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TERRACE BAY/SCHREIBER NEWS Wednesday, May 10, 1989 The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 0867. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. Tree cutters and smokers ruining our environment My last trip to Thunder Bay, which I took about two weeks ago, made me open my eyes to our environment. While driving, especially between Nipigon and Thunder Bay, I noticed a number of areas which had been clear cut by . logging companies. I realize forestry is a vital industry to the Northwestern Ontario economy, but I found myself asking the question, "why do these companies have to cut the trees down right next to the highway?" To look at an expanse of what was once a lush forest, only to now see an open clearing, makes me wonder how lazy these companies are. Granted, they were "generous" enough to leave a single row of trees between the highway and the area which they cut down. I guess this is supposed to block our view of what they're doing. 'Why can't they move back just a little further into the bush away from the highway? I'm not proposing that "out of sight, out of mind" attitude, but there's a great abundance of trees out there. I fail to see why these companies can't try to preserve the beauty of the landscape that we can see by doing their cutting activities further away from the highway. Something else I noticed as I was driving along. There must have been close to a dozen areas along the road where the brush and grass just to the side of the highway had been bumed. These burned areas weren't situated anywhere close to businesses or residences. They were scattered here and there in the middle of nowhere. As I see it, there's a good chance these bummed areas were caused by people throwing cigarettes out of their vehicles. Luckily, none of these burned areas was wider than ten or 15 feet and longer than 100 feet. But come on smokers, use your brains. We're approaching the fire season and if the ground had been. drier, any one of these burnt areas could have turned out to be a large fire. And just think, if a fire had started, those logging companies would be forced to do their cutting away from the highway. 'Editorial Page === General Managev....... Paul Marcon Editor.......... sesteeeee... David Chmara Admin. Asst...........Gayle Fournier Production Asst....Carmen Dinner Editorial Asst......... Connie Sodaro Single copies 40 cents. Subscription rates: $15 per year / $25 two years (local) and $21 per year (out of town). " WaLK TALL, PAL, YOUR PROBLEMS ARE Now BEHIND You ! " SS ~ ( Can disabled work for CP? Dear Editor: I am writing in regard to an ad placed in the May 1 cdition of the Times-News by CP Rail. The ad was for the position of Train Persons. It states that the position is open to all qualified individu- als, (women, aboriginal peoples, DISABLED PERSONS, and members of visible minorities). In order to qualify for this position at CP Rail you must pass réquired medical examinations, these being: 1. Visual - color blindness, depth perception, stigmatism, deficiency of sight are not accept- able. 2. Physical - Persons applying must be able to do the following: a. throw switches b. climb up to hand brakes varying from 6 feet to 15 feet up the side of a box car. c. carry a knuckle which weighs approximately 80 Ibs. for an undetermined distance. d. jump on and off mov- ing equipment at speeds from 4 mph to 10 mph. e. walk undetermined distances. These duties must be per- formed in all weather conditions, night and day, winter and sum- mer. How could a disabled person perform these duties up to com- pany standards? CP Rail encour- ages disabled persons to apply and in my opinion has no inten- tion of hiring them. Is CP Rail trying to rebuild its Continued on page 9 course -- or lack of it. Canada Post is forever getting shot in its corporate foot by. the fatuous LfGny. Gentlemen, Merchants , or others , wants tosend any Letters to any foreign port, they may depend on _ having their Letters carefully deliver'd to the Captain of the first Vessel bound for the Place to which their Letters are directed, by paying One Penny per Letter to said Office. Their humble servant, Benjamin Leigh The above ad appearcd in the Halifax Gazette on April 27, 1754 -- the first evidence of what would grow to become Canada Post. And unless I miss my guess, by April 28,1754, disgruntled colonialists were swapping the first anti-post office jokes. Ah, the post office. It's the brunt of more one-liners than telephoe operators, airline food and Jewish mothers-in-law combined. Why. do Canadians love to hate the Post Office so? Part of it is performance of clown who works there -- on both sides of the picket fence. Remember the famous quote from the lips of Jean-Claude Parrot, President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers back in 1978? His union had been ordered by court injunction to go back to work. Mister Parrot faced the nation _ via the TV cameras and snarled "You want to mail a letter? Just try it." That's the kind of talk that $ tax-paying citizens of a ~ democracy are really keen to ¥y hear. But it wasn't just the labour side of Canada Post that got the nation's goat.. Andre Oucllctte, Postmaster-General 'once blandly told the Globe and Mail: "I can't accept that businessmen have to rely on the Post Office to make a living. If they do, they better find ways." What planct do _ these people live on? Somctimes the Post Office seems to be engaged in one long banana-skin slidc, stumbling and careening from Chaplinesque gaffe to Three Stooges pratfall. It introduces, with great fanfare, Supermailboxcs. They don't work and everybody hatcs them. It announces, in a scrics of slick and expensive newspaper ads "new © strcamlining procedures to efficiency". First thing it docs is Close a whole clutch of small Postal service started to slide in 1754 improve town post offices, throwing people out of work and shattering a time-honoured rural tradition. And how do citizens fight back? With jokes of course. "Know how to become Postmaster-Gencral? Make the Prime Minister very, very angry." "It now costs 38 cents to mail a Iettcr. Thirtecn cents for delivery; twenty-five cents for storage." Then there's Allan Fotheringham's wicked solution: "It could be ordered that Post Office workers receive their checks by mail." But you know when all is said and done, I think maybe we give the Post Office a bit of a bad rap. Sure it's inefficient -- but no more than the phone company or Ottawa or those idiots who keep billing you for magazincs you never received and don't want. We Canucks will linc up at Supermarket checkouts or sit in doctor's offices like good little sheep for hours with nary a bleat of protest, but Ict three people get in front of us at the stamp wicket and we start rummaging around for tar and feathers. Pity the poor Postics -- even when they win they lose. Did you rcad about that Ontario farmer who received a Ictter last month with a King George V stamp om it? It had the stamp - because it was mailed in 1931. "Must have got stuck behind some machinery" an official explained. Har. har. Big laugh on the Post Office for losing a letter for 58 years. But the really remarkable thing is that the Postics delivered the Ictter. Just as they're supposed to. Even though they knew they were in fora merciless razzing. _ That's class. Not First Class, but class. I say, Two Cheers for the Post Office. I'd give'cm all three, but they have to lose something for lousy dusting.