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Goodbye. It‘s not that easy. It should be a lot of words to a lot of people. Even with a good reason for leaving it‘s not easy to walk away from people who have made the last two years of your life special and memorable. Saying thanks to all the people who have made my job in the city easier and more interesting isn‘t all that easy either. I‘d start the list here, but we are only running a 24â€"page paper this week. In the early days you go along taking the weather â€" and everything that goes with it â€" one day at a time, and before you know it a year or two have gone by. You‘re into the community and it‘s your town. It‘s a good feeling. _ Then comes the time you have to move on. It‘s goodâ€" bye; no see you later about it. The odds are 5 to 2 you won‘t be retracing the 2,800 miles from Vancouver in the foreseeable future. And in spite of what the census people say, Waterloo is growing. With that growth the people who have made my stay in the Region a happy time will themselves be moving around. So I guess in most cases this really is goodbye. In all probability, in a year from now I‘ll have turned into one of those crashingly boring people who rave on ad nauseum about the mountains, the ocean, the West Coast dynamic aura and the sheer beauty of A recent interview I heard on a Toronto FM radio station left me feeling rather shaken. And more than a little angry. C e The interviewee was one of the higherâ€"ranking ofâ€" ficials of the infamous Ku Klux Klan. Most people know something about this group, either through TV movies on the subject or the occasional headline that pops up in newspapers. _ But it took a live interview for me to fully compreâ€" hend the twisted nature of the Ku Klux Klan. In a gruff southern accent, this soâ€"called scholarly member of the group explained why nonâ€"white people are inferior to the "pureâ€"whites"". Complete with reâ€" ferences to the Bible I confess I don‘t know that particular book very well. so I‘m not even sure what this fellow said is true But he claimed one passage in the Bible tells us to stay within our "own tribes"", and not to mix people of different racial origins Assuming that thought is indeed in the Bible, it‘s still a demented interpretation of the word Blacks back to Africa, oriental people back to Asian counâ€" tmes etc etc. is what the Ku Klux Klan proposes. How ludicrous s To add insult to injury, the weirdo went on to claim that white people are now discriminated against. Boy. the world is in some mess today. isn‘t 1t° With two world wars in this century. and the oceans of blood shed in them. not to mention the limited wars in Korea and Viet Nam. you‘d think mankind would come to its senses. sit back and say. "Hey. chaps Enough is enough Let‘s sit back. cultivate our own gardens. and have a few centuries of peace and friendâ€" ship Let‘s relax a little. try to make sure everybody has at least two squares a day. stop burning up irâ€" replaceable energy. and make love. not war _ Not a chance All over this planet people are staryâ€" ing. shooting. burning. blowing up. raping. mutilating and demonstrating. all in the name of some nonâ€"exisâ€" tent ideal. such as freedom. or nationalism. or lanâ€" guage. or religion. or color. And nobody is making a nickel out of it all. except the purveyvors of weapons All over the world. in vast areas of Asia. Africa and South America particularly. there are probably 300 times more refugees. orphans and just plain starving people than there were at the beginning of this cenâ€" tury of enlightenment World War 1. with its mullions of dead. produced a bare decade and a half of peace It also signalled the beginning of the end of the fairly fair and benevolent By Geoff Hoile Howard Elliott the evergreen Playground. However, you will have the silent satisfaction of knowing that my newlyâ€" acquired West Coast colleagues will have suffered through an equally long and devastating public relaâ€" tions pitch on my favourite city back East in the golâ€" den triangle. > â€" I didn‘t think I want to get into a comparison beâ€" tween Waterloo and Vancouver. After all it is the peoâ€" ple who make the important differences, and I don‘t know that many on the West Coast yet. I suppose we should conceed that Vancouver does have the mounâ€" tains and the ocean, while we have Kitchener. And they‘ve got us on the water supply. I have it from a very reliable contact in their meteorological service that Vancouver can count on an endless source of water from all sides â€" and a good deal from above. When we get down to serious discussions I‘m sure politicians and civil servants across B.C. will be franâ€" tically searching ways to stifle my unsolicited lecâ€" tures on the efficiency and diligence of Waterloo‘s public servants. They‘ve made newswriting damned difficult at times; no scandals, no colossal blunders, not even a reasonable amount of financial misâ€" management. Hell, even in Toronto the councillors help out by wearing shorts and sneakers to city hall. They‘re not hired for certain jobs because of their color, he claimed, and they don‘t have equal educaâ€" tional opportunities. â€" s c The Klan official also elaimed that he and his coâ€" horts were quite prepared to take up arms against nonâ€"whites and the government of the United States. You see, the Klan apparently blames the government for racial problems and allowing so many different races into the country. Brilliant, no* And he told the