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2 The Canadian Statesman, Bowmanville, December 15, 1976, Section Two EDITORIAL COMMENT Santa Claus: C;anada Can't Afford Hlm Santa Claus is an over-weight, over-age, over-priced myth, and Canada can't afford him any more, a writer declares in the current issue of The -United Church observer. The Rev. Terry Shillington of The Pas, Man., says the yearly worship of Santa -Claus "baptizes our children into a lifestyle which is, proving to be 'suicidai. "For more than the incarnation of Christ, the coming of Santa Claus symbolizes the spirit of our culture: spending and getting. In fact, Santa Too High A year- ago last October, when Prime Minister Trudeau announced wage and price controls, hie sounded a warning to which few of us paid attention. In his usual unruffled style hie told us that Canadians were living beyond their means-that we were expecting more from 11f e than our labor could be expected to earn. Naturally we kept on expecting and demanding. Subsequent events have underlined the truth of Mr. Trudeau's words. Last week the Canadian dollar was forced sharply down in value compared with American currency. That development was not a mere, exercise in international finance. It was a reflection of world opinion about the credit of Canada and its people. As a consequence we will pay more for everything that reaches us from beyond our own shores-food, clothing, cars, TV sets-you name it. If the general'Canadian response to increased prices turns out to be nothing more than a demand for higher wages and prices our goose is quite literally cooked. It will b e only a matter of time until the entire -process is repeated and eventually we will find ourselves in the same boat as bankrupt Britain. Canadians should take note of a few salient facts. The cost of social services in Canada totals about 40 per cent of national revenue. In the U.S. the figure is about 34 per cent and in Britain it is over 50 per cent. Lesson No. 1: No nation can afford the kind of government handouts we demand. might be called the patron saint of a people unsurpassed in wealth, yet with an incredible hunger for more," he writes. "This preoccupation with getting things is a 1f estyle we can no longer afford. We simply cannot go on producing more, consuming more and throwing'out more garbage. Surely -both the times and the gospel make it imperative to teach our children radically different values." -The United Church Observer on the Hog Average wage for top level civil servants in Canada is about $65,000 a year. In the States the same calibre of people get only $45,000. Prior to the introduction of wage controls'the average contract settle- mÏent with organized labor was for increases of about 13 per cent. In the States, where labor- is much more highly organized, the average settle- ment during the same period was from, 6 per cent to 8 per cent, indicating that intelligent labor leaders in the country recognized the necessity of keeping ail sectors of the economy in balance. No one knows, as yet, what the full impact of a separatist government in Quebec will be. The recent victory of the Parti Quebecois, however, is already proving to be the turning. point in the Canadian economy. Unless we can prove to the world that we are hard-working, reliable people we are on the rough roa¶I to economic trouble. f The factors which can rebuild this nation's economic health have to be considerably higher productivity (value of goods produced in relation to the dollar cost of production); intelligent use of automation rather than strikes over its introduction. Countries, like private business, are judged on their ability to demon- strate successful management tech- niques. Perhaps the most important factor of ail is the behaviour of the average citizen. If we prove ourselves industrious and demon-, strate that we do not squander every cent we make the prospects for the whole nation will improve. -Wingham Advance Times The High-pitched Christmas Jet plane engine noises are pitcbed so higli that they cannot be heard by the human ear. 0f course, there is the familiar jet roar that does get througlh, but most of the sound is beyond our range. The community is filled with the sound of Cliristmas carols. Radios, T.V.'s street-corner speakers, churclies, scliool roomns and a tliousand common dwellings ahl vibrate witli the sound of familiar Christmas songs. Part of the carol, gets tliroughbut part of it is beyond our range. The happy melody gels tlirough. The power to awaken memory of bygone days gets tlirough. The plain homely images of the manger, the star, the shepherds, the wisemen, the mother and the lovely sleeping, cliild are reinforced by our singing of the carols. Almost any ear can catch these sounds, But there is more. At a higlier frequency that only the lieart can hear there is born in upon us the assurance that our world is wrapped in love. But this word is higli-pitched and is entirely lost on those who hear only the obvions- "No ear may hear His coming; But in this world of sin, Wliere meek souls will receive Hlim, SURl The dear Christ enters in." Perhaps this is why at the first Chiristmas il is said that the carols were sung by a chorus of angels. The Chiristian message is more than a group of people chattering theology or school children singing carols. It is the subtle sound of God's compassion.,It is assurance at depth that human life lias immortal meaning and