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WH1TBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, AUGIJST 13.,1986. PAGE 5 "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson Advise and Dissen A wuekdy n.wn commeutary from ont or GanUa'u PETE Ottawa - There was a meniorial service not long ago at Carleton University for Wilfred Eggleston, the first head of the university's school of jour- nalism, and one of the giants of the trade when I was getting into it. Mr. Eggleston was born in England on Mardi 25, 1901, and emigrated with his parents to the Canadian prairies in 1909. He was, despite the place of bis birth, a Canadian patriot, in the best sense of the words. He was also, I suspect, a husband, a father, a citizen, and a student and teacher first, and a journalist second. 1Mr. Eggleston did not fit the journalistic stereotype of the 1930's and he most certainly did not fit that of the 1980's. He got out of fuli-time jour- nalism in the late 30's to work on press relations for the Rowell-Sirois Commission on the financial relations between Ottawa and the provinces. And although lie fully intended to return to neporting sevenal times subsequently, he neyer really managed it. After the Rowell-Sirois report was completed, the Second World War broke out, and against ail his in- stincts, Mr. Eggleston found himself serving as Canada's Chef Censor. Mr. Eggleston was such an affable, gentle and scholarly man that George Ferguson, then the Editor of the Wnnipeg Free Press, was moved to nemank: "It's pretty obvious this is a phoney war when they appoint Wilf Eggleston as chief press censor". It was typical of Mr. Eggleston that he took his friend's wry remark as a compliment. But you begin to understand what Mr. Fenguson was diving at when you read in Mr. Eggleston's autobiography, "While I StilI Remember", the following point about how the Second World War af- fected him: '«I found I had to give up golf entirely, " Mr. Eggleston recalled, "because the state of this world obsessed me so mucli I couldn't bear to play'". .So our Press Censor planted trees instead, secure ini the knowledge that their beauty and utility would outlast both Adolph Hitler and the horrors of war. "'One curious result of my four yeans in press cen- sorship," he wnote, "was a heightened awaneness of the basic and fundamental importance of a free press in a parllamentary demnocracy". Mr. Eggleston was no ordinary censor and no or- dinany reporter, and Carleton was very lucky to get him to launci its fledgling school of journalism af- ter the war. And a whole generation of Canadian journalists were lucky to get him as a teachen, mentor and predecessor. MIKE KNELL RETURNS NEXT WW:EEK WITH OUR FEET UP By Bill Swan In 1885 a Young man who had recently graduated fromn medical sehool as a surgeon came home from Montreal to visit his family. He arrived home in Blenheim Township (Oxford County) to find his 16-year-old sister in agony. He quickly diagnosed the condition. The appendix was near bursting. Only surgical removal would save bis sister's life. Within the decade this Young surgeon would travel to Europe to study radiology (x-rays). But here on the farmn he had no sophisticated tools. This was pioneer country: bis father, who had imrnigrated from Scotland, dour and proud; his mother, the girl who came to Canada when she was ten from England. They wed when she was 17, he 39. They would raise a family of nine, three girls and six boys. It had been with some sacrifice that they sent this son, 'their eldest,. to Toronto to university (mathematics) and later to Montreal to medical school. He was graduated in 1885. Now here he was back home trying to act the surgeon to bis own sister. The appendix must be removed, he told his paren- ts, or Lizzie will die. But fine education or no, the father was adamant. Life had taugbt him one thing, and that clearly: surgery meant death. There would be no butchery in this family, he replied. How then to cross the generation and education gap of 100 yeears ago? His father had enougb education to read and write and do business figures. The mother, illiterate when married, learned to read only later in life, and then suffered blindness. Only one answer worked. Young Dr. James enlisted bis brothers in the battie. With sufficient force, the parents were locked in their bedroom for the duration. HE removed bis sister's appendix on the kitchen table. The sister recovered from the operation without complications, and as the tale bas been handed down in the family, the parents were willing to believe the resuits and forgive and forget.' Today an appendectomy* might be considered one of the safer operations (there is stili a risk for any operation. sn Samuèl, the old man, did have proper instincts.) But to show the effect: 20 years later and a baîf-mile away, a young boy of 15 would die of a similar affliction simply because no surgeon was on hand. That boy was my grandfather's youngest brother. But back to the kitchen table: the surgeon, Dr. James McMeekin, later moved to the United States where be became chief of surgery at the General Hospital in Saginaw, Micb. (His son, also James, also beld the same post, and was killed in a plane crash in 1950 at the age of 50.) The story is one of several I have been able to cul from close relatives as part of my own personal genealogical studies. Much of the bistory of southern Ontario bas been lost. Mucb of it we are neglecting or letting developers tear down. But the moat important part, the story of the people who built tbis province, we are letting drift into forgotten memories. Few such tales - and every family has many- are written' down as this now is. Even so, witb this one it may even be too little too late. The details came fromn my mother and an aunt. But the event happened 26 years before my mother was born. The parents, the couple locked in their own bedroom, were my great-grandparents. Tracing sucb family lore is perhaps one of the most interesting parts of personal genealogy. The bulk of the study is clerical: burning out your eyes in old census records, etc. and trying to keep track of individuals. While immediate family is alive, this is not difficuit. But once you get back beyond 100 years, the going gets sticky. I have been fottunate. In one swoop tbrougb the 1881 census, I bave been able to îdentify ail four of my grandparents (tbey were then listed as children, aged 10, 9, 8 and 4). Also on the list were six of my eigbt great-grandparents, and ten of the 16 great- great-grandparents. Ail lived within a ten-mile radius in the nothern part of Oxford County - where I grew up. My studies, began tbree years ago, bave a long way to go. Anyone interested in such activity sbould contact the Whitby Genealogical Society. The society meets on the first Tuesday of every month at the Whitby Lîbrary, althougb it may be best to check by telephone ahead of time.