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Page 4, News, Tuesday, May 28, 1991 Editorial The Terrace Bay - Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT 2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspaper Association : ; a a Sandy Harbinson Sing! 50 cents incl. 4 GST. Sckortion rates: Advertising Mogv............... Linda Harbinson CNA $18 per year/seniors $12 EGUtOM...................ssseseeeeeseeees Robert Cotton -- (local); $29 per year (out of ~Sales Representative........... ...Lisa LeClair cn er AGININ. BSW. esc Gayle Fournier ast Add GST to yearly subs. : Production Asst................ Cheryl Kostecki Community Policing eo The new blue line =a = The police services in both communities, the OPP in Schreiber and Terrace Bay Police Services in Terrace Bay, have traditionally involved themselves in community life. However, the recent Police and Community Together (PACT) program, held in Schreiber, provided a unique opportunity for representatives of the public learn about the inner workings of the Ontario Provincial Police. This was an essential first step in removing misconceptions held by the general public about police services and, perhaps, misconceptions held by policemen about the public. Community policing is a term that has been associated most recently with Ontario's new Police Services Act. The concept of community policing, however, is not new and has been going on in a practical way in many communities for some time. The PACT program is a good example of this. The program, started in Geraldton in 1989 by Dave Wall, OPP Detachment Commander at that time, was developed to meet the particular needs of that community. Community policing is really a renewal of the old approach developed in London, England. The overall goal is a police- community partnership in dealing with crime and related problems. It contrasts with the old 'professional' approach in which crime is the exclusive property of the police and the police form a 'thin blue line' against crime. Community policing, with a community - police partnership, will form a 'new blue line' with new and far-reaching resources - the people of the community. However, before this new partnership can begin to work effectively, both partners have to be fully aware of the others goals, needs and methods of operation. PACT programs can, and should continue to, provide the police services half of the equation. The Community Policing Committee, to be set-up for the communities serviced by the Schreiber OPP, can provide the communities half of the equation. An opportunity not to be missed. Robert A. Cotton Open letter to residents of Birchwood Terrace It is with deep regret and serious concern that I wish to inform all of you that I will not be seeing you in a working capacity anymore. I have been terminated because I did not wish to re-apply for a job that I was already doing for the past ten-and-a-half years. I see no reason to re-apply since my supervisor is still the same as is the employer. The only change is the reduction in hours from seven-and-a-half to four per day, four days per week. I agreed to this last item on March 25, 1991, so why would a re-application be necessary? It is very sad to see the deterioration in working conditions and the general turmoil as well as the direction that management has taken at the home. In the past six months the management, by its methods, which are both autocratic and dictatorial, have created a situation under which it is most difficult for anyone to work. As stated several times elsewhere, the cutbacks were expected by the staff but not the manner in which they were carried out. The methods used fly in the face of honesty, fairness and true negotiation. I enjoyed caring for all of you while I was employed at Birchwood. It is unfortunate that a very small few can ruin what was an excellent team. In closing, I would strongly recommend that the Board of Management, representing 17 municipalities and the Provincial Government set up a group to get to he bottom of the problems. However they must include the residents and all of the staff in their investigations. Mona Cano. Terrace Bay UNE UP LIKE THIS FOR , a ee FOOD AN CLOTHING 2 fee gs Fly me to the moon and let me sing among the Stars. Let me see what spring is like On Jupiter or Mars. Here's a date to circle in your Daytimer: October 12, 1992. That's the day when 20 well- heeled and unusually adventurous travellers will each toss back a noggin of champagne, strap themselves into a tastefully appointed three stage rocket and blast off to spend seven fun-filled days orbiting around the planet Earth. They will collect no scientific data. They will take no prize-winning photos nor file any breathtaking first-person commentaries. The trip is strictly for pleasure. Tourists in space. It had to happen. Actually, don't deface your daytimer. It won't be happening. Not on October 12, 1992 anyway. That was the target date set by a travel agency called Society Expeditions a few years back. The company even sold a few tickets (only $52,000 U.S. for the round trip -- and that included in-flight breath mints). Alas, the plan was ahead of its time for our current state of interplanetary travel technology. The ticket money was refunded. Society Expeditions now offers only earth-bound travel packages. But that's not to say it was a dumb idea -- just a little premature. Humans were fantasizing about space travel long before Old Blue Eyes warbled the lyrics to Fly Me To The Moon. Shakespeare wrote about singing songs at Heaven's Gate. H.G. Wells wrote a potboiler that took his early twentieth century readers for an extended moonwalk. Even Chester Gould, the crusty and eccentric creator of the cartoon strip Dick Tracy occasionally filled his panels with drawings of a proto-typical space vehicle of sorts. It looked like an oversized wastepaper basket but it had a special quality: it wasn't subject to the rules of gravity. Gould often portrayed his gumshoe hero white-knuckling the . tim of the anti-gravity bucket with one hand and clamping down his trademark yellow fedora with Arthur Black the other as he whisked off to battle evil-doers lurking anywhere from a gang hideout in Teaneck, New Jersey to a crater on the moon. At the bottom of the last cartoon panel, Gould would print cryptically: THE NATION THAT CONTROLS GRAVITY CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE Which is true, though largely meaningless. Gould might as easily have said the nation that controls oxygen controls the universe. But Gould, nce Like so many other Homo Sapiens, was space-struck. For him, as for the misguided visionaries behind Society Expeditions Ltd., the fantasy of slipping the bonds of earth had become somewhat of an obsession. It seems to be a disease that's going around of late. I hear that scientists at NASA are currently kicking around a new intergalactic agricultural discipline called Terraforming -- literally "making earth". The idea is to take a barren planet -- Mars, say -- and by installing solar reflectors and various sophisticated gas producing facilities, to alter the planetary climate and make it conducive to the formation of Life. At least as we know it. One might ask whether mankind's dismal track record even entitles us to another crack at planetary husbandry, but the question is redundant. We will go Out There, whether or not its a sound idea. And the solar reflectors of tomorrow will give way to Golden Arches the day after that. Symbolically, however, it's a shame the New Age couldn't have started as Society Expeditions Ltd. planned -- with the worlds first space tourist shuttle on October 12, 1992. That's a pretty significant date, after all. Exactly five centuries from the day another whacky visionary arrived at a destination much of the the world thought impossible. The destination was the island of Hispaniola. The visionary was an Italian tourist by the name of Columbus.