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p 4 theittlbunfetve6at junr24 f097 sr the tribune v tuesday june 24 1997 vol 109 no 33 comment send your letters to the editor to the address below i v mt res editorial take care around water this summer with school coming to a close this week the sum mer has truly begun for many it is the start oflong and fun days at the beach lake or by the pool it is also an extremely dangerous time of year for young children with the recent drowning in an abandoned pool of a six year old in scarborough and another neardrowning in toronto parents cannot be careful enough at this time of year the statistics on children and drowning are terri fying according to the red cross drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional death among canadian children aged one to four the leading cause is motor vehicle accidents most staggering among the statistics is that 69 per cent of these young victims are alone at the time of drowning an additional 24 per cent are accompanied only by other small children obviously adults must watch children like hawks when they are around the water the red cross says give your children your undivided attention when they are swimming dont be distracted by anything including the telephone it only takes a few seconds for a tragedy to occur have fun this summer but also be careful ssues of safety a concern for area parents dear editor re safety of students at st mark and glad park schools last fall i attempted to bring to the attention of both the york region school boards and the town of whitchurch- stouffville my concerns for the safety of children around st mark school during the construction of the new glad park school and what i thought were serious planning issues that were not being taken into consideration for when the new school opens this fall basically i was thanked by the public school board for my concerns and left to think that i was alone with my concerns asthe opening of the new school draws closer i realize that i am not alone- far from it concerned parents of st mark have been passing around a petition and currently have more than 500 signatures of support with the added issue of an earlier start time 815 am other parents are coming out and voicing their con cerns i do not believe that the parents of the children that will be attending glad park school next fall are as aware of the seri- letters to the editor ousness of thesituation we will all be fac ing when the school opens our concerns are both schools which will have more than 1250 students between them will use the same deadend driveway in front of st mark known as glad park this is the only entrance and exit for approxi mately 15 buses children walking to both schools and approximately 200 cars to drop off their children to both schools at off to france to battle with a phobia for the last couple of years i have accompanied two friends of similar vintage to a charming country cottage where we derived considerable amuse ment from vacuuming flies off the windows in order to enjoy the full glory of the panoramic view this year we decided to broaden our cultural horizons not to mention our knowledge of minute airbreathing arthropods by familiarizing ourselves with the creepy crawlies indigenous to northern france not i hasten to add that any of us is especially fond of insects or their environmental cousins but when someone offers you the use of half a breton long house for the princely sum of 180 a week you dont start complaining about sharing space with a multitude of multi- limbed tenants our vacation is to commemorate a collective 150 years on earth and our destination is the holiday haven of a good friends brother and sisterinlaw whose description of the chateau in question contains the following entic ing information the house is rural and unoccupied for weeksatv a time visitors must therefore accept that they share their accommodation with a variety of kates corner kate gilderdale small four- six- and particularly eightlegged creatures since i read that i have been endeavoring to con vince myself that spiders are people too as a lifelong arachnaphobe howev er its going to take a lot more than getting in touch with my inner child to overcome this primal feart my only hope is i will come through the exper rience with enough of my marbles left to produce the definitive arachno- phobes selfhelp book upon my return to civilization as i know and love it ie sans spiders where i live spiders are the excep tion rather than the rule and they sel dom measure up in size or creepiness to their ghastly hairy british relatives a large contingent of whom used to reside in the family coal cellar in beautiful downtown woodford green x in a while one would migrate up the drainpipe into the bath or basin where it would lurk furtively until you staggered in eyes halfclosed and turned on the tap whereupon it would engage in a sinister scuttle guaranteed to cause cardiac arrest in all but the stoutest of souls my father who was almost as much of a wimp as i was when it came to spiders was forever being entreated by me and my mother to effect their permanent dispatch unfortunately my elder brother was a rights activist for allcreaturesgreatandsmall before rights activists were invented and decried the demise of even gods most microscopic creations whenever we were driven to engage in a spot of genocide we had to wait until he was safely out of the house to begin otherwise he would insist on capturing his 8legged buddy in order to release it unharmed into the mean suburban streets this exercise consisted of running around the bath room jar in hand in hot pursuit of his quarry which would immediately secret itself in a crack in the wall and bide its time until it could get me alone again im just praying that with my english heritage i will be as attractive to a french spider as gilles duceppe is to preston manning the same time this street is 21 feet wide and only 300 feet long with no exit the traffic on this street now is horren dous in the morning and after school with only one school and about 700 students should there ever be a need for emer gency vehicles at these peak times there would be no hope of gaining entry past the traffic the implementation of a 16 km walk ing distance for all students means that children as young as 3 years old will be asked to walk to school many for the first time ever with the 16 km walking dis tance comes the reality that small chil dren have to cross the 9th line at the heaviest commuter times anyone famil iar with the traffic on the 9th line knows that cars and trucks race up and down at speeds exceeding 80 kmh the horror stories of trying to cross even at the cross walk are terrifying there is no crossing guard at millard for a lot of these children which are coming from the subdivision on the east side of ninth line there are apparently stoplights and an extension of millard planned for the future but not likely within the next five years the walking distance also affects chil dren from other areas around the school there are no sidewalks on any of the main arteries leading to the school elm road glad park fairview avenue or rupert avenue added to all of the above is the new start time for both of these schools the visionaries at our school boards have decided to implement an 815 am start time for both schools all in the name of saving some money in the dead of winter our children will be arriving at school in the dark whether they walk are bused or driven our children will be walking in the dark to school on snowcovered streets it is the hope of everyone involved that if enough people show support that these very serious issues can be resolved and no- children will be hurt or worse yet killed trying to get to school next year cathy singh stouffville stouffville tribune a metroland community newspaper patricia pappas publisher andrew mair editorinchief julie caspersen editor debra weller director of advertising mike rogerson retail advertising manager stacey allen classified manager barry goodyear director of distribution vivian oneil business manager pamela nichols operations manager about us news 0056402100 retail sales 9056402100 classifieds 9056402874 distribution 9056402100 fax 9056405477 email tbetribistarca k i s ill stouffville ont l4a1e2 v v vy the stoufftule tribune pub- lished every tuesday thursday and saturday la one of the metroland printing publishing and distribution group of commu- nity newspapers which includes ajaxpickering news advertiser alliston heraldcourier jbarrls advance brampton guardian burlington post cityparent collingwoodwasaga beach con nection east york mirror etobi- coke guardian georgetown inde pendentacton free press kingston this week lindsay this week markham economist a sun midlandvpenetangnishene mirror milton canadian champion mis- sissauga newanewmarketauror erabanner northumberland news north york mirror oakville beaver orillia today oshawa- whitbyctaringtonpbrt perry thi week peterborough this week richmond hiuthornhillvaughaii liberal scarborough mirror and uxbrldge tribune todays seniors contents cannot be reprinted with- out written- permission from the sublisher permit 1247 the pub- sber reserves the right to refuse or classlfy an advertisement credit for advertisement limited to space the error occupied s i cna 3s letters policy the tribune welcomes your letters to the editor please keep letters to no more than 300 words note that letters may be edited for space libel spelling grammar while we endeavor to print as many letters as possible we regret that not all letters may be printed