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i the tribune thursday january z 17 wh wtihxnt established 188s oiarles h nolan i publisher- puwiihjvrytiorljyti4mjinstsioufnlltootttlt4ml barrfc beacock toronto pboat mmwo tint copies 20c subtcriptioas mm per year in advertising manaeer ciudu00 ljbermmbtr of audit burwusj circulation cndio 5 6 community newspapers assocutioa and ontario weekly newspapers association second class mall registration number mm si3tit the tribune is one of tne inland publishing co limited group oi suburban newspapers which includes the aiaxwhitbypickering h advertiser brampton guardian burlington post etobicoke gazette markham economist and sun newmarkevaurora era oakvillc beaver cshawa this week and mississauga news editorials go transit need has never been deterimined v often political considerations override pragmatic analyses of events certain decisions are made for political reasons and then must be put into practice this seems to us to be the case with the go transit service scheduled to go into service feb 15 it will link uxbridge stouff- ville and claremont with downtown toronto this is a good thing in one respect but in another way it is somewhat disturbing the service was announced last fall yet little planning was done ahead of time premier william davis announced the plan to have a rail service eventually and a bus service in the meantime as far as the tribune can ascertain there has never been a survey to gauge the need for the service such a survey should have been done first you dont establish a service and then test for the need the new go transit bus service for in stance could simply take passengers off the commuter train it could also aid shoppers going to the city but might not be very useful for people commuting for work how many people in stouffville commute to toronto to work we cant answer that question and neither can the transit people of the people who do commute how many can be realistically wooed from their cars unto the buses with the possibility of fare increases and present push for government restraint in spending will the saving be worth it to commuters can one reasonably expect that a government committed to budget cutting will have the millions of dollars needed to make a commuter service to uxbridge operational these are rhetorical questions but the government must find answers for these questions if a commuter service can be viable up to this time the cart has gone before the horse noise bylaw is improbable the spectre of the town of whitchurch stouffville passing a bylaw banning noisy jet aircraft in the area is something to boggle the mind it seems hardly possible that the local municipality could do such a thing dr charles godfrey mpp for durham west assured council in a letter that such action is possibleand legal if that is true it opens the way for i all sorts of improbable visions about the townsbylaw enforcement officer serving a summons on an air canada 747 5 on a serious note one would agree that such a bylaw could be one more obstacle in the way of 4heproposed cancelled pickering airport however if the s under tobksuch a course of action it could mean fighting the bylaw all the way to the supreme v court of canada i 5i as demonstrated by the dump issue we feel that the town is unprepared for such a long and costly battle in the courts should the pickering airport project be ressurected we wonder if dr godfrey was not speaking a little tongueincheek about including com mercial jets in the bylaw i as far as smaller aircraft operating out of markham and buttonville airports such a bylaw might be useful in regards to com mercial jets unless the town would be prepared for the long court battle- restrictions would not be worth the paper theyare printed ithe initial reaction by council was that theysdid not wantto become involved jn any more costly court actions passing a noise bylaw would inevitably lead to that this irierease justified the residents of stouffville have been fortunate in having some of the lowest hydro rates m southern ontario the announcement of a rate increase last week does not change that situation the local public utilities commission has done a remarkable job in installing modern uptodate equipment on a payasyougo basis the only debt is a small amount left to be paid on the puc building on main st the puc has a small efficient staff and a dedicated group of workers who seem to be willing to go out any time day or night to perform needed repairs r the present increase of 20 per cent is still lower than- the increase ontario hydro is levying in other words two per cent of the increase is being absorbed by the local utility with our present concern for conservation of energy it will be a small matter for most families to avoid the increase by simply using less hydro it is up to us to do our part skill and talent abounds r im- this home on main st now the office of chiropractor js delaurier is one of the impressive stately homes in town the sketch here is by peter koopman bible thought for the week from the liyingbibte then adam had sexual intercourse with eve his wife and she conceived and gave birth to a son cain meaning i have created for as she said with gods help i have created a man her next child was his brother abel abel became a shepherd while cain was a farmer at harvest time cain brought the lord a gift of his farm produce and abel brought the fatty cuts of meat from his best lambs and i presented them to the lord and the lord accepted abels of fering but not cains genesis 415 otj sugar and spice bill defines curmudgeon by bill smiley recently i listed some of the things i dislike about our society when id finished i thought to myself boy you are a nasty old piece of work do you realize youve barely scratched the surface for a week or two i went around thinking in 10 or 20 seconds spurts