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4 the tribune thursday october 23 1975 jht wtihum established 188s barre beacock i i i i l aq charles ii nolan publisher x dov kprvtnn published every thursday at 54 main 5t stouhville oat tel mo210i i toreirto phoae mmmo bosle copies mc subscriptions tt m per year in advertising manaeer tailor ciidjsi0elsewere member of audit bureau o circulation canadian 6 community newspapers association and ontario weekly newspapers association second class mail registration number mm the tribune is one of tne inland publishing co limited group ef suburban newspapers which includes the aiaxwhitbypickenng news advertiser brampton guardian burlington post etobicoke caiette markham economist and sun newmarketaurora era oakville beaver oshawa this week and mississauga news editorials controls became necessary a m most people seem ready to admit that the inflation spiral cannot be allowed to continue and thus ready to admit that the government j traffic snarl begs j for town bypass council last week made clear its intention to push the provincial government into providing a bypass south of stouffville the traffic on main st during rush hour and on saturday mornings has gone far i beyond the point of being a joke and although i the motoring public are subjected to some discomfort not to mention frustration the big losers are the downtown merchants on saturday normally the busiest shopping day only a masochist would battle through the downtown traffic to shop in local stores a southerly bypass should be a first priority item for council if they are committed to keeping downtown stouffville alive as a shopping district j r there is no way a community should be needlessly subjected to the type of traffic congestion which occurs regularly in the village was justified in taking drastic action its been no secret for long enough that canadians in general have been living high off the hog more concerned about getting all they could out of the system with little thought con cerning how much they were putting into it government too has been one of the biggest culprits in this regard the prime minister tells us that this is going to stop and we are now in the wait and see period there is no question the strong moves recently made will need time to show effectiveness to the economy in general whether inflation is of such a worldwide nature that it will sweep over us anyway is no longer of concern weve got our controls and we wait to see if they will moderate spiraling costs and at the same time not knock the economy completely flat there will be no quick results but many pitfalls along the way that can knock the entire plan in the head the government has said it will use the big stick to gain com pliance if it does not the scheme is dead it remains to be seen whether the public in general the unions and business are all sufficiently alarmed with the way matters have been going to give the allout support necessary to halt the spiral now before it becomes any worse freedom and responsibility in a terse statement to york regional council king township mayor margaret bntnell maintained her right to speak freely about injustices being perpetrated by the regions top civil servants she failed however to justified com ments that she was reputed to have made in an aurora banner story of july 30 1975 the comments indicated that the regional department heads were exerting undue pressure on the land division committee the ldc as a quasijudicial body is to be free of political pressure in subsequent meetings mrs bntnell was not present to defend her statements last thursday she marched out of the council chamber before judgement could be passed on her be that as it may mrs britnell must realize that responsibility is implicit in the right of free speech if york department heads were not acting properly the matter should have brought to the council not published in the newspaper in that mrs britnell has shown that she is not afraid to speak out against injustices but has failed the test of a responsible civic leader who must be prepared to backup charges mrs bntnells refusal to substantiate the charges leaves the impression there nsno substance to them that kind of shooting from the hip type approach is both wrong and unfair there are enough real injustices for mrs britnell to waste her time on unsubstantiated ones bible thought for the week from the living bible i paul the servant of christ am here in jail because of you for preaching that you gentiles are a part of gods house no doubt you already know that god has given me this special work of showing gods favor to you gentiles god himself showed me this secret plan of his that the gentiles too are included in his kindness i say this to explain to you how i know about these things in olden times god did not share this plan with his people but now he has revealed it by the holy spirit to his apostles ephesians 315 v the beauty of a farmhouse covered in a mantle of snow is captured here by artist peter koopman the drawing was made of the house on the george yake f anion the 6th cone of whitchurch stouf f ville sugar and spice bill the toothless wonder by bill smiley one of my recurring dreams is that all my teeth are crumbling and breaking off like toast its a terrible nightmare and i always wake up sweating jam some fingers into my mouth and groan with relief when i find the teeth are still there