Municipalities assume animal control services Vol. 15, No. 51 Wednesday, December 18,1985 32 Pages Have aheart- Volunteer Trudy Ruest,~In Memorium Chairperson of the Whitby Heart and Stroke Foundation is seen recelving the Whitby Charter on Nov. 5 at the An- nual Meeting of the Ontario Heart and Stroke Foundatlon from President R.J. Nober. The Charter will officially come to Whitby in conjunction with the Kick Off of the 1986 Heart and Stroke Campaign, under the Chairmanship of Karl Filo and Jim Gartshore, Business Chairman. Ali persons interested in fighting Canada's number one killer, heart disease, are invited to at- tend a public meeting on Jan. 20, 1986 at 7:30 p.m. in the service training room, 2nd floor, Whitby Police Station, Rossland Rd. Mrs. Erma Wood and her Education Committee will present an informative program and all the last minute details of the February campaign wili be ironed out Shapiro Commission Private school should, be funded By JAN DODGE Free Press Staff Private schools should get $75 million worth of public funding, but there are limits and strings attached. That was the gist of recommendations of the commission on private schools in Ontario outlined by its author, Dr. Bernard Shapiro, at the McLaughlin Library in Oshawa, Dec. 11. Shapiro said, "In my view it is inappropriate to provide funding to any school that would exclude students on any grounds other than academic." He admitted in questioning later that even-this kind of ex- clusion could be a risk. If all the easy-to-serve (academic achievers) went to private system and the hard-to-serve (those outside an academie program) went to the public system which must be law look after their needs, it would create problems for the public system. However, to realize the advantages of a creative approch he said, "we must be willing to risk failure." Public opinion polls show the majority of Ontarions don't want funding of private schools. Shapiro said contrary to popular belief most private schools are not those such as Upper Canada College and Trafalgar Castle which are based on the English system of "private schools" and connected with the social establishment. The majority are religious schools. Three percent of children attend On- tario's 450 private schools, excluding Roman Catholic separate schools. This attendance has doubled in the past 15 years, he said. Shapiro said the strongest argument put forward for funding private schools was one of discrimination. The government cannot con- tinue to offer to Roman Catholic separate schools what it doesn't offer to other:religious schools. That combined with the charter of rights was convincing he said. The opposing argument, that funding private schools would mean a loss of educational opportunity which would destroy using the public schools for social mobility. had merit he said. The commission recommends present- day public schools be called board schools and private schools be called independent SEE PG. 25 By SUSAN LESJAK Free Press Staff The Whitby animal shelter on Thickson Rd. will remain open, despite the Ontario Humane Society's (OHS) decision not to renew its contract for area animal control services next year. Ross Batten, chair- man of the Pickering, Ajax, Whitby Joint Animal Control Com- mittee (the PAW com- mittee), announced Monday that the com- mittee will be taking over animal control for the three towns as of January 1, 1986. The humane society's con- tract expires Dec. 31, 1985. Batten assured repor- ters at Monday's press conference that the facility will operate without interruption and will be staffed by ex- perienced, well-trained personnel. Employees will be hired on a tem- porary basis until long- term alternatives for animal control can be explored, he said. While the committee's plans for January in- clude only five shelter staff and two vans (compared to the 12 employees and four vans currently in use by OHS), Batten said heW does not expect any cut- backs in services. In the past, he ex- plained, the humane society has offered two services: animal con- trol and humane service such as animal adop- tion. Only the former was contracted by Pickering, Ajax and Whitby. The provision of humane services is not regarded as a municipal responsibility. While the PAW com- mittee has pledged to provide "full" animal control service, it has not determined what if any humane services it will provide. Batten does not an- ticipate spending any more for animal control next year than the $164,400 it paid out to the humane society for 1985. SEE PG. 12 Sidewalks plowed butgood When the Town of Whitby announced this fall that it would assume responsibility for sidewalk snow removal throughout the municipality, the public cheered. Despite war- nings that property might be damaged by ploughs or snow inad- vertently pushed into private drives, nothing could quell the public's enthusiasm. Nothing that is except the winter's first snow fall. Town ploughs cleared their first residential sidewalks starting at 4:30 Thur- sday morning and by Friday afternoon, the public works depar- tment had received over 100 phone calls from irrate taxpayers. Virtually every caller had the same com- plaint: as the ploughs made their way down the walkways, they took large chunks of lawn with them. Muddy mounds still line the edges of sidewalks where blades wider than the paths being cleared left their mark. As the tractor ap- proached his house, downtown resident Karlis Silins said he could see sod and debris flying. "The tractor just pulled it out of the ground." While Silins said he was "sort of" in favor of the town clearing the sidewalks before, if this is the kind of job it's going to do he'd rather do it him- self. Centre Street resident Cindy Carson agrees. "I looked outside this mor- ning (Friday) and thought, oh my God ... SEE PG. 26 Minor Bantams ready for world championships At ,precisely 12:30 Monday afternoon, 19 fourteen year old boys and 30 parents, coaches, brothers and sisters will be boarding a bus at the Iroquois Arena to em- bark on the trip of a lifetime. The boys are mçm- bers of the Brooklin- Whitby Bantam Crouch- Peacock Canucks and they are off to compete in the World Bantam Hockey Tournament in Helsinki Finland, with stops in Sweden and Russia along the way. The three week trip is the culmination of nearly a year and a half of concerted team work on the part of the boys, their coaches and manager, the Brooklin- Whitby Minor Hockey Association and many of the parents. Close to $30,000 more than the entire minor hockey yearly budget for many Ontario towns, had to be raised to cover the boys' expenses - no mean feat for a single small town hockey club. There were bake sales, yard sales, bottle drives, bingo and Christmas tree sales and over the summer each boy on the team had to come up with $50 from his summer ear- nings to contribute to the cause. "It's been a lot of hard work for them," said Mike Primeau who, along with Larry Win- dover, coaches the boys. 'They certainly know how to raise money now. We've tried to make them feel that they had to work hard to earn their way on this trip. It SEE PG. 19 1