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'TERRACE BAY/SCHREIBER NEWS" Wednesday, July 26, 1989 = Editorial Page The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 0867. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. General Managev.......Paul Marcon Editot..................--... David Chmara Admin. Asst...........Gayle Fournier Production Asst....Carmen Dinner Single copies 40 cents. Subscription rates: $15 per year / $25 two years (local) and $21 per year (out of town). Developing tourism You might think that the $3 million tourists spend here every year is a lot of money. I guess it actually is, but compared to what this figure could be it's not very much. After all, what is there for tourists to do here? Sure, they can do some shopping. But, realistically, do people come to Terrace Bay to shop? I seriously doubt it. More than likely they'll go to Thunder Bay or some destination in Southern Ontario for their purchases. _ As for swimming or catching a tan, the miniscule sign announcing our beach would have trouble attracting the attention of an eagle's eye, let alone a weary tourist. Same goes for the golf club sign. It's much too small to entice any avid golfer to try to break par. And then there's the gorge. A beautiful scenic attraction that I'm sure would have many tourists stopping, if even for a moment, to take in its splendor. Once again though, there isn't even .a sign mentioning its existence let alone a decent road or path to get to it. There's bus load after bus load of people coming through town. Several stop and those travelling will often buy themselves-some lunch. But where is there a place for them to sit and enjoy this food? There are no picnic tables 'available for them to be comfortable. Instead, they must try Ne » to grab one of the few benches, if any are available, stand around, or climb back onto the bus to eat. This is hardly the way to attract tourists and increase the income generated by their staying here. By increasing the amount and size of signs promoting local attractions, and developing some of the resources that are available here, more tourists will stay and this will in turn increase the amount of money brought into the local economy. And in turn, the opportunities for private investment will increase as well. Job opportunities, especially summer jobs for students, will also increase. Prior to this, public (municipal) investment must take place so the private sector can be shown there is indeed a LooK WHO's GETTING THE GATE Now ! tourism market which can be taken advantage of. But before any of this can happen, the public (both individual residents and businesses) must want it to happen. They must voice their support and commitment, especially to town council, as it is they who act upon the wishes of the people and will in turn make the first investment in tourism. After this initial investment, tourism will rise and once people see the opportunities, private investment will follow. Then, the money should start rolling into town to the benefit of the entire community. And the $3 million currently being spent here will look like a drop in the bucket compared to what it will be. WY) _ nS AAA VERE AVN IN ' The News welcomes your Ict- ters to the editor. Feel free to express comments, opinions, appreciation, or debate anything of public interest. Write to: Editor Terrace Bay/Schreiber News Box 579 Terrace Bay, Ontario 13 Simcoe Plaza POT 2W0 In order that we may verily authorship, please sign your Ict- ters. No 20th celebrations for Moon Landing This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the creation. Richard M. Nixon, then- President of the United States mouthed those sentiments 20 years ago, on the 24th of July, 1969. He should have been right, but he wasn't, and I've never quite been able to figure out why. He was talking about the Space Race and the fact that, after several years of frantic effort and the application of some $24 billion American , the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had successfully placed a human bootprint on the face of the moon. It was a heady moment. American astronauts had managed to reach out and touch a heavenly object about which humans had written songs and poems for as long as we've been able to gaze upward and wonder about that silent, silver orb in the night sky. President Nixon's words did not seem pompous or overblown in 1969. They seemed appropriate" -- understated, even. Putting men on the moon felt like a human achievement on a par with the discovery of fire, or the invention of the wheel. If we could put men up there and bring them back, was there anything we could not do? That same week, American writer and _ philosopher Norman Cousins wrote: "The message from the moon which we have flashed to the far comers of this planet is that no problem need any longer be "considered insoluble." Back in 1969 that didn't seem preposterous at all, and yet, 20 years later it makes you want to shake your head at the collective naivete of humanity. What happened? Well, for the Americans, . Vietnam happened. And an international oil crisis, and a president who claimed that he was not a crook, but clearly was. there were also Russians in Afghanistan, Chinese in Cambodia, Contras in the White House basement, a mad Ayatollah in everyone's nightmares and sundry other headaches, from AIDS to stagflation, that wouldn't go away no matter how many Yankee 'greenbacks were thrown at them. Then there was the problem of the astronauts themsclves. Brave as they undoubtedly adequate to the occasion. We had achieved the impossible! We had put men on the moon, dammit! And what did they do when they got there? They spouted cliches and golfed. The moment called for a canvas from Picasso, a soliloquy from Shakespeare, a 'symphony by Becthoven. Instead we got an interoffice memo from Shipping and Receiving. Watching the banal antics of the astronauts, another American by the name of Michael Rossman wrote: "Torn between joy and 'e despair, I thought, those gracecless clowns, with their locker-room boy's toys socicty and poétry of Gee Whiz, they're supposed to represent mc?" Maybe that's why, 20 ycars later it all seems so flat, so anti-climactic. Shouldn't be. You'd think the twenticth anniversary would be an international at the NASA Hall of Fame televised around the world -- by satellite of course. But there is no NASA Hall of Fame as far as I know, nor is there anything similar for Sovict cosmonauts in Moscow. About all I've seen by way of celebration is the re-issue of a couple of old video documentarics, both of them made more than a decade ago. I remember that summer of '69 when I, like every other human being with access to a television screen sat mesmerized by the bleary, wavering signal that showed what looked like luminous deep-sea divers walking in a gravel pit. Live from the moon. If you'd told me then I would live through a summer in which a movie about Batman, a second-rate comic book character, would receive more hype and hoopla than the twenticth anniversary of man's first walk on the moon, I'd have dismissed you as, well... _ A lunatic, Lsuppose. . -