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TIE EE ET I RR ER A A FR Br "A Family Tradition for 133 Years" PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, March 9,.1999 -7 | The Pod Povey Sha Question of the Week... 4) What are you doing for the : WR is a ; ah rw i FF March Break? Lisa Timms Mike Scuse James Cook Becky Henshall Michele Ferland I'm going to Quebec City I am going up North with I am going to my cottage I will get as little accom- I'm goping to hang out || with Breakaway Tours. my family to our cottage. in Algonquin. I will go plished as possible and let and listen to music. Good ice fishing, relax and read my brain turn into mush. fun, good oldies. ...1050 Do you have a suggestion that and spend time with my | CHUM. you think would make a good . family. | question of the week ? Call us at 905-985-7383. ' LETTERS Hunting regulations need revision To the Editor: I am writing this letter as a concerned Ontario taxpayer. I was born in Canada and have farmed all my life. Our family farm has grown from 100 acres in 1928 to 1,200 acres, and we rent 4,000 acres around Hampton. We operate a large dairy and cash crop operation and we see a terrific amount of damage that wild life are doing to our crops. In 1980 I planted 50 acres of red kidney beans on land in south Whitby and when I har- vested this field there was only five acres to harvest because the ducks and geese had com- pletely stripped the rest of the crop. In 1992 we rented 200 acres in the Blackstock area. In the fall when we were harvesting the corn there was about five acres of corn along the bush which had been completely stripped by deer. In our area in the past two years a group of farmers have killed approximately 40 wolves and there are still a lot around which we hear howling at night and they have killed many calves and sheep in our area which is about two miles from the city of Oshawa. I feel the environmental issues, gun issues and animal rights have gone too far. I feel that the people that are pushing all these new regu- lations are not feeding and putting up with these wild geese and animals. "Ido not agree that the taxpayers should not be having to compensate the outfitters and the tourist trade in the north because of the can- cellation of the spring bear hunt. I feel this expense should be charged to the animal rights and environmental groups. I attended a rally in Ottawa to try and con- vince the government not to pass the new gun control laws but they would not listen to us. We need crime control and new laws for young offenders not gun control. We have an over-population of geese, wolves, foxes and deer and if we are not careful we will also be over-run with bear if they try and stop the spring bear hunt. I feel the Progressive Conservative party whom I support should respect what the farmers have to say when it is the farmers that are feeding these animals that are in the farming area and should have longer hunting seasons so they can be kept under control. August Geisberger, Hampton mber When? Sougog In the early part of the century. Ice DON'T WANT TO ALARM YOU... There's a car alarm ringing incessantly outside my window. It began a good ten, fifteen minutes ago, and has continued unabated since then. Although the win- dow is shut against the icy blasts which are screaming in from the north, | can hear it clearly. It is like a nagging itch deep inside my head. What is the appropriate course of action here? | have a hickory axe handle | just bought at Canadian Tire in my trunk. | could use it to bring about some sort of satisfactory conclusion. Ah, but one musn't be advocating vandalism, even well-intentioned -- albeit vigilante -- action. Just because some bozo has a hair-trigger alarm that goes off when the wind's blowing, doesn't mean you can bust his car all up. Does it? Sitting here and thinking, though, I'm reminded of a funny car alarm story. | had a friend who was a criminal lawyer. He specialized in representing inmates in the numerous prisons around Kingston. One bright summer day he had to go out to Collins Bay Penitentiary, which is just a couple of miles from downtown Kingston, on a heavily-travelled four-lane street. His boss told him to take his car, a beautiful new Corvette convertible. | He got to the jail all right, conducted his interview with his client, and then, upon coming outside and hop- ping into the car, triggered the damned alarm. He had no idea how to turn it off. : At a loss, he drove the Corvette all the way back to town with the alarm screaming away, "| expected at any minute to be rammed by a police tank and taken down by the tactical unit," he said later. "Think about it: A guy comes out of the parking lot of a federal penitentiary in a car he obviously can't afford, with the alarm blaring. It's a wonder they didn't shoot me from the guard tower." But he made it, driving all the way back through stop and go traffic, and ignoring the stares and derision that were no doubt directed his way. It must have been one long drive. Some days are like that. It's like breaking the zipper in your pants five minutes after you arrive at work. "What am | gonna do?" you wonder. "I can't stay behind | a desk all day." We always pull through though, huh? It may be that we're compelled to stop and do some shopping at the liquor store on the way home, but we make it. It helps, of course, if you can find some humour in the situation. But that doesn't usually occur until much later.