every three or four days that i was a curmudgeon some of my younger readers will not know what a curmudgeon is well it comes from the root word mud we all know what mud is it is dirty it is cool under the toes unless it is in the form of a mud pack which is good for the wrinkles if your name is mudd you are either in the doghouse or you are a loser i hope that is clear to the root word mud unless we want to root around in the mud a bit longer we attach the prefix cur a cur as everyone knows is a cad with teeth and sometimes a moustache who plays the villain m oldfashioned melodramas- in newfashioned melodrama he also has teeth and a big belly or a bald head and he has become the hero t r still with me we now have curmud signifying a mean guy who is cool under thej toes has wrinkles or is a loser sometimes all three now we come to the suffix geon which is of more obscure vintage it is of hungarian antecedent and it seems to have meant originally something we- might call colloquially a dummy who makes a lot of silly and unnecessary noise without getting anywhere which is rather a contradiction in terms come to think of it there are many perversions of the original of course we find the suffix in such words as injun- engine and john but the original meaning is in there somewhere an injun for example is one of the original in people who rides around in everdiminshing circles emitting war- whoops until he is shot off his horse think of your car the engine makes a lot of silly and unnecessary noise at least mine does and gets nowhere occasionally the car gets somewhere but the engine remains exactly where it started in the car and of course there is the colloquial word john meaning a toilet or water closet or backhouse if toilet offends you this item of hardware indulges in a great deal of unnecessary noise whether receiving or transmitting and isusually going nowhere except on trains buses or airplanes whenit is so active it has to put up a busy sign most of the time on ships of course with their innate sense of superiority the john is called a head this came about when one of the head men jn the british navy admiral sir dudley pound affectionately known to his jolly tars as dud once went looking for the john and discovered a lot of common seamen and a very common lot they were lined up with one of the symptoms of scurvy known as dire rear in the interests of clarity this has nothingto do with the term rear admiral understandably sir dud flew into v high j rage the only type allowed to senior officers and uttered a good deal of silly and un necessary noise or geon when he had to wait his turn for the john as naval tradition has it this led to the wedding of- dud and geon meaning a john that isnt working or a senior officer with a red face or a towering rage whichever youi choose thats one of the beauties of the english language you can take your pick and you know what you can do with it v if you have followed me carefully through a this brief but enlightening exploration into semantics i am sure you have come to the v conclusion as i have that i am not a cur- h mudgeon at all i am not a mean guy i havent hit a little kid since mmegrewup re- i o i am not cool under the toes my feet heat something terrible in this weather jj i am not a loser how can you know youre t a loser when you dont know what it is to be a winner f i do not go around making silly and un necessary noises except when it is absolutely necessary and finaly i feel that i- am definitely getting somewhere v v it is amazing the amount of hitherto unknown skill and talent that has come to light since the library last year initiated a policy of displaying the work of local artists and craftsmen t r one or two artists are featured every month and examples of their work are displayed at the back of the library jj the library staff has done an excellent job of seeking out fine local talent that was in many cases previously unknown to the rest of the community the display area at the library provides a forum for local works that never existed t before and it is our hope the public will con tinue to support this program by volunteering their work for showing j through the displays we get aninsight into the creative activities of our neighbors this is increasingly important in a r com munity that with the influx of commuters is rapidly josing its small towncloseness theexcellent works thathave included paintings photography leathercfafts and a multitude of other handiworks should provide encouragement to other residents who would like to get involved in this type of endeavor less sophisticated although to many people equal in importance are the showings of public school art work j countdown stouffville centennial 18771977 one hundred years ago the average price of farms on the market in the stouffville area was 60 an acre for first- class land 40 for second class and 20 for the poorer farms about twothirds of the rfarmswere fenced principally with cedar and pine rails or stumps drainage was not generally resorted to about a third of the farm houses wereof log constructionjt u grain yieldswere very low by present day standardsfwithfall wheat 20 bus to athe acreoats 35 and barley 28 abouta s third of the land wavstill heavily timbered o s h4- centennial committee fin januaryofilwsikeithsutherland ordinating committee that committee has been holding regular monthly meetings throughout 1975 and sofar in 1976 plans have been formulated for a sketch book with historical line drawings of stouffville i buildings and other scenes- of interest artists interested in having work included i in the book or folder can hand them in to the tribune office at 54 main st w bruce burton is chairman of the committee established to produce the sketch book x v theme song contest j hvj t vthei centennial committee is spon- soring a theme song contest the entries must