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6- The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday August 18, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate.The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Guest Columnist Is Ottawa fiddling while the markets churn? Garth Turner Halton MP s I'm sure you noticed, especially if you're an investor or worry about your RRSPs, there was a mini-meltdown recently on the financial markets. At the same time, interest rates have been rising and the US economy is taking a beating. In recent days, the US central bank pumped some $70 billion into the financial markets to prevent a stock market meltdown and a credit crisis of global proportions. Bankers in Canada, Britain and France, among others, did the same. Hedge funds in the United States and Germany, among other places, have stopped allowing panicked investors to cash out, because they have just about gone bust. Mortgages just became instantly harder to get in the U.S. due to a credit crunch, as stock markets take a dive and the subprime mortgage market collapses. As American homebuyers find if more difficult and more expensive to borrow, fewer of them close deals. This is creating the conditions under which the U.S. real estate collapse is picking up speed. Demand for housing is sinking just as adjustable mortgage rates are rising and equity is evaporating as home prices decline. And are we immune? Ask that question in eight months. Maybe six. Maybe less. What does all of this have to do with the federal budget and finance minister Jim Flaherty? Simply that the thunder rolling over the global financial landscape, and especially the United States, did not instantly materialize in the last few days or weeks. In fact, I've been writing about the subprime market, the American housing meltdown and the implications for Canada for months now. With the Americans spending $150 billion a year on Iraq, running massive deficits, adding a trillion dollars in new debt and facing a freaked-out consumer at home ­ all the time accounting for 70 per cent of our export sales ­ you'd think our finance minister would be paying heed. But, it seems not. The Conservative budget has increased spending by twice the inflation rate, essentially spent the surplus, goosed inflation and fostered higher interest rates. This is not, repeat, not, what you want to do when there's a hurricane bearing down on you. The odds are that, given current events, we will see more unemployed and more demands on government, along with reduced tax revenues and less economic activity, just as Ottawa is committing itself to an endless river of new cheques. The high-spending, high-dollar, rising-rate and inflationary policies of Mr. Flaherty are massively imprudent. Did you expect this of Conservatives? And what's likely to come next? What messages would you like me to take back to Ottawa when Parliament resumes in a few weeks? I'd love to get hear your thoughts, and see you at one of my coming Town Hall meetings. As usual, everyone is welcome, and free to speak. These meetings are a great way for us to chat in some detail, and they certainly help me do my job of representing you in Parliament. I will be holding one in Oakville on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 7 p.m., Oakville Town Hall, just east of Trafalgar Road, north of the QEW. For more information, call 905-693-0166, or email me at mp@garth.ca. Garth Turner NEIL OLIVER Publisher JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director TERI CASAS Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production Metroland Media Group Ltd. includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, Alliston Herald/Courier, Arthur Enterprise News, Barrie Advance, Caledon Enterprise, Brampton Guardian, Burlington Post, Burlington Shopping News, City Parent, Collingwood/Wasaga Connection, East York Mirror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes, Etobicoke Guardian, Flamborough Review, Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press, Harriston Review, Huronia Business Times, Lindsay This Week, Markham Economist & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror, Milton Canadian Champion, Milton Shopping News, MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA CALHOUN Circ. Manager WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver is a division of IAN OLIVER Group Publisher Media Group Ltd. Mississauga Business Times, Mississauga News, Napanee Guide, Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner, Northumberland News, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Shopping News, Oldtimers Hockey News, Orillia Today, Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week, Owen Sound Tribune, Palmerston Observer, Peterborough This Week, Picton County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal, Scarborough Mirror, Stouffville/Uxbridge Tribune, Forever Young, City of York Guardian RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America A THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville TV AUCTION Good opening line inspires book buyers into opening wallets "My wife, Utchka (whose name I some time ago shortened to Utch) could teach patience to a time bomb..." There's an old adage that you only get one chance to make a first impression. And Utchka teaching patience to a time bomb ­ the opening line of John Irving's The 158-lb Marriage -- indeed made an indelible first impression on me. I read that line in a book store and immediately bought the book, took it home, read it, loved it, and went on to read everything Irving has produced over his long, prolific career. When book buyers are asked what factors most influence them when making purchases, they typically respond: the subject of the book and the reputation of the author. Surveys and research be damned, publishing insiders assert that what really influences book-buying decisions are a book's cover ­ is it catchy, is it cool, will it look good on the bookshelf in the living room? ­ the allure of its back-cover blurb, and the book's first line. For my money, the master of opening lines is the aforementioned Irving who opened his breakthrough novel, The World According to Garp, with: "Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater..." Irresistible. Then there is The Hotel New Hampshire that opens with the sublime: "The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born ­ we weren't even conceived..." Opening lines often set the tone and pace of a novel. Irving's quirky comedy, The Water-Method Man, opens with the quirky and comedic: "Her gynecologist recommended him to me. Ironic: the best urologist in New York is French. Dr. Jean Andy Juniper Claude Vigneron: ONLY BY APPOINTMENT. So I made one..." So, how does an author hook and reel in a reader with just one lonely line? There are assorted devices. First lines often raise inevitable questions that readers naturally want answered, such as how, why, what? How could Utcha teach patience to a time bomb? Why did Jenny wound a man in a movie theater? What was his father doing buying a bear? Frederick Reiken opens his wonderful novel, The Lost Legends of New Jersey, with: "The day my mother left Livingston, New Jersey, she threw rocks through most of Claudia Berkowitz's windows." Of course, making the reader want to know why his mother's leaving town and tossing rocks through windows. Often a good opening offers readers a teasing taste of things to come, but still leaves them hungry. Charles Simmons opens Salt Water with a succinct statement: "In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned..." Starved for more? The lesson here is that if you're working on The Next Great Novel, and you're tapping your muse for an opening line, work to ensure that it rises above the mundane ­ indeed, shoot for something magnificent, or, like the opening of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, the magical: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember the distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice..." All of which leads me to my personal favorite opening line -- J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap..." Gotta go. J.D.'s hooked me again. -- Andy Juniper can be visited at his Web site, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajuniper@strangledeggs.com