joy is rooted not in, coloured tissue paper and escapist celebrations but in the presence of a hardy, holy love to which we can commit ourselves. "Joy to the World! the Lord is come." In the occasional, moments when any man lias the confidence that this is really so, it is as if an angel bending o'er the earth liad touched a, harp of gold. The higlier frequency becomes audible. Confi- dence in God and lis yearning over man is the high-pitclied word that sounds in every simple, pleasant carol we sing. Listen for it now. ACorne'rfor Poets A HOUSE WE CALL OUR OWN Sometimes we sit all alone In a house we>caîl our own We often sit and think 0f people that drink. Tley start to drink for pleasure But finally lose their treasure And then they start to pray They may be given another day. A new day is liere I promnise not to drink any more beer Thatis good enougli for me. I try to live the if e of a Christian I choose my own religion With God's blessed help I can Be a mucli better man. With the Lord as our Guide We need no place to hide, We no more will roam For lie will safely guide us home. Durham County's Great Family journa! Esfablished 122 vears ago in 1854 Also lncorporafing The Bowmanville News The Newcast le Independent The Orono News Second class mail registration number 1561 Produced every Wednesday by Y-HE JAMES PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED 62-66 King Sf. W., Bowmanville, Ontario LiC 3K9 JOHN M. JAMEý Editor- Pub Isher S r GEO. P. MORRIS Business Mgr. BRIAN PURDY Adlvertising Mgr. DONALD BISHOP Plant Mgr. "Copyright and-or property rightssubsist in the image appearlng on this proof. Permission to reproduce in wholè or inpart and in any form whatsoever, particularly by photographic or offset process in a publication, must be obtalned f rom the publisher and thne printer. Any unauthorized reproduction'wil be subject f0 recourse in law."1 $10.00 a year - 6 months $5.5U foreign - $21 .00 a year strictly In advance Although every precaution will be taken to avold error, The Canadian Statesman accepts adverfialng in ils columns on the understanding thaf il wil not be liable for any error in the. advertlsement pubilàhed-hereundler unless a proof of such adverfisement 19 requested in wrlfing, by the adverflser and rofurned f0 The Canadian Statesman business office duly signed by the edvorfIser ind wlth such error or corrections plainly nofed in wrltlng thereon, and In that case If any error 80 noted le nof correcfed by The Canadian Statesman Ifs hability shall nof exceed such a portion cf thee@nfIr@ coof of such advertisemenf as the space occupled by the noted error bears to fhe who1e epace occupîed by such advertlsemenf. Letter to the Edit or, N o Mistake. It's 'Receipts'. Dear Mr. James: We are constantly being asked if a spelling error was-made in the title Of our new Cook Book "Bowmanville Reeeipts". The, answer is no! The Statesman did not make a mistake in printing, and the Hockey Mothers do know how to speil., The dictionary gives the following meaning: "Receipt" - Recipe. Both words mean, "directions f or making some- PRIMROSE PATHI Nomnatter how plainly the way is marked some people stiil trav- el in the wrong direction. thing. " Locally, one or the other may be preferred b y cooks, but they are interchangeable in actual meaning. Whichever, term you choose, "Recipe"' or "Reeeipt" our cook book is full of superb recipes, new and old, and we are very proud of it. Sincerely, Noreen Siggins For the Cook Book Committee "B owmanville Receipts", Report From Queens ParkI by DOUG MOFFATT M.P.P.I I would q like to present some comments and questions that I asked in the House regarding the iacrease of health costs in Bowman- ville Memorial Hospital. The Minis- try of Health, under Frank Miller, presented supplementary estimates last week. ThMese estimates deal specifically with ambulance -and related emergency services, and extended health care benefits. The ,following remarks are from the debate on December 7, 1976. Mr. Moffatt: What I wanted to discuss was the practice as it has emerged over t he past 10 to 12 months at the hospital in Bowman- ville. As a direct result of the activities of the ministry in cutting back the funding and the number of patients allowable in the, Whitby Psychiatric Hospital, what we have emerging in the region of Durham is a very serious situation where ambulatory patients are placed in the privat ely owned nursing homes in t he area, and people who would normally be, resident in those nursing homes are being forced to remain in hospital for extended periods of time because there is no suitable location for them. I know, the minister will deny this is happening, but if hie will check with the administrator of the Bowmanvýille Hospital l'mn sure this will emerge as being the case. What they have noticed over the past several months is that doctors who wish to discliarge patients and normally' would have used the privately owned nursing homes - there's no space in any of the publicly funded institutions in the region of Durham because there aren't enougli beds available in the first instance - because of the- number of ambulatory patients released from Whitby Psychiatric Hospital to those particular institu- tions, the hospital in Bowmanville lias found the number of days stayed, particularly by, elderly patients, h as dramatically increas- ed over the past little while. One of the board members of that hospital was in the House the