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High tobacco taxes will encourage criminal activity overnment encouraged crimiâ€" al activity by hiking taxes to discourage smokers. The moment Queen‘s Park came down with a new budget, the outboards were dusted off, the hulls checked for leaks and tanks filled with petrol as the aramda prepared to set sail from the south shore of the St. Lawrence. Smugglers will have a field day but too will those who "sin" as they can now buy a carton for less than what they paid before the $9â€"aâ€"carâ€" ton increase, thanks to car trunks full of contraband. Waterloo citizens need a new library While statistics show a rise in the price of smokes translates into a drop in the number puffing, it‘s difficult to take seriously governments who pockâ€" et 75 per cent of the price of a pack while trumpeting their knightâ€"inâ€"shinâ€" ingâ€"armour status for coming to the Continued from page 8 Such a vision for a library was popular at the turn of the last century, when books were stored in crowded, narrow, dark "stacks" beyond public access. Such a plan for a library perâ€" sisted into the middle of the last cenâ€" tury, when in my boyhood I would visit the San Francisco public library on Saturday mornings and learned about worlds beyond my neighbourâ€" hood. I would present my book requests to a stern librarian who would then forward them to what 1 had always imagined were trolls scurâ€" rying through the multiâ€"storied stacks behind forbidding gates. This is a library for troglodytes. It is ideal as a repository of books, but it is not a people‘s library. In the end, a library is not about books; it is about people. It serves only as a vast repository of knowlâ€" edge, it allows us to share both knowlâ€" edge and expertise. I see the modern library as a place where continuing education is offered to young and old alike. 1 see a place where those who are without means can come to read and come to find information from around the world through the Interâ€" net. I see a place where new Canadiâ€" ans are offered help in acclimating to You said it QUESTION WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS SUMMER? rescue of our health and healthâ€"care Forget about the bullâ€"inâ€"theâ€"chinaâ€" shop approach to snuffing out the filthy habit; throw out the ridiculous pictures of rotting lungs on cigarette packs and stop profiting from "sin"‘. Establish a think tghk and discover that the more difficult it is to get someâ€" thing the more valuable it becomes; the more you force folks to do what they don‘t want to do, the more resentâ€" ful and bitter they become, wanting to fight back Rather than a negative approach, drop the price of smokes, issue a license to buy cigarettes and watch the problem go up in smoke. Driving a car, like smoking, is a hazardous activiâ€" ty. So we‘ve made it tough for kids starting out to finally secure a license, believing that education is the key to Mn B s h. their new society. I see a place where students struggling with today‘s curâ€" riculum can come for tutorial help. I see experts, both retired people and working professionals, providing guidance and advice, using a model that Communitech has made so sucâ€" cessful for our local highâ€"tech comâ€" munity. All of this requires rooms, equipment and facilities beyond what the current main library is equipped to offer, even if it were expanded a bit. And although branch libraries in the future will provide more convenient access to books for those of us in the outlying areas of the city, it is beyond what branch libraries befitting a city of our size can offer. These services are not a radical departure from the role of a library. Other public libraries offer such serâ€" vices, but not Waterloo. The proposal by the library board provides for these needs. In a new facility operated jointly by the Waterâ€" loo public library and the YMCA, the two groups complement each other in the mission of public education. Our needs are immediate and pressing. In times when provincial cutbacks have all but shut down school libraries, the public library serves as a refuge of last resort for our "I‘m going on lots of trips and stuff." "I‘m going to England for three weeks." O THE CHRONICL Hugh O‘Brien Isidora Rovic COMMENT responsible driving. A requirement for your cigarette license is that you spend five hours of class time taught by teachers pulling no punches. They will outline the hazards of being a smoke stack and will require you pass a diffiâ€" cult test to ensure you know the risks ofindulging. But the final and by far the most important license requirement is that you visit a cancer ward filled with dying smokers. The visitors will be required to minister to the needs of the patients on two separate visits learning the ins and outs of the selfâ€" inflicted disease. You don‘t ultimately stop people smoking by spanking their wallet, but by using the most powerful weapon known to man â€"fear. ® students. If we see fit to invest in our own community and we choose to grow our centres of knowledge and learning, the library board‘s plan will be implemented in stages over a long 14 years. In the meantime, children entering our school system today will continue to suffer with facilities that many have called substandard and won‘t even see the completion of the expansions by the time they graduate. For this generation, it may already be In the end, this community desâ€" perately requires a