and with pain because i have bitten my fingers today i feel that im having a daymare rather than a nightmare last night at dinner one of my front teeth came away in the midst of a glorious dish of curried chicken i love curried chicken and this time my wife had excelled herself whatever that means but i am not keen on curried chicken with teeth m it even when they are my own however this incident did not alarm me unduly or otherwise it was only my peg tooth every couple of months it comes unscrewed or whatever i carefully comb it out of the soup or spaghetti trot down to the dentist with it clutched in my hand he dusts it off pops it back in cements it in place and im back in business stuffing my guts but this morning munching my matins in this case a ripe yellow pear that tasted as so much fruit does nowadays like wet card- board i crunched on something hard now i know that pears do not have either bones or stones they have pips arid i knewthat this particular pear did not even have a pip because my loving wife knowing i was one tooth short from the night before had disembowelled it right another front tooth broken off just beside the missing peg there was no pain in either case just a sense of horror and selfdisgust its bad enough to pull a filling when eating toffee or to snap off a bit of molar when you crunch down on an unsuspected beefbone or even to have an aching tooth yanked but to have one break off when eating an overripe pear yeeeccch i still wasnt plunged into the depths some peoplego for years with no hair on their heads and plant articles in magazines suggesting baldies are more virile others go all their lives with no brains to speak of i reckoned i could get through the day without two teeth and i did but by noon the tip of my tongue was raw and shredded from thrusting it into that jagged crevice crevasse but i was coping and i knew that if i hustled down to my friendly dentist he would squeeze me in somehow and patch me up somehow i should have known better from my air force days i know that disasters always come in threes right in the middle of a brilliant lesson on the use of fourletter words in victorian literature such as legs somebody somehow rammed a redhot needle into a tooth in my lower jawbone four teeth and two spaces from the missing ones 1 almost screamed aloud i screamed silently the needle was removed two minutes later that redhot needle plunged into the tooth directly above i have two teeth on that side upper and lower and they are fairly friendly with each other because there is nobody else around this time i couldnt help it i emitted s huh as though someone were driving a stake through my heart i sagged into my chair white and shaken you can always depend on students they rally around when things are tough despite their outward cynicism theyre all heart inside that tough exterior f i think the old sods havenna hardatak wuddell we do t jeez i hope he hazzen godour tests marked yet i think i failed mine maybe hes just godda bad hangover slap him in the face a coupla times and he might come around i came out of it of course and pretended i was enacting heathcliffs grief in wuthering heights when they looked as though they didnt believe me i curled back my bottom lip and snarled at them with my new gaptoothed look they shut up when everything cooled down i realized that my back teeth were merely expressing sympathy for my lost front teeth it inade them lonelier than ever but they didnt have to shriek their sympathy at such volume my whole jaw has been aching for the remainder of this dark day but the redhot needle has cooled to a blunt instrument as soon as i finished telling you this fascinating episode of a continued story called one mans fangs im going straight to the dentist and have him rip every tattered remnant of bone out of my head l big joke fizzles out by john montgomery you know how sometimes you get an idea and you keep putting it off and putting it off until finally something happens and either somebody else does it or you get outflanked by events well im afraid im about to get out- flanked on a little joke ive been intending to pull for about the past five years the joke concerns the sending of christmas cards which i think is one of the stupidest and most inane north american customs second only to halloween as you may have gathered i dont send christmas cards but what i have been in tending on doing is to stock up on cards after christmas when they go real cheap and then pick the hottest spell of the summer and send everybody i know a card big joke eh well anyway i figured if i sent cards in july they wouldnt get lost in the avalanche of in season cards theyd be more meaningful you see i always got a chuckle out of planning it i could just see somebody stagger up to their mailbox semiparalyzed by the scorching heat hovering around the 90 degree mark or whatever the hell the metric equivalent is taking out their mail and finding this christmas card complete with wintry scene and sentimental verses extolling all the noel pap but as i mentioned earlier i think ive been outflanked the culprit is the post office and postal workers as we all know they went on strike tuesday and when you hear all the rhetoric both sides are spouting it doesnt take much imagination to figure were in for a long postal strike you take the tremendous backlog of mail j were going to have and you figure in the already painfully slow mail i