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Reapîng the harvest Orono Fair Prize Lists are available at the Orci office, from George Carson, Orono, from Mr Ayre, R.R. 4 Bowmanville (983-9491). Be part of the fair - be an exhibitor in one oft classes available in numerous categories. T~UMAN 1 came across a fascinating series of articles in the current "National Geographic- magazine recently about the exploration of three sunken Basque galleons in the waters off Labrador. The wrecks have flot yet been precisely dated, but their presence makes it at Ieast possible that there was a thriving Basque whal- ing station at Red Bay, 15 miles across the Straits of Belle Isle frôrn Newfoundland's northerni tip, before Jac-' Cartier made his so-called voyage of dîscovery in N~rost of what we hear about the Basques these days has to do with the violence ofextremists who want By Tony Carlson Shorter summer days signal the fast-approaching season when the seeds of sprîng have blossomed into the harvest of One of the political crops planted as winter petered out was the Summer Employmient/ Experience Developmient (SEED) program, a federal plan to help students fînd summer work that was career oriented. SEED offered employers wage subsidies of up to 50 per Cent, to a maximum of $3 an hour depending on the region, to hire srudents. The plan was part, of a re- freshing new breeze blowýing through the policy offices in r the employment ministry, a move away from costly, non- productive make-Work projects and towards a more decentral- ized, in dividualized approach. For some time, representa- .0re 10Ythetives of the small business sec- P CetqRAL tor have been saying that their PM à-%CIEIYsector holds the key to most of sOcIEV<the job creation potential for the foreseeable future. What is needed, they've been saying, is governiment policy which recognizes that potential and acts accordingly. That means, to simplify somewvhat, that government should drop its general job-creationi .~,)programs--which provide ~ ~¶,Ishort-tr solutions at best-and put its money into flexible projects which can be keyed to the indîvidual require- ments of the small business. AlI right, said EmploymIentL ! Canada. Show us. And small business did. OM The figures tell the story. O f the 15,500 private sector businesses which applied to hire students under the SEED program, 80.5 per cent hiad fewer than 50 empfloyees. An- other 15 per cent were medium-sized comnpaniies, withi n oT lim e s --Up to 500 employees. Tlhe rest Irs. Arline were large businesses. Not only that, but private the many employers accounted for 36 per cent of al the jobs ap- to create an independent Basque state. And so 1 read a companion article on Basque history with mounting interest. 1 knew that the Basque homeland straddles the crest of the western Pyrenees between France and Spain,- and that there are about three million of them. 1 didn't know that they themselves Euskaldunak, their 'coun- try Euskal-Herria, and their language Eu skara. 1 didn't know that they have been in the Pyrenees for at least f ive thousand years, and that they have preserved their identity through a political and military maelstrom that has swirled over them since they got there. No one knows where they came from, but scholars who have studied their unique language say that although they are obviously Caucasian, they are a dis- tinct ethnic group, not related in any way to the Indo- Europeans who inhabit the rest of the continent. Scien- tists point out that type B blood is practically nonexis- tent among Basques, and they have one of -the highest incidences of 0 type blood in Europe. More important, according to the experts, they have the highest Rh- negatie factor of any of the world's peoples. There is no one else like them , ànywhere. And it wvas this unbending, unyielding little race which routinplv set off from the Bay of Biscay to cross the howling Atian- tic in cockleshell galteons perhaps even before Jacques Cartier. As far as 1 know, 1 have no Basque blood in me, but 1 arn type 0 and Rh-negative, so 1 dare to hope. proved unider SEED. That is almost six times the usual rate at which private firms partake of government programs. These figures are of im- mense importance, both sym- bolically and otherwise. For- the thousands of young people wh o got jobs, it has meant a first step into the work world. And because these weren't "count-the-flower" positions, but attuned more or less to the students' ambi- tions, they provided ail- important experience for that résumé. Significant, too, is the fact that the vast miajority of these jobs were flot in government or monohithic corporations, but in small and miedium -sized irmus. Thus, students saw\ first- hand the miany roles a small business person miust play to keep) the firmn on the right track. They mnight even have been thrown into the thick of the fray themselves, learning a Inspection Staftn Ail Vehicles Including Dump Trucks Sohool Buses PROPANE Propane Conversions and Service MANGAR'S, GARAGE Orono -983-5130 variety of bankable SKiIIS. As well, most of those young people are destined to find at least their first permanent job in a small business, flot in gov- ernment or the retrenching cor- porate sector. Again, SEED has given them a leg Up. But equaily important, the success of the programi is proof positive that the smnall business sector has put its jobs where its mnouth has been-and has succeeded in husbanding a fine crop of young workers. And ail Canadians reap the harvest. You can sense the -gentile astmosphere of life in the early 1900's at Stephen Leacock's old summer home in Orilia. I's now a memorial to the world famous humourist, and where he wrote -Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town". He called the town Mariposa, but itwas a very thinly veiled description of Orillia and its people around 1910. In the hilarious stories, Leacock took a poke at the pomposity, puritanismn and hypocrisy of the barber, the druggist, the banker and a lot of the other smrall town types of the time, and they didn't like it one bit! Although Leacock staunchly maintained that Mari- posa could be any small town of that era, the people of Orillia knew dam well that when he holed up at that big mansion of his over on Brewery Bay, he was writ- ing about themi In later years when the world changed and the out- look on morals became more honest, the townspeople saw the humour of it ail. They recognized the literary genius of the crusty philosopher who was also a brilli- ant professor of economics on the side. Not only that, Leacock had made them world-famous. In the late 50's they bought his home, restored it, and turned it into a memorial to their favourite son. Tourists and students of' Leacock came from many parts of the world to see where Leacock lived and worked. The home is crammed with memorabilia. There are original manuscripts, photos, even the original bar- berpole.owned by Jefferson Thorpe, Mariposa's barber. 1 hadn't been to the Leacock's place in years. l'd first gone there to do a story about Stephen Leacock Junior, the Leacock's only child. We .were the same age, and later on, got to know each other faîrly well. -Stevie', as he was, known, was a wrîter and histori- an. He was a bachelor and, after his f ather's death,. lived alone in the 19-room house for a time. Needless to say, he wàsn' t much of a housekeeper. There were papers and books and ashes and bottletops strewn around. It was a comfortable mess. But when 1 revisited the hom estead one beautiful summer morning last month, 1 found it almost unrecog- nizable. Fromr the long veranda, the beautifully kept lawvns reached down to Old Brewery Bay where 1 saw a man in white ducks and a white slouch hat moorîng a sail- boat. He turned out to be Jay Cody, director of the home. Jay is not only an authority on Leacock, he seems to go with the place. As we roamed around the panelled rooms I got a taste of life in an earlier era. It may have had its fault, but il was an age of refinement that many people, including the young, seem to yearn to recap- ture and recreate in our brittle and often vulgar world. As 1 left, 1 took another look at the lawns, gardens and spotless veranda, and chuckled as 1 recaîîed the days when Stevie and myseîf would sit there surround- ed by debris.