other evening while the estimates were going on and drew this to my attention. What bas in fact hiappeneci is mat the cost there accrues to the people in the region of Durham- in two fashions. Number one, because these people from Whitby Psychia- tric Hospital now are in the privately owned nursing homes, a portion is paid by the region of Durham. That adds significantly to the tax cost of theý people in that area. As well, we're finding that these increased lengths of stay in the hospital directly contribute to increased costs. It's much more expensive to, keep those people in the hospital, where they don't want to stay, the doctors don't want them to be there, but -because there are no available spaces, that's whetre they have to remain. I'd like to hear the minister's comment on that if I could please. Hon. F. S. Miller: You started your comment b y saying that I would deny it, and I will. HSC beds are separate from nursing home beds in our allocations for areas. Very often areas firmly believe that they're somehow being cheated on the number of nursing home beds available to them because they see people released from psychiatric hospitals in nursing homes, the very same nursing homes that may have nursing home patients. The fact is, thougli, that we have specific licences for these two kinds of care and, in fact, when an area is getting HSC patients, we are bringing business to that area, if you want to C tc t ttway, that otherwise would dibrsed to the area of origin of the patient. We're not really cutting down on the number of nursing home beds available for nursing home care patients. Wliat is a more serious problem is who's getting admitted to the nursing home beds available? Should they be there? Or have they been allowed in by perhaps a generous assessment of the disabi- lity of the patient prior to admission by the family physician? Mr. Moffatt: Mr. Chairman, if may respond to that, wliat lias in fact happened is that the tremen- dously expensive hospital care beds are the ones which are now having to be used by those doctors in Bowmanville, even thougli in Bow- manville they have tried to comply in every way with the minister's regression analysis and they have closed down parts of wards, tliey have closed a whole floor, they have closed down beds, tliey're operating on a lower budget than they were last year and, in fact, tliey're finding that their costs are going up. It seems to me that in this overal regional analysis, if that's what is done or was done, somebody made a mistake in the calculations, because the costs to that hospital board should not in fact have been going up but they are, and it's this sort of third level effect, the spinoff of your last fall's great activîty, whicli is causing this little community to have great difficulty in maintaining its hospital. I realize that the minister lias attempted to deal fairly with this situation on an area basis, but in some cases where we have sucli a hospital board there is not fairness at ail. What is happenn is that costs whicli neyer used to be charged to the local people are now to some 20 per cent being picked up by thelocal people and other costs are being maintained at a mucl higlier rate because of the place that we're keeping people. I see no reason why the people of the Region of Durham who are already burdened with undue costs should once again be burdened by increased liealth costs by a, ministry which is famous for its cost-cutting tactics such as-liospital closings. 9 By1 49 Years Ago Thursday, December 22, 1927 The Opera House was filled to capacity on Friday night when local sehools held their annual Christmas concert under the direction of Miss Helen Morris. One drill under the direction of Miss Edna Jewell and Miss Marion Ward- er was well received. Dressed in suits resembling pepper- mint sticks were Donald Sanders, Clarence Wîther- idge, Fred Neal, Jack Gibbs, Alfred Allin, Jack Dunn, Douglas Blunt, Charlie Welsh, Alton Richards, Tom Sheehan, James Hayman and Bert Dean. Rotary Club is arranging to erect a Community Christmas Tree on the vacant lot west'of Corbett Motor Sales Garage. Carol singing will take place around the tree Sunday eveni- ing after the church services. Town council at the Decem- ber meeting passed accounts of the Finance Committee for $333.04 and waterworks $65.20. 1Miss Emma G. Niddrie and Miss Lois M. Lamb are receiving congratulations on obtaining their R. N. Degree. On Friday afternoon, De- cember 23rd, C.T. Ross, manager of the Royal Theatre will give his annual Christmas treat to the children of a free show and free candy. In the Dim and Distant Past 25 Vears Ago Thursda v, Dc. eth, 1951 Sld'Littie was elected mayor for the third time at the civic elections on Monday. Slightly over haif of the ratepayers turned out to vote. Michael and Margurite__. Hickey and their seven child- ren were made destitute by a fire which destroyed their clothing and home on Sunday in Manvers. The "Mikado" was pres, ed by B.H.S. students in 'tué Opera House last week. In the cast were Alex Drummond, Ivan Woolley, Ted Ott, Ken Buttery, Jim De Geer, Evelyn Goheen, Greta Snowden, James Parkhil1, Grace Nichol- son and Barbara Goddard. Winners of the Enmiskillen Temperance medals contest were Jimmie Rowan, Carol Wright and Bert Werry. Keith Jackson will direct and produce the forthcoming play "The Man who Came to Dinnner" to be presented'by the Rotary Club in February. The Bethany Basebail team' was