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Cl'ii?tiriicle "_', Aller months and months of delays, the sale of Waterloo Town Square IS stdl up in the air. And that's goi some folks specu- lating that somethings gone very wrong with the deal, _ Remember a tune when little Halloweeners meant something when they wrapped on your door gleefully clurping the phrase "Tan or Treat"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesnt that festive little greeting mean, and I'm paraphrasing here, "give us some candy or else"? A spokesperson for First Gulf has said "some functional things" have to be resolved, one of them being price Surely Canada Lk Assurance, the mally cumm owners, and First Gulf could have haggled am a Imce by now -- they've been deal- wk, last Suida/night land my Jan. N been out G the pumpkin patch on Highway 7 the day before, and picked out the perfect spec- when. A big, bright orange, perfectly mund beauty, she was. And I Cn ii' home il, ieork In)! magic. Aitir several practise sketches on a notepad, I took knife in hand and carved out a sheer more than one to a customer, 1 might add. But he little, um, ghouls tricked me none the less. They took my candles - even the trendy wrought-iron lizard one that you put a tea-light candle behind to make it glow all spooky-like. I could understand the petty theft if! had not been doling out the goods or, worse yet, been handing out those disgusting brown chewy things wrapped up in orange and black wax paper. But this was unprovoked. AMI mama Oh, and another thing. UNICEF has my deepest concerns if the trick-or-tmatters that came to my door Sunday are typical, In the first place, very few carried boxes, Some, after getting what they'd really come for, had to be reminded that they were in fact carrying boxes. "Do you want some money for UNICEF?" I'd ask. "What?" (blank look) "Oh, yeah." But the topper - the grand daddy Whopper - was the kid who asked me for money for UNICEF but wasnt carryinga UNICEF box, Yeah, right kid. What am l, some kind of Chump? sJniia year, I'm turning curmudgeon. The/en be no trip to the pumpkin patch. There'll be no carved masterpieces, And there'll Cer- tainly be no wrought-iron candle? 75 King St. South, Suite 201 Waterloo, Ontario, N2) IPI Phone: 886-1830 Farr; "6-9383 [and]: wchronic1eeseruex.net EIIIIIIIIIl Hick, if thefre Tucky, I'll tum the porch light on, Imam-l Stand-rd Sen-I Numb- ISSN mm mm my lucked even "mull they were heeled Tm... i:ii9"iiirrjii" What's the hold-up? masterpiece which, by the way, looked nothing like the sretfes, _ K I spent at least half an hour fmding just the right candle to illuminate my creation - one that would give " enough light without setting the top of Mr, Googlie's (dont ask) head ablaze. Placing him by the front door, I thought a few more candles scattered around the railings of my porch might make the exhibit that bit more eerie. Yup, it looked great. Then I waited for dusk. And they came. They yelled "Trick or treat" and I happily treated And none of that cheap crap either. We're talking chocolate bars and potato chips. And mg since June, for heaven's sake Now city council is scheduled to approve the sale of the land sur- rounding the mall at Its next meet- ing. But if the other two players haven't worked things out by then, council will be in a very tough position. It then has to decide whether to pul thrngs on hold - again - or scrap the deal allo- gether. We've seen " before, And if somebody doesnt move last, the name First Gulf will become syn- onymous with Torgan and Cmbar. _- = > N q, - h' f A; s a. T, .. 'err,'.' Edy . i - 3. Q a V © = “in: t.:‘ 2 t, ""'3‘°. [hills-In t--...,t.,,s,T" fining-7 - _ nun-u nun-4M Jt'W'd'.1. was “which 0““ 'iiiiii%ii, tn“: EEiii EEiEEiiiiB, 'i'iPrfs' IEEE, l. , 1 5” I', , in '-, - A; j, ', _ z . j r, , [£62411 I ii , _ l a" _'if'r1 gm _ f _'" s/ 'ri-', g L" l 1llhgt'll we call 2011: century Fox two months from now? I have a hunch: It's that opponents of that proposed 12- scmn theatre at Erb and Caroline will win on at least some points. _ _ _ . . Gosh, given what other mega-movie houses look like, you can understand an objection on esthetic grounds, let alone considerations of traffic and parking. Oh well, the developers lllink lllcy have problems. What about 20th Century Fox? What are they going to all it two months from now? A On the Curb?: Often I'm as thick as a brick, but 1 must be missing something in the possible elimination of RIDE, the anti-drunk driving pro- It could disappear from Waterloo Region if a provincial grant covering its cost disappears. Huh? Either the program is an appropriate police expense or it's not. Ifit is, it should be continued and fimded out of the police budget like other worthwhile pro- grams. Why discontinue it if ity effective? Or why seek special funding for it? As a matter of fact, police arrested more tipsy drivers during Oktoberfest this year. For every i 40 vehtcles stopped, police nabbed one impaired driver, compared with one for every 98 vehicles in 1997 There may be an explanation: The RIDE program is quite a deterrent and I dont think it got the publicity this year that it had In other years. _ _ The Chnsllnas RIDE program, adequately publicized, has had excellent results, It's frightened a lot of drinking drivers from the roads tie encountered the program only once. lt happened on New Year's Eve smite -jears agd on Hamil- lon's Barton Street. l was drinking no longer. and the stop was courteous and fleeting. - Ili bet I wouldnt feel that way if N had a few belts of oh- be-jolly m me. There's talk again of stiffer penalties, and the RIDE program is a way of making would-be npsy mownsls to think it over. _ SNIFF (ha (Mill LIGII'I‘LY It seems reasonable to continue the roadside checks The average driver will then know that only one more for the road and hell need an Esso map to get to the from door - unless he hits the RIDE program first, Wrong Again: i oJe Waterloo Region council an apology: Recently I wrote that it'd wiggle, squirm, and water down the bylaw banning smoking, in public. places, come January I. a "If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, wnlh all the existing human relations remammg the same, it would look something like the fol, lowing. There would be 57 Asians ... 21 Europeans _.. l4 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south wr' eight Africans. "Fifty-two would be female 'tV 48 would be male .. 70 would be non-white ..t 30 would be white -.. 70 would be non-Chris tian .v. 30 would be Christian -.v SIX people would possess 59 per cent of the wodd's wealth." "Eighty would live m substandard housing _ 70 would be unable to read . 50 would suffer malnutrition .V one would be near death ..e one would be near berth FV. on: (yes, only one) would have a college education 'fe one would own a computer." Ai, yes, half the world doesnt know how the other half manages, and mather does the other half, It's the loughest such bylaw in the province, but the regional council (albeit by a slim margin) stood by its guns. Now if coun- cillors could only work up the same gumir- tion when it comes to regional reform. Say, for years I've been reading about mice getting cancer hom cigarettes. Queen's Park IS finally going to do something about it. As of Monday, it'll be against the law to sell c1ga- mtes to mice. Waterloo Chronicle is published every Wednesday by The Fairway Group a A division of Southam Inc, Small World: LetS thank Dr. Phillip M. Hatter of Stanford University for putting the world in perspective. like so: - The views of our coiummsts are their own and do nul ntccssanly represent the new» of the the newspaper Mailed subscnpnan rates Mn yearly In Canada $00 yearly outside Canada o G S T