phone. She showed up at the cottage one sunshine-y day with a huge pic- nic hamper under her arm. We spent the afternoon watching the tide come. into Bedeque Bay while we munch- ed on marinated clams, smoked her- ring, barbecued chicken and homemeade bread. There are lots of less-plesant ways to. spend a sunny = afterm noon. Speaking of unexpected treats, Clovie and his wife Jean popped in the evening before we had to leave for home. They had a young teenager with them, clutching a paper bag. As ' I chattered with Jean, Clovie disap- peared into the tool shed behind the cottage, re-emerging with a toothy grin and a bottle of his justly notorious home-brewed wine in hand. Then Jean asked: "Have you seen the step-dancing yet?"' Step dancing? I thought to myself... ins't that the stuff with kilts and sporrans and crossed cutlasses on the floor? '""Why... no" I replied. '*Well" said Jean, *' you're going to see it now." And, responding to a curt nod from Jean, the younger girl (their grand-daughter, as it turned out) stood up, pullrd a pair of tap shoes out of the paper bag and strap- ped them on. Jean sat down at the piano, Clovie dug a harmonica out of his shirt pocket and for the next hour that wee cottage on Bedeque Bay rocked and rolled to the sound of Scottish reels and jigs that had been handed down from who knows how far back. There was no shyness, no coyness and certainly no suggestion of show- ing off. It was just two generations of Islanders trying to make sure that some "stranger from away" had a good time. Did a fine job of it too. I can't wait to go back.