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Question of the Week... Are you in favour of the introduction Mary Meade William Belknap RYAN SZEWERDA John Pearson Andrew of parking fees at In some ways yes, For emergency use - Kniewasser No, I'm not in No, why should the Port Pe it would be good for would not, but for No, | think it is favour, it would they charge people tony paying off any visiting it is okay. unfortunate. deter people from for parking if they hospital? debts. visiting the sick. need hospital attention. LETTERS Everyone has a different view To the Editor: An open letter to Alex Shepherd, M.P. After reading your latest diatribe in The Port Perry Star (Nov. 2), | am amazed. You call anyone who writes a column in the paper, or speaks on radio or T.V. that tells the facts as they are, is a yellow journalist,or news reader. Next it will be closing those who don't say what is politically correct. Come on Alex, we each have a different view of current events. One look at our Immigration Department says it all, it is a joke, in every country in the world. A man came to Toronto International Airport on Sept. 11 with at least three passports, and a uniform, from an airline in Europe. He was detained at the - request of the U.S. government. Not by Canada. Over 300 Chinese came to both of our coasts, where are they now? Our immi- gration minister, Elinor Caplan, tries to say only 58 per cent of people who try to come to this country are accepted. A U.S. congressman says it is 80 per cent, who is right? | believe him. If we don't weed out the terrorist cells in this country soon, we are really in forsome big trouble. I am asking for answers to these ques- tions and an apology to the news media in general. Frank Harris Nestleton The Golden Goose Throughout the Kawartha Lakes region, many eyes are turning toward Port Perry's waterfront as it begins a leading-edge trans- formation from neglected to naturalized. | Earth-moving machines moved in last week to clean out concrete and grade the water's edge near the tennis courts to prepare a high-profile piece of shoreline for the equivalent of a hair transplant. Cuttings of willow and dogwood will be stuck in open lattice- work mats of coconut fibre designed to hold everything in place until roots take over the job. : There are many lakeland communities who want to do for their troubled waters what the Scugog Shores Millennium Project is doing for our lake, and they're watching carefully. Yet despite the win-win balance sheet of this project -- shoreline enhancement, tourism dollars, public education, and new life for the lake -- the reaction of special interest groups in this town has been surprisingly negative and suspicious. For the most part, concerns have now been worked out with the baseball and tennis folk, local business people, snowmo- bilers and model float-plane flyers, but not without adding to the stress of overworked volunteers behind this project. Ken Carruthers, the municipal representative on the board of the Scugog Shores Millennium Project, knows first hand the vol- unteers' work, and defends them vigorously. Last week, at the start of a public meeting held to counter recent bad press, he chastised the gripers. | "Volunteers don't want people with negative vibes who are constantly pecking away at them -- If you don't want this project, then these people will step back, but you will have helped the lake commit suicide." And that's the truth. Lake Scugog is aging, like all of us. We get wrinkles; the lake gets shallower. Even without thousands of lawn-loving home- owners, it happens naturally as erosion, runoff and dying vege- Over the fence by Kay Langmuir tation gradually fill in the bottom. Human activity simply speeds it up considerably. The most important aspect of the Millennium project is its public-education role as a demonstration shoreline -- to visibly show landowners what they can do to help slow a lake's aging process. The conservationists behind this much-needed project hope that by strolling along this rejuvenated shoreline (actually only a few small parts of it will be bullrushes) people will begin to acquire a new sense of what's fashionable for the modern envi- ronmentally conscious shoreline to wear. With the help of interpretative signs, people will see that native shrubs and grasses hugging and overhanging a shoreline act as the kidneys of a lake, filtering out all the runoff crud before it gets in the water, catching it like milk in a moustache. It creates fish habitat while dense root structures in the bank reduce ice damage and erosion. Down the road, as pressures on Lake Scugog grow, there may 'be other steps needed to protect it. God help us if people keep reacting with the kind of short-sighted self-interest that has dogged this wonderful project. The council, for example, is anticipating calls to greatly restrict or eliminate cosmetic pesticide applications in the township, following precedent-setting cases elsewhere. A bill called the Personal Watercraft Act is currently before parliament. if passed, it will give communities the right to ban or restrict personal watercraft. Many marine craft are powered by two- stroke engines which are tremendously polluting of air and water, discharging about one-third of their fuel unspent into the water. So far, fish in Lake Scugog have a clean health record. What are we prepared to do to safeguard that? Lake Scugog is our golden goose, but self-interest can slay it and Port Perry's economy. Time will tell if we are enough of a community, in every sense of the word, to keep the lake, and our town, alive. close her up!" and prepared for what will be a battle of David against Another Thing! By Rik Davie School Daze Sometimes | am wrong and sometimes I am right. Unfortunately sometimes | am right | for the wrong reasons and wrong for all the right reasons. Are you following this so far? Good, stay with this, there's a point in it somewhere. when something as emotional as the closing of the oldest school building in Durham comes along it can be an easy thing to look at the dollars of the thing. The good solid reasons for closure of the Epsom Public School are hard to argue with. I found them hard to argue with. Board officials found them hard to argue with. Most people with a light working knowledge of how the funding system for public education works (or doesn't work!) would see the figures and say "yep, But a little over a week ago | went and sat in the Epsom church and watched as the parents, students, former students, and the people of the Epsom area jammed the little house of worship and shook their collective fist at the mammoth Durham District School Board offices in faraway Whitby and cried no! They sat and listened as a core of dedicated parents laid out a battle plan not only to save their little school of under 100, but to make it a viable school for a board so penny-pinched by the Province of Ontario that it is at it's wits end as it tries to keep small 'schools open while building and repairing overcrowd- ed ones. There is a habit in the newspaper business... well actually it's my habit. of calling such meeting Whine and Cheese parties with no cheese. Not this one my friends. These are people with a plan and a huge understanding of what a school community means. For those of us who did not have the great good fortune of a small school education, some of that can be lost. At my old high school they shoot people in the parking lot these days. A senior, well respected in the community, sat and listened as this group gathered strength from itself the Goliath of modern education. This was not a story any reporter should have phoned in the next day. Ya hadda be there. I'm glad | was. When | slow down to 50 km to pass through their school zone | promise to stop cursing low speeds and start enjoying the look of that little school amongst the trees. Does the closing of the Epsom school make good financial sense. Yes it does. Should it be closed. No way! Right and wrong at the same time... see | told you there was a point! | rode with the Durham Regional Police on Halloween night, and besides spending the night with a great guy, Sgt. Terry Richardson, | got to see how our community has embraced its fire and police workers since the horrors of Sept. 11. The greetings from the kids and the handshakes from the adults for these guys was a nice sign of a change in perception about what they do and who they do it for. | also wore a bullet-proof vest. The first thing you notice is all the places they don't cover! And another thing