almost said s service but that word certainly doesnt apply delivery and youll probably come to the same conclusion i did were all going to get our christmas cards in the middle of a july heatwave in passing id like to heap a little vilification on the post office employees i personally if they stay out for the next 10 s years i hope the government doesnt cave in and give them what they want in my opinion they are for the most part uneducated unskilled people doing flunky jobs who if they were working in private i industry would be thankful for a fraction of the pay holidays and fringe benefits they are now so distainful of the continued deterioration of the postal service is especially galling to us as we are a business which is very dependent on the post office j time and again we receive notice of a press conference or meeting that occurred three days before the notice arrived of course not all the ills of the postal system can be laid at the feet of the workers agood deal of bureaucratic ineptness was also required the postal workers just dont seem to give a damn whether they do their job properly or not recently i spent about 10 minutes waiting for service in a scarboro post office not because they were busy in fact i was the only customer but because the four employees standing at the back chatting just couldnt be bothered to break up their conversation for something so insignificant as a customer w thirty years ago this week grasshopper meat grass for broth a meat course of boiled dried grasshoppers and broth from common grass were on the billofare served the canadians captured at hong kong by the japanese and are among the things that allen har per prisoner for about four years will never forget yet despite such eatables this ruddyfaced lad declares it might not have been so terrible had only some salt been available the boys craved for salt but never got any allen is the second eldest of five sons and one of four who enlisted from the family of mr and mrs ross harper 6th concession whitchurchhe reached home on sunday after about four years most of which time relatives and friends feared for the worst since no trace or word was forthcoming for so long he enlisted in the summer of 1941 and after short training was among the boys of the royal rifles of canada to embark for hong kong where he was among 1200 captured on christmas day little more than seven months from the time of his enlistment chief cause of falling prisoner- was the fact that the royals arrived ahead of their equipment and were unable to fight with their guns and ammunition failing to catch up with them on the water voyage when captured that memorable christmas day said allen we were sent to what was known as the china camp on hong kong island food and medical supplies were terribly short but no cruelty was practised on us for misdemeanours the japs would slap our men riceformed the chief diet but one of the nottobe forgotten items was dried grasshoppers which might have been palatable had there been salt available as it was they made poor meat the men craved for salt f another dish was broth made from common grass and under such fare i dropped weight noticeably he said allen stayed in the camp on hong kong island for a year then the more fit were chosen and sent to yokohama in japan to work in the great dock yards no news on the progress of the war reached the prisoners up to this second year no mail and no tidings of any kind whatever in fact it was not until 1944 that this boy received his first letters from home then at least two years old parcels were- mostly stolen in may this year allen and a group of his com panions were moved again they were put to work in the mines 4000 feet below ground and it was hard going by now about 30 had died from malnutrition and sheer lack of medicine this camp was known as hell and slavery camp a name attached to it by the english whom they replaced we were given an issue of japanese soap said allen and this was something even the native civilians didnt obtain he continued then we broke the bars and gave part to the guards as a bribe for english papers by this means we at last began to learn about the good turn the war had taken and we noticed too a slight improvement in the treatment of us as defeat became possible for the japs 1 we were released one day after the surrender was signed so the japs got an extra days work out of us he said on being set free they were able to visit the surrounding cities and were soon back in yokohama awaiting passage to america however allen was due to a sore disappointment when he went aboard ship here he was found to be ill with a spot on one lung and was returned to land for treatment the boat went without him still when he was recovered instead of going aboard a boat he look off by plane in fact he made the journey in several hops all the way by air to san francisco v his flying too was delayed when the plane reached saipan for the cold weather up above was too much for his condition and he was stricken with pneumonia causing a delay of three weeks when he grounded at saipan midway between the philippine and wake islands once at san francisco interest rather lagged in the great winter mecca for world tourists because of his eagerness to reach home so a stop of only four days was all allen harper allowed himself before he boarded the train for home to be greeted at toronto by his home folks and 25 or 30 friends m