honored with a banquet and, dance held on Friday evening in the Town Hall, honoring their double champ- ionships. ~ugar and SPoc Bill Smiley The Fault With Wives My wife and I had a terrific fight the other night. She's always reading articles and watching tele- vision panels. One week it's how you can guarantee that your baby will be a boy (or a girl). The- next tie it's how to avoid dying in your sleep by positive dreaming. As you can imagine, some of these topics don't really send me and she gets quite annoyed when I on't wax sufficiently enthusiastic. I try to- participate in the monologue by reading hier one of my favorite articles, something like, "Is The Real John Turner Just a Shy, Humble Little Boy Underneath It All? " She just retorts, "Who cares?" and goes relentlessly back- to lier own article, which this week was about battered wives. The article was entitled "Couples That Batter Each Other Matter to Each Other," or something equally ridiculous. Its gist was that married people who figlit, even physically, are far happier than tlhose who hold in their resentments and become psycholo- gically warped as a result. For once I made a stand. I told hier, in words to that effect, that that was a lot of women's magazine, soap opera crap. I went on to cite some of our friends who used to batter eacli other regularly, and are now happily divorced from each other and re-married to non-batterers. For some reason this irked lier. I don't know whether it was the male chauvinistic crack or the fact that some of lier friends are happier with a new mate, but she started a fight. Her article hadn't said anything about battered husbands. ll draw a veil over the next few minutes, for those with tender sensibilities who have neyer been ht by a sneak punch from a woman when they weren't looking. Anyway, when I had picke'd myself off the floor, wiped the blood- from my nose, and locked myself safely in the bathroom, I issued an ultimatum. "If you ever lay a finger on me again, I'm leaving. inm going home to your father." Her reply: "Go ahead, you- crumb! If you walk out of this house, you'll neyer get back in. It's in my namne. So's the car. ll ean out our joint account, garnishee your sa- laryhire a lawyer, and put you on Skid Row, where you belong."' I needn't tell you here thgt she had recently read some shyster's article about how to go about doing just that to your husband. I was s0 mad that I was adamanxt for quite a while. If there'd been a phone in that bathrooms, I'd called the police for an escort and walked riglit out of there. But there wasn't. I ignored hier further taunts, all of them on a similarly low, despicable level, and maintained a dignified silence. She calîs it sulking. Fortu- nately, there was a good paperback novel on the back of the toilet, and I was soon absorbed. She can't stand this. Bitter invective, coarse comments, even bad launguage rolîs off lier shoul- ders. But she nearly goes out of lier skull when there's nobody listening to her. Finally, "Do you want a cup of tea, you cowardly bum?" I didn't make a sound for a ful minute, then grunted, "Maybe. Wliat.else?" I meant a full apoloy and an abject admission of lier guxîit in instigating the donnybrook. "And a ipiece of apple p e," she. snapped. 'With cheddar ceese.", gave up. How can you reason witâ.-' someone like that? "Well, O.K. But no more batter- ing,, baby, or I caîl the cops. " Mfter a while, we liad cooled out a fair bit, and she got me an ice pac" for my nose. I was willing tu forgL--. it, but underneath I was still simmering, and I entertained thouglits of cashing my two $100 bonds the next day, skipping off te the Canary Islands, and leaving lier high and dry. But, like every woman I've ever met, she wanted to "talk things out." That's one of the most disgusting phrases in the English language. Riglit, chaps? It was finaâlly decided that we'd each make a list of our worst faults, let the other have a look at the list, then try to do something about it. I worked away assidously for what seemned hours, my tongue stuck out of one corner of my mouth. My list went something like this:1 a) too ready to forgive wife; should be firmer b) too generous with my children; must be tighter c) too fond of grandchildren; must be sterner d) complain too mucli about arthritis; should complain more about hemmorhoids e), too ready to see good side of others; must be more realistic. Well, my list went on and on and on. I didn't realize what a truly rotten guy I was until I started to put it down. My Wife finislied fairly quickly, and, resumed fier overt affair witli her sewing machine (one of the things that are drivîng us apart). Handed over my list. Sh e started to read it with a benign smile. The smile began to curl down on the corners. Her face got red. XWliy, youlousy 1l. idttl oc roacli!" seuexloded I idtlpoint out that she was being redundant. I'd like to tell you this little marital drama had a happy ending,. that it wound up in a clinch. .Well, it did wind up in a dcli. I had lier arms se tied up that Muhammad Ali couldn't have- thrown a punch in the same situation. Se she kneed me you know where. When I had stopped grunting and got to my knees, I picked up lier list of -faults, which she'd thrown in my face as I lay prostrate. I haîf, exected that she'd write somethinglike, "My only fault is that I don 't appreciate wliat a' wonderful husbandlIhave." It was a little shorter than that. It just sAid. "None."'