The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Shirley Whittington Last week, a bulky envelope addressed to me thumped through our letter slot. When I opened it, a crisp one dollar bill fell out. This was a nice change, and infinitely preferable to the usual impassioned pleas to the householder: "Finish High School!" "Be a TV Technician!'"' 'Save Money with a Home Freezer!"' That dollar bill was bait in the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement television viewing survey. A multi-paged diary was enclosed, along with bi-lingual instructions on how to fill it out. A dollar for a personal diary? That's peanuts compared to what some people get for publishing their secrets, but until I get famous or marry a prime minister, I'll take any payment I can get. I'll only complain if excerpts from my personal TV diary are serialised in the Toronto Star. Someone called Louise Martin (a perfectly bi-lingual name) commented, in a personal introductory note: 'These BBM survey results are used to plan programs. This is your chance to influence what's on TV." Until now, the only way I've been able to influence what's on TV is by screaming when people leave empty pizza boxes or dirty socks up there. A new opportunity plus the bait of a fresh 82 cent dollar captivated me. I tucked the dollar into my cleavage (similarly devalued) sharpened my pencil and began SETS Fe I WONDER if southern Australia needs a weekly columnist or a cracking good English teacher. This thought was prompted when an Australian girl, an exchange student, walked into my class today. She'd arrived on the weekend and had gone skidooing in a blizzard. Quite an introduction to Canada. I think she's still a bit shaken. It's summer in Australia, and the drop in temperature she experienced would be about 100 degrees. Why couldn't my great-grandfather have been a convict, and been sent to Australia, free passage, instead of a bog Irishman who had to scrape a few shillings together to pay his way to Canada, steerage class? Just think of those lousy Australians, loitering about the beach in Sidney, bikini- clad, while we lurch about, bundled to the ears, like a lot of sore-headed bears. Afraid to open our mouths in case our lungs freeze. Certain the car won't start. Cursing the town snow-plow that came sailing along just after we'd risked a coronary shovelling the drive, and dumped a couple of tons into the driveway. Even my wife, who has always been a fearless driver, is daunted. She used to sail my diary. MONDAY: Dear diary. Turned the TV on early this morning to check the weather on our local cable channel. Immediately distracted by another channel upon which a TV evangelist was playing the piano with great energy. His mouth moved joyfully as he played. Nosound came out. Question: If God is all-powerful, why does he allow evangelists' microphones to fail? Flip for weather. 'Snow' says channel 2. Pull back curtains and look outside. Yup. Snow. No TV for remainder of Monday, diary, unless you count accidental overhearing of Happy Days and Love Boat. (Aside to Louise Martin: I'll give you back your dollar if you promise to sink Love Boat.) TUESDAY: Early morning time check on local cable channel startles me. The digital readout says 89:85 a.m. How is this possible? Has the clock gone metric overnight? How can it possibly be eighty-five minutes after eighty-nine o'clock? Put on glasses. Peer at screen again. Realize digital readout zeroes have a stroke through middle like continental sevens. Time is really 9:05 a.m. Tuesday evening I begin with the CBC news at 10:00, then sneak over to Johnny Carson. Would rather doze off to mindless laughter than tales of disaster, unemployment, Eighty-two pennies for your depression, et-dreary-cetera. : WEDNESDAY: Tonight I visit China via TV. Good stuff. Then Carmen, a ballet where dancers smoke en pointe and do odd things with side chairs. Later, try to maintain bifocal contact with Knowlton during Nashional, but doze off. Wake up as Frum and Finley smilingly buzz-saw visiting ex- pert. As eyes shut for last time I realize both women's voices are identical. THURSDAY: No TV tonight. Choir practise instead. Choir leader does terrific monolgue. Catchy commercials. No canned laughter. ; FRIDAY: TV binge starts with Not the Nine O'Clock News, then an unfunny Brit comedy called Butterflies. At 11:00, frantic dash for pyjamas, slippers, toothbrushing, procurement of soothing beverage and bowl of barbecued peanuts. (Bought with your dollar, Louise.) Then back to TV to watch double header of SCTV -- first on CBC, then flip to American channel for NBC version. What's this? Yikes! Bananas -- four star Woody Allen pic -- is on, same time as SCTV. Dilemma. What to do? Last two hours spent flipping back and forth between channels 11 and 12 -- a possibility not even