new facility to meet current and future needs. We take such pride, and justifiably so, in hosting two fine universities and a wonderful college, and in serving as the international headquarters for some of the leading technology comâ€" panies in the world. In large part, we are a city of the future, a city of know!lâ€" edge workers. How ironic it would be for us to not even provide basic and adequate sources of knowledge and expertise to our own community. We should do no less than move forward with the joint library/YMCA proposal as a strong foundation for our current and future needs. "I‘m going to my Grandma‘s in Windsor." "I‘m going to my cottage for two weeks, and then I‘m going to a lot of day camps." Stuart Bennet Alyssa Foster ral Andrewsâ€"Leslie‘s review of the current production at Stratford ‘ of Shakespeare‘s Henry VI cycle of plays ("Never a dull moment as ie Henrys take Stratford Festival‘s Torn Patterson stage," June 26) is vitiated by the commonest solecism in writing about the Bard‘s works: "(Gloucester) gives the horrified audience a calculating and convincing hint of things to come as he closes the *Revolt* with the chilling words, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent. ..‘" I am not speaking of Andrewsâ€"Leslie‘s fumbling (and, charitably, I hope unintentional) pun, but of the famous words the reviewer (and apparently the reviewed production) quotes from Richard III. They are, granted, the first words in that play (and, as it happens, the first words uttered by Alec Guinness at the first Stratford Festival), but they are not the first construable words; in fact, they are the first misconâ€" struable words of the play, to many in a modern audience. Chronicle reviewer ; misconstrues Shakespeare‘s words Gloucester‘s first sentence reads, "Now is the winter of our disconâ€" tent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York;/And all the clouds that lour‘d upon our house/in the deep bosom of the ocean buried." The modern English ear (or eye) wants, when hearing (or seeing) the first seven words of that sentence, to understand Gloucester to be saying, "This moment, right now, is the winter of our discontent" â€" and then has to scramble to make sense of the rest of the sentence, having premaâ€" turely settled on the meaning of the first part of its first clause. But Shakeâ€" speare here means, "The winter of our discontent is now made (transâ€" farmed into) summer by this sun (of course punning on "son") of York, and the clouds that hung over our house (family, dynasty) are now buried in the deep bosom of the ocean." Shakespeare places the "now" first both to emphasize it and to allow the word, with wonderful econoâ€" my, to govern (in the grammatical sense) both of the verbs in the senâ€" tence. I cannot count the number of times 1 have heard or read this truncatâ€" ing of the passage after "discontent," thus forcing the "now," in the minds of the unwary or untutored, to modify the wrong word. Simply extending the quotation to the following eight words would at least give the reader the opportunity to try to work out the correct meaning. (If the production reviewed quoted only the first seven words without some dramatical justification of the truncation, then shame on its director!) Shakespeare‘s richly constructed sentences may sometimes be challengâ€" ing, but that is no excuse for perpetuating allâ€"tooâ€"frequent misunderâ€" standings of their meaning. Firearms are inherently dangerous consumer products The horrible shooting in Grimsby on June 14, that left five dead and devastated a community, raises serious issues and conâ€" cerns. Canadian law governing the security and storage of firearms should, indeed, have been enough to prevent those tragedies. Guns are an efficient way to kill: almost half (46 per cent) of vicâ€" tims shot with guns will die. The proportion of completed suicides is highest with a firearm (92 per cent). Guns are easy to use and rather impersonal. Medical experts say it takes a less wellâ€"informed motive to shoot someone than to beat someone to death. Ready access to guns makes it easier to become a killer. Firearms are inherently dangerous consumer products. On a perâ€"use basis, guns wreak more havoc, injury and death than any other consumer product. Significant public resources are directed to promoting traffic safety and fire safety â€" with impressive results. In contrast, although guns are far more deadly on a perâ€"use basis than automobiles, they are, in general, subject to fewer restrictions and far fewer resources have been devoted to reducing deaths and injuries associated with their use. Between 1970 and 2000, guns killed over 40,000 people in this country â€" more than the 39,000 Canadian soldiers who died in the Second World War. Gunâ€"related deaths and injuries aredinked to a complex set of factors, including the culture of violence. Strict gun control, prediâ€" cated on a commitment to public health and safety as well as the detection and deterrence of criminal activity, is a critical part of the solution. Education to reduce the primary demand is also fundaâ€" mental. Without question, Bill Câ€"68, the federal government‘s gun con trol legislation, will not end all violent encounters. However, if government can make it harder for people to kill and injure not only each other but themselves, it is certainly acting in the public interest. THE CHRONICLI Emileâ€"J. Therien, Canada Safety Council president