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

Second Class Mail Registration Number PAGE 6 â€" A much deserved thank you! That‘s exactly what Waterloo city council forwarded Monday night when they officially commended the city‘s finance department and commissioner Don Schaefer for his "aggressive yet conservative‘"‘ attitude in investigating avenues for investment of city funds. Aggressive and conservative at the same time to some may sound somewhat incongruous, yet that‘s exactly what Schaefer was as he thoroughly researched possibilities before deciding to invest city surplus funds primarily with chartered institutions rather than with trust companies. Of course the latter are currently enduring some of the most trying times in their history due to the adverse publicity surrounding the government seizure of Crown, Greymac and Seaway Trust companies after a suspicious and controversial series of transactions involving 11,000 apartment units in Toronto. mc L l4 â€" Apnoonn ie e nte ind uhuididibutctainiharind tssc nt uic in dn nhen en tintt The government takeover of these companies, and subsequent investigation of their entire operations, has uncovered any number of horror stories citing alleged mismanagement and improper business practices that whether valid or invalid have cast a shadow over the entire trust company structure in this country. bfodionlifdinc ooes oaln o i t id Of greater local impact is the fact the Region of Waterloo and city ‘of Kitchenerâ€" have a total investment _of approxiâ€" mately $3 million with Crown Trust, at a time when Consumer Minister Robert Elgie is introducing legislation attempting to allow him to transfer the trust company to new owners. It is no laughing matter that both Kitchener and the Region have sweating hands waiting out the conclusion to this sordid tale. Nor can they really be blamed for utilizing what they considered a sound outlet for maximizing their investment returns. But the revelations of recent weeks just stand as further proof that economically speaking, it is tough in this day and age to "trust" any significant gamble. That our city fathers, particularly Don Schaefer, obviously . realized that, is another feather in their cap, and one certainly due the recognition it received. SORRY if my eight or nine faithful readers missed a column. ‘Twere the fault of the ‘flu. I can usually belt out a column regardless of weather, wife, or nuclear explosions, the latter two being much alike, but this time I was laid lower than a grasshopper‘s anus, right from before Christmas through the New Year. Must be getting old and soft. It‘s hard to turn out a column of deathless, sometimes desperate prose when your brain is like putty, your fingers are like dough, and your legs like clay sticks, while your stomach is making like a cement mixture and producing something much like cement. 1 can usually find a topic this time of year: a savage attack on the Canadian winter. But 1 can‘t even do that. Christmas was warmer than August, warmer than England, according to a colleague who was there, and superior to Puerto Rico, where it rained and rained and blew the palm trees horizontal, according to anâ€" other colleague who went off for ‘"a week in the sun."‘ And serves her right. Despite my decrepitude, I tried to struggle through. Have you ever played chess or Monopoly with a bright eightâ€" yearâ€"old who can beat you at either, even when you‘re in top shape? C SS gen on ts Genls mar \I f se I Hav'ev;(; ever tried to repair broken WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, BILL r SMILEY | tegistration Number 5540 established 1854 published every Wednesday by Fairway Press, a division of Kitchenerâ€"Waterloo Record Ltd., owner 225 Fairway Rd.S., Kitchener, Ont. Whew Waterloo Chronicle office is located in the Harper . Haney and White Law Office Building (rear entrance, upper floor). Parking at the rear > of the building. Open Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m address correspondence to Waterloo office: 45 Erb St. E., Waterloo, Ont. N2J 1L7, telephone 886â€"2830 toys on Christmas morning with a sharp sixâ€"yearâ€"old when your hands are shaking with the ague and your mind is fixed on your next spurt to the bathr(_)om? Have you ever coped with a wife who moans, "But you always make the dressâ€" ing and help me with the gravy!", when all you want to do is crawl into a hole, cover yourself with something, even dressing, and quietly expire? I compromised. In the shape of an octogenarian leper who has just had a massive stroke, I stuffed the ruddy beast, trussed it, and jammed it into the oven, before collapsing. But 1 got my revenge on those who had frittered around making cups of tea while I labored over the creature. Told them I‘d spit on my hands before 1 mixed the stuffing. That almost, but not quite, threw them off their Christmas dinner. I nibbled a bit of ‘fluâ€"filled stuffing, proclaimed it excellent, and they ate like pigs. _ It was only through the greatest fortiâ€" tude that I was able to get a little brandy down, now and again, to keep Death at His distance. _ But it wasn‘t all bad. It never is, if you keep your pecker up. No small chore in these days of economic and political gloom. _ Because of my condition, I let the old girl make all the Christmas telephone calls to old friends and relatives. That probably Publisher: Paul Winkler Manager: Bill Karges Editor: Rick Campbell "Whatever I‘m doing, they can‘t get used to it yet." It is written * HEY HONEY, COME HERE , Pay Ttv reaucy 1& entertaiming We en _ _ _ 08 , esd ppmaamtmizsnaret cost me about $200, as she has a propensity to believing that longâ€"distance calls are made to somebody just around the corner, even when they‘re six hundred miles away, and can chat amiable for half an hour about sweet fanny adams. And I managed to totter to the telephone on New Year‘s Eve and talk to a couple of old turkeys who joined the air force the day I did. I could have saved my breath, what was left of it, on that one. They were in worse shape than I was. And they didn‘t have the ‘flu. # Got some cards from old friends: Don McCuaig, asking me to come and help him dig a hole in the ice for fishing, up in the Ottawa Valley; the Cadogans of New Brunswick, telling me to get that book published. Exactly the kinds of activities 1 felt like. â€" * But don‘t worry, chaps. We‘ll get some of those treout yet, McCuaig, even if we have to use dynamite. And we‘ll get that book written yet, Cadogans. Even if we have to use a computer, a shost writer and a team of doctors. Missed my usual card from Major McEwen, who teaches playing the bagâ€" pipes in California, if you can imagine anything more incongruous. He was a mere 84 last Christmas, so he may be slowing down. e e veome _ But my old pal in Westport didn‘t fail me. He signs his cards only, ‘"Your TV Here‘s this year‘s: ‘"Merry Christmas Smiley and lots more. Thank you for another year of your cheerful wit. I can‘t imagine anyone enjoying your column more than I go. Don‘t you dare to retire. The world needs you and you do a lot of good. Some day when 1 get over being silly and the swelling goes down in my head, I‘ll let the air out of my ego and write you a bragging letter that will make B.S. smell like roses. In the meantime, stay just like you are and I‘ll keep buying any paper, that carrtes your column."‘ Repairman‘‘, but they always come through. Earthy but uplifting. It atmost ended my ‘fMu. One of these days I‘m going to hire a private eye and track the ould divel down. My Christmas tree, erected in fifteen minutes by a friend who arrived suddenly and cheerfully, while celebrating an anniâ€" versary, didn‘t fall down. My grandchilâ€" dren still love me ... 1 haven‘t been fired, despite due cause. My wife hasn‘t left me, despite due cause. All in all, despite the ‘Nu, not too bad. I even got a refund from National Revenue. It took only from April to late December to find their error. I‘m almost healthy again. The only thing I‘m dreading at the moment, is the arrival of my Chargex account for December. Listowel Cyclione Junior B hockey coach John Gross, when asked what system his players are having trouble conforming to. â€" SEE PAGE 23.