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

‘When I heard this. I felt a real surge of something. 1 can‘t ‘Aescribe it in a family journal. What do they think the organ Nor did I set off any fireworks. We have those practically every day around our house. and they don‘t cost a penny. It was so moving that I had to go to the bathroom. Espeâ€" cially when the CBC types involved in reporting the whole dump job kept telling us that it was just peachyâ€"dandy that we now had an official national anthem. O Canada. While the rest of you were winging around the country. smashing up and down the highways. belting about in a boat. or whining because you hadn‘t got the Monday off instead of the Tuesday. I. like a good citizen. stayed home and had sober thoughts on Dominion Day. Canada Day. or the Firsta July. as we called it when I was a kid. I even put them down on paper. What I did was slump before the slob machine and listen to a flood of flatulence from a posse of politicians who dogâ€" gedly dragged out every old chestnut that had already been opened and exposed as wormy. It‘s difficult to write something succinct. sincere. and sentimental when you have a lump in your eves and tears in vour throat. But I tried. 1 Like most moribund Canadians. I didn‘t run into the back yard and run the whateverâ€"itâ€"is up the flagpole. We don‘t have a flagpole. The nearest we come is a cedar post that holds one end .of the clothesâ€"line. the other end of which is attached to a cedar tree. E Not only hope but anticipation of the future. My anticipaâ€" tions are a huge heating bill. higher taxes and worse arthriâ€" tis. Our immense size. The Incredible Hulk® Our vast riches. Mostly owned by foreign companies. Our confidence in the future. Of the Canadian dollar? Our unity in diversity . Albertans letting us freeze and Quebecois letting us do it in the dark? And so on and on and on. BILL SMILEY Another, lost in a world of his own., sits silently until the 4th bar. then leaps to his feet and begins to disco. For at least a decade. our Olympic athletes have stood. hand on heart. listening to what they thought was our naâ€" tional anthem. Tears have flowed freely over that repetitive song. written about a hundred years ago by a couple of guys nobody ever heard of. but who weren‘t Rodgers and Hamâ€" merstein. has been playing at hockey games for years. while the players ‘slouched around at the blue line. scratched their jocks. .chewed gum. and looked bored. One knocks her entire math set to the floor. stoops to pick it up. and is aided by classmates who kick calculator. set squares and compass in all directions. A third rises with the speed of an anaconda emerging from a deep freeze. leans on the windowâ€"sill and watches the dog across the street doing his business. A fourth is back down at her desk and scratching obsceniâ€" ties on it before we hit the second. "We stand on guard..." What do they think the kids in my classroom have done every morning for the past few years. just before the prinâ€" cipal‘s announcements that we beat Hayfork Centre yesterâ€" day in basketball, and that the Christianâ€"Mosliem Fellowship Group is meeting at 4.05 beneath any cars left in the parking lot. and then says. "Please rise for our national anthem.""? I‘ll tell you what happens. A doleful dirge which even the kids know is O Canada comes over the P.A. system. We all respond. I stand like a guardsman. chin in. chest out. ‘ollow back. thumbs aligned with the seams of my trousers. Encouraged by my stance. the kids also eagerly respond to the stirring tune and inspired lyrics that fill them with pride. hope. conâ€" fidence and such. Now. by an act of parliament, to which all parties agreed. Thoughts on Dominion Day Waterloo and Kitchener, two cities that have been together in many ways since the Pennsylvania Dutch first setâ€" tled in this area, face an imminent rift in their relationship. A Waterloo presently pays Kitchener a flat rate of $2.54 a mile for transit serâ€" vice. Over the period of one year this amounts to a staggering threeâ€"quarters of a million dollars‘ These residents got together to form a delegation, select a spokesman, petition their neighbors and put together a proâ€" posal for presentation to the city. Mayors Carroll and Rosenberg are rattling their sabres over transit service in the two municipalities. _ The recent transitâ€"related unheaval began when residents in the Maple Heights subdivision in the north end of Waterloo requested bus service to their neighborhood . A recent survey conducted by the resiâ€" dents showed 36 students and 206 famiâ€" lies would be using the proposed bus serâ€" vice. â€" Waterloo, afttr much deliberation, backed the residents‘ proposal and forâ€" warded a request to Kitchener for an exâ€" tension of the Route 4 Glasgow St. bus to serve those living im Maple Heights, Maple Hills, Glasgow Heights and Westâ€" vale Meadows. Somehow along the way this message seems to have gotten mislaid or watered down in its presentation to Kitchener council. I tend to agree with Mayor Marjorie Carroll‘s.comment that Kitchener Tranâ€" sit misrepresented Waterloo‘s need for extended service into the subdivision. She claims transit staff underestimatâ€" ed the potential number of riders and the size of the area that would be served. Mayor Rosenberg claims his duty is to the citizens of Kitchener and they shouldn‘t be asked to make any sacriâ€" fices in service just to ‘‘satisfy a few people in Waterloo." It‘s apparent that Rosenberg hasn‘t studied the statistics from the neighâ€" borhood survey. And what kind of sacriâ€" fice is he talking about? It boils down to an extra five minutes tacked on to the present bus run‘ _ Five minutes is a long time to be stuck on a bus â€" much like bouncing around in a dryâ€"docked submarine â€" but it‘s not Morley‘s out of whack ‘ And I love that song. I must admit I had a certain leaning toward the other old one â€" the Maypull Lee. that we all learned in public school. The second line goes: ~Fourembâ€" lumdeer." But it‘s long gone. and I doubt if there are many Canadians who would remember. or dare. to sing. ‘*Wolfe. the dauntless hero came..." What the heck. We can always depend on our money . I just checked my wallet. Sure enough. there was the Queen. lookâ€" ing not a day over twenty. But what‘s this? Horrors? On a ten dollar bill was John A.. looking as though he‘d never had anything but a Canada Dry in his life. Even worse. on a fiver. was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. looking like Pierre Trudeau without being through Margaret. £ . And the whole wallet would have bought me a box of strawberries. a quart of rye. and a gallon of maple syrup. Oh. Canada‘ because it didn‘t involve the building of a new post office. the paving of some highways. the funding of some losing inâ€" dustry. or the cutting down of some trees to make a new naâ€" tional parking lot. we have an Official National Anthem. Our national emblem is the beaver. a large rat which specializes in cutting down trees. building dams which flood farmers® fields. and doing nothing whatever for anybody exâ€" cept other beavers. Don‘t get me wrong: I‘m not being cynical. I think the beaver is a fine animal. if you like fat rats. Some of my best friends are beavers. * I love our flag. too. Every time I see a Canadian flag that has been out in the weather for a week. something sweeps through me â€" like a desire to mop up the kitchen counter. It figures. We don‘t move too fast in Canada. but we move. It took us only 100 years to beget a national flag. It is a maple leaf . a piece of toliage remarkable by its absence in about 95 per cent of the country. Waterioo Chronicle, Wednesday, July 30, 1980 â€" Page 7 STEWART SUTHERLAND I really wouldn‘t want to see Waterloo drop its present rental of service from Kitchener, but if our citizens continue to get the dirty end of the stick from our neighbors I can think of no other alternaâ€" _tive but to launch a Waterloo owned and operated service. . It would prove to be a costly experienâ€" ce but at least we‘d be getting service for our payment rather than the present payment for abuse system. Waterloo should have more input into the affairs of Kitchener Transit. Preâ€" sently the city has two representatives on the transit advisory committee, but it‘s a rather impotent representation at that. The committee may only put forward suggestions and is in no way involved in the policyâ€"making procedure. enough to deptive hundreds of taxâ€"payâ€" ing residents from getting much needed transit service. *:, I wonder what the good mayor of Kitchener would say if he learned‘ that many of the students in the area under discussion attend school in his city or that many of the adults are employed in Kitchener? Several residents have complained about having to walk nearly a mile to catch a bus and spending an hour to get to their destination. Rosenberg would probably react by telling them that he used to wrap newspapers around his shins using jar rings to hold them in place and then set out on a crossâ€"country trip just to go to the outhouse when he was a kid. . I do think, however, that Waterloo made a mistake by not having one df its own representatives make the presentaâ€" tion to Kitchener. What we got instead was a wateredâ€"down version of the facts presented by Kitcherer Transit officials who have their own interests, and those of Kitchener, at heart. I think the presentation would have had more of an impact if it would have been laid out by a member of Waterloo council. After all, we‘re paying $750,000 for transit service. and that‘s no drop in the bucket! * He seems to have all the answers, and in this situation he‘d more than likely suggest they all move to Kitchener.