interviewer that the group was swelling in numbers every year. Believe it or not, children below 16 are actually recruited into the orâ€" ganization and taught the basics of racial prejudice Bigotry. Hatred. Before I heard this interview, I felt lunatic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were far removed from our lifestyle. Geographically I guess that‘s true. But what scares hell out of me is the fact that lunatics like the one I heard even live on the same continent as we do I know there is racial prejudice everywhere â€" inâ€" cluding our beloved Waterloo. That‘s a social problem that hass been with us for centuries and, unfortunately will probably remain But the type of wellâ€"organized madness represented by the Ku Klux Klan is much worse than prejudice British Empire. allowed the beginning of the massive international communism, and by its punitive peace terms. laid the foundations for World War II That one produced as little. or less It vaulted Rusâ€" sia and the U S. into the great confrontation that has been going on ever since. It wrote finis to the British Empire and reduced that sturdy people to a drained impoverished. thirdâ€"class power It split Europe down the middle between two philosophies. communism and capitalism It launched on the world the final weaâ€" pon by which mankind could wrnite kaput to his own species Has it smartened anybody up"? Not exactly Today we have Iranians beating on Kurds. Chinese glaring at Russians. Cambodians hammering Laotians. blacks fighting blacks all over Africa. Jews and Palestinians toeing off. dictatorships in South America. India in turmoil. revolution in Central America. frishmen blowing up each other with giddyv abandon. old Uncle Tom Cobley and all We don‘t seem to learn much. do we? The United Nations. a noble idea. conceived with a touch of the greatness man can aspire to. is a joke. albeit an exâ€" pensive one. merely a political soundingâ€"board for Getting Ann to move out of the old stone farmhouse 32 Bill Smiley § wnamm.mvom 17, 1979 â€" Page2 If I can scramble a bit of what I hear in the comâ€" mercials â€" memories are like long distance phone calls, the next best thing to being there â€" then we‘re going to be all right. The Waterloo years have been jammed full of good memories. Goodbye. to set up shop in a modern backsplit hanging on the edge of a mountain was a breeze compared to the flack I‘m going to catch from 10â€"yearâ€"old Tony for not moving closer to Waterlooâ€"Arena, Bechtel Park and Seagram Stadium. Apparently the Vancouver Lions, Canucks and Whitecaps don‘t sit as high on the sports totem pole as their counterparts in Waterloo. Jenny‘s no problem. She has her heroes and favourite teams, but she‘s only five. And girls are kinda fickle anyway. If Tony is too disappointed with the move I might play a few bars of Abba singing Waterloo after each Canuck goal we see on TV. Maybe we should have moved to Boston; at least they‘d have the same coâ€" lours. I can‘t remember off hand what colour sweaters Vancouver has, but with my luck it‘s probaâ€" bly purple and green, or some combination that wouldn‘t fool even Jenny into believing she was watching the Siskins. Trying to fool them isn‘t such a good idea anyway. We‘re moving and that‘s that. It‘s not a social problem, but a social sickness. SO LONG Losing a coâ€"worker is never easy. And with a small, fairly closeâ€"knit organization like this one, it‘s even harder. As you‘ll read on this page, Geoff Hoile is leaving the Chronicle for the warmer clume of British Columâ€" bia. I‘m sure 1 speak for the rest of our staff and Geoff‘s avid readers when i wish he and his family the best I know 1‘ certainly miss Geoff‘s personality around the office, though he‘s been known to be a trifle strange. (What‘s a goodbye note without a corny joke or two? ) I wasn‘t here when Geoff started at the Chronicle but I have been around long enough to know that he always took his job seriously and that trait was obâ€" vious in his work, his relationships with the comâ€" munity and with the staff here. every new pipsqueak nation that wants some publi city, along with plenty of foreign aid The US . which emerged from W W II as a great. powerful and wealthy nation. has been terribly weaâ€" kened. chiefly by its external affairs policies,. or lack of them. and the meddling in foreign affairs of the noâ€" tomous CIA By coincidence, Geoff‘s departure and the beginâ€" ning of my holidays fall on the same day, so both our handsome profiles will be missing from this page next week I‘ll be back, but Geoff won‘t. It won‘t be quite the same, but that‘s another story It had its shining moments. the Marshall Plan to put devastated Europe back on its feet. Kennedy‘s showdown with Kruschev over the Cuban missiles inâ€" stalment . an attempt to make a better deal for blacks in their own country At home right now. the States has a rather panicky President. growing inflation and unemployment. belâ€" ligerent blacks and hardline unions. and a recession on the horizon Abroad. it has lost a great deal of credibility. and seems to be pushed around by anyâ€" body who has plenty of oil But these were flawed by other events and attiâ€" tudes: the backing of rightâ€"wing dictators around the world. the loss of face in Korea: the treatment of Cuba . the meddling in the affairs of other nations . the fairly indiscriminate supplying of arms to anybody who could pay for them. and finally. the abortive. badlyvâ€"burnedâ€"fingers mess of Viet Nam