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

9| W aterloo C hronicle | T hursday,June 28,2018 w aterloochronicle.ca This is a tale of two cit- ies, separated by 100 or so kilometres of road. Over the past two weeks, I travelled to Toron- to three times, once for a play, once for work, once for the Rotary Internation- al Convention. In all cases, I was headed downtown. But the game of trains, bus- es and automobiles that I played to get there was dif- ferent, each time. My daughter and I went to see Mirvish Productions' Come From Away - you must go - at the Royal Alex- andra Theatre (King Street West) on a Wednesday af- ternoon. We would normal- ly drive, but the last few times we have attended an afternoon matinee, the downtown traffic has made a timely exit from the city flat out impossible. So we plotted a new route. We left Waterloo at 9:30 a.m., headed to Alder- shot station in Hamilton. Our plan was to park there, to hop on the GO Lake- shore train, to Union Sta- tion. However, our plans were thwarted when we could not find one free parking spot at Aldershot, leaving us checking our Google Maps app for the fastest route to the next sta- tion, Burlington. Off we went, back on the 403, to our next possible stop. We briefly considered abandoning our plan, but the thought of that end of day snarl in Toronto kept us focused on our task. We squeaked into one of the last remaining surface parking spots in the Bur- lington GO parking lot - their parking garage was chock full - then hustled our tail feathers to the sta- tion. We caught our original train, paying $22 each for our return trip to Union Station. Once there, we easily walked to the thea- tre. We were home, in Wa- terloo, by 8 p.m. A long day. A few days later, I drove in to the city for a work commitment. As we do, I did the calculation - if I leave at 4 p.m., it will take at least two hours. If I leave at 6 p.m., it might be faster. If I leave at 10 p.m., I'll cruise in. My map app told me that I was driving 109 km, yet it felt like 250 km, especially on the way home, a few days later. That drive home was a bumper to bumper conga line of cars. I lis- tened to podcasts. I sang, loudly, to myself. I won- dered how much time and money was being wasted, right there, right then, (the answer: A lot!) A few days later, I found myself on the road back to Toronto. This time, I wanted to leave my car at home, so I hitched a lift to the airport, hopped on the UP Express ($12) and rolled into town. By far the easiest option, if you have someone who wants to waste their day by driv- ing you to the airport. As I write this, I am boarding a Greyhound bus ($17.50) back to Kitchener, then I'll take a cab home. We shall see how that goes! Bottom line on this ex- periment? We need better - more connections and ca- pacity - transit options to Toronto. Full stop. - Karen Scian is the co- founder of the Talent Busi- ness Solutions, an educator and a community advo- cate. She is also chair of the Waterloo Public Li- brary Board. You can email her at bein- scian@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter@karen- scian. OPINION Not a lot of good options to get to Toronto We need to build better connections to this region says Karen Scian KAREN SCIAN Column I've always dreamed of finding a rare copy of the Beatles' album Yesterday and Today with the infa- mous "butcher cover," with the Fab Four dressed in butcher smocks and draped in doll parts and raw meat, considered one of the holy grails of record collecting. That's why I struck up a conversation this past week with Jeff Barber, owner of Sonic Boom Re- cords in downtown Toron- to, when he was visiting Market Road Antiques in Waterloo. He told me how copies of Yesterday and Today- with the avant-garde cover hit store shelves on June 20, 1966 and was recalled a day later. "The 'butcher cover' art- work was sent over from England and then Capitol U.S. got a hold of the art- work and started to print it, and someone else said, 'Wait a minute, you can't put this out, this is going to be very offensive to a lot of people,'" said Barber, own- er of the largest indepen- dent record store in Cana- da. "So, they immediately issued a recall and got a bunch of them back and started pasting them over with what they call the 'trunk cover' with the Beat- les sitting around a steam- er trunk." Barber said that collec- tors like him are always on the hunt for the so-called "trunk cover" version, oc- casionally finding copies at garage sales and thrift shops given up by people who have no idea the butcher cover is hiding un- derneath. I was fascinated to learn there are three different versions of the butcher cover collectors are seek- ing. "There's the first state- version, which never had that paste-over, so it had the original artwork on it, and those are pretty much the rarest ones," said Bar- ber. "And, quite different than a lot of Beatles al- bums, the stereo version is rarer than the mono ver- sion, so a first-state stereo version is crazy sought-af- ter, I think now going for $30,000 to $50,000, with very few of those out there. "Then the second-state that has the paste-over, those are getting rarer and rarer as more and more people are peeling the cov- er off of those, and finding those in very good condi- tion, and then the third state is where somebody has peeled the cover to re- veal the original cover." I asked Barber if he had any "butcher covers" in his collection. "I have three second- states that have the cover on them, and three third- states that have been peeled in various condi- tions, but no first-states," he said. Like any sought-after rarities, the value of the butcher cover will only in- crease over time, and my dream of adding one to my record collection will like- ly remain just a dream. But before you take a box of your dusty old LPs to the thrift shop after clean- ing out your attic, you might want to check for a certain Beatles album. You could be sitting on a gold mine. - Marshall Ward is a freelance writer and artist. Email is welcome at mar- shall_ward@hotmail.com. You might be sitting on a gold mine Rare album covers like the Beatles 'butcher cover' is the Holy Grail of collecting says Marshall Ward MARSHALL WARD Column Re: Vandalism of rain- bow crosswalk Just a thought about the rainbow cross walk. Firstly, you say it was paid for by the City of Wa- terloo - but did you mean by to say by the Waterloo tax- payers? More importantly for people of faith a rainbow was used to show God's fa- vour and reconciliation with his people. Do you understand the insult to those of who love God? Don't be so religio- phobic. It is right to live and let live. Since the LGBQT+ want the right to live as they choose, so do people to whom God's love is impor- tant. By the way, maybe the person driving the car was just driving a little fast and didn't notice the rainbow on the ground. Cecilia Caesar Waterloo Robots may soon walk among us To: AI Expert, Suzanne Gildert Suzanne, I feel that ro- bots are walking among us now. They are called hu- man robots. Thousands of people wake up in the morning, and their robot hand reach- es for their cellphone or iPods. That device stays in their hand till they go to bed at night. During the daytime hours, their life is run by this device. They commu- nicate to their outside world on it. They play games on it. They go to lunch with other people, ev- eryone has their cellphone in one hand, and they eat with the other. They don't talk to one another, be- cause they're texting some- one else in the city. They walk down the streets, heads down, looking into their cell- phone world. They are all into their own small world (robot land). They walk into walls, doors and people among them. No word is said, just bounce off of someone and keep on trucking. Now, you really think that is a good way to live? They are living and act- ing just like robots. The sor- ry part of this is their minds are not being used. The de- vice is their tool of living. Some people are lost with- out this device in their hand. Sad. Well, who's to blame for this? The high-tech work- force. Don Snider Kitchener Don't be religiophobic about rainbow symbol l MORE ONLINE See all our published letters to the editor online at waterloochronicle.ca Letters See what our readers are saying about the issues that matter to them waterloochronicle.ca/letters