dimly forseen by those who designed the TV viewing diary. So, Louise. You're not perfect. At 2:00 a.m., stagger upstairs giggling thoughts uncontrollably. Peanut fragments wedged painfully between teeth. Wrist sore. Eyes- grainy and half-shut. SATURDAY: While preparing my toilette for a social evening, I watch Wild World. Mother giraffe gives birth to baby giraffe, right on TV. Astonishing. She didn't even sit down. Think about this all through first social hour. Then feel guilty when told that local high school students competed on channel 3 Reach for the Top while giraffe in labour on channel 6. Should have watched kids instead of calf. Ponder: Reach for Top good name for show about giraffes. SUNDAY: Try to improve mind by wat- ching National Geographic special on cut- tlefish. Keep dozing off. Finally in deter- mined effort to stay awake and improve mind, I stand up and dare self to fall asleep in that position. Fall asleep. Wake up later in Love Boat. Why doesn't somebody give that show to the Russian Navy for target practise? So -- that's it Louise. Thanks for the dollar, and would you do me a favour? Don't tell the Squire how much you paid me to reveal the secrets of my TV watching. I like the feeling of being independently wealthy. Ha! He's still trying to figure out how I was able to afford barbecued peanuts on Friday night. off to the city with the two kids, in any kind of weather, to take music lessons in the city, a round trip of nearly 200 miles. She was even caught in a six-car pile-up one day, when a white-out blinded her and five other drivers, and some idiot plowed into her rear end. Her car's rear end that is. This winter, she's plain scared to take off to visit her father, what with plugged highways, drifting snow, high winds, and that constant bone-chilling cold. There's only one small bit of comfort. Everybody else is getting it, too, including those traitors, the rich, who went south for the winter, leaving the rest of us to stumble toward spring, should it ever arrive. That's the good news from the south. The bad news is that the heavy frosts down there have killed a great part of the citrus crop as well as the vegetables whose prices, which were already sky-high, have shot into the stratosphere. I can see the day coming, soon, when Canadian matrons will be selling their bodies for a bunch of carrots, a couple of those little, hard, green tomatoes that are artificially reddened, or a chunk of that rabbit food known as lettuce. Please send me to Australia Had a look at your oil bill lately? I swear that if a couple of Arabs, dressed in burnous and robes, showed up in an average small town in Canada, they'd be lynched, after suitable torture: application of icicles to their tenderest parts. Or maybe burying them up to their chins in a snowbank and leaving them there, the way they used to bury people in the sand and let the sun finish them off. There seems no way out. Even suicide, not unknown in residents of northern climes, is almost impossible. Jump off the town dock to drown, and all you do is fracture your skull on the ice. Slit your wrists and the blood congeals so fast all you wind up with is a couple of sore wrists. Try head-on collision with another car, and he skids into a snowbank just before you hit him. It's depressing, that's what it is. About the only thing that pulls most Canadians through a winter like this is that we can stay hot under the collar most of the time, and generate enough heat to keep the lower extremities from turning to stone. All we have to do is read the papers. Our RCMP, once one of the most admired police forces in the world, can produce a lot of thermal units. Paying a multiple murderer $90,000. Paying another well-known hood fifty thousand for fingering some other hoods. Government waffling over Poland. Wringing every possible nickel in taxes out of the poor and the middle-class, while allowing the rich to go merrily on their way. Even accountants, the most tight-lipped people in the land, have been stirred to anger by some of the blatant idiocies of the MacEachen budget, which almost seems as though it were designed to increase inflation and unemployment, discourage people from investing in their own country, put a stop to new construction, and deliberately alienate almost every sector of the public. There seem's a great lethargy in Ottawa, a sense that our leaders are saying, "'I'm all right, Jack, what are you grouching about?" Not many banks going bankrupt these days, but a lot of other people are, from farms to fishermen to small business to manufac- turers. I think it's time to throw the rascals out. How about you? And how about one of my three faithful readers starting a campaign to raise funds for SSA (Send Smiley to Australia). I'm sure there are a great many who would contribute, heavily. Investor's Inquiry by Charles Colling Further to the column last week on Money Markets, the 1954 revision of the Bank Act changed the reserve ration of the chartered banks from five per cent to a rate varying from eight per cent to 12 per cent - to be set from time to time by the Bank of Canada. The banks immediately began to lower their reserve ration downward from the traditional 10 per cent and by the last half of 1955 it had fallen to the eight to eight and one quarter per cent range. This change made many millions of dollars of excess reserves available for employment by the banks and until more profitable em- ployment in commercial loans could be arranged, the banks placed these excess funds in short-term paper. This made for a more active and a broader money market only temporarily. The rising tide of business and the accompanying demand for loans caused banks to sell government bonds. Since late in 1955, the banks, at the instigation of the Bank of Canada, have sold bonds and restricted the increase in bank loans in order to reach a more liquid position, equal to a minimum of 15 per cent of deposit liabilities. Interest rates rose in this period. The 1954 revision of the Bank Act also permitted the banks to increase their capital through the issuance of "rights". This action assisted the banks in meeting the increased financing requirements of a growing country and thus, indirectly, the growth of the money market. All banks utilized this new power and have had "'right"' issues. The investment dealer sells Treasury Bills to customers who have surplus funds which, however, must be available in cash in the near future. In other words, the customer wants to be sure that he can get his money back on a specified date. Since there are Treasury Bills outstanding from one day in term to 182 days in term, the dealer may be Revision of Act freed funds able to sell the customer a Treasury Bill maturity and agree to buy it back on the required date at a price which will give the customer a pre-arranged yield. Sales representatives of investment dealers are constantly seeking out prospective buyers of short-term paper and thus playing an important role in broadening the money market. Charles Colling is the resident manager of Yorkton Securities Inc. in Midland. In sen- ding in questions to be answered, please remember Securities Commission Regulations will not permit giving opinions or recommendations on any specific securities through this column. All other signed inquiries will be answered as soon as possible. In all answers only the inquirer's initials will be used. Address all questions to "Investor's Inquiry" c/o The Midland Times, Box 609, Midland, Ontario. Easter Seals: b The story ehind stamps The Easter Seal -A consultative nursing recreationprogramsfor the society will help - The society has been Society is a private service by 37 registered disabled children, parents to obtain ar- instrumental in helping charitable organization. nurses, with public | sponsored by municipal tificial limbs, braces, © create treatment The society wascreated health and recreation departme- wheelchairs, and other centres. At present in 1922 to bring together _ rehabilitation nursing nts, or community vital aids. For short- there are 19 children's in a voluntary training, and ex- groups. term needs, the society rehabilitation centres association what has_ perience, based in 23 - The society will will also provide throughout Ontario, now become 238 Easter district offices. require in excess of $9 wheelchairs or other including the Ontario Seal Service Clubs in - A two-week camping million during 1982 to -- aids on loan. Crippled Children's Ontario whose 10,000 experience for more maintain its services to - Diagnostic and con- Centre in Toronto, a members have chosen service to physically disabled children and their families as their form of community effort. Services currently provided by the society for over 6,700 children include: than 1,000 youngsters at the society's five summer camps. The Society also offers children under seven and their parents a family camping program at most of these camps, and supports community disabled youngsters in the province. The society does not par- ticipate in United Appeal campaigns. - Where financial assistance is required, over and above finan- cial support provided by the Ministry of Health, ~ sultant clinics are world renowned sponsored annually by 'rehabilitation facility the society in the more - Through the Conn remote areas of the Smythe Research province by request. During 1981, some 1,000 Foundation for Crippled Children, the Easter children were examined Seal Society sponsors by specialists whose basic and_ clinical findings were reported research into crippling to the family doctor. disorders in children. Wednesday, March 3, 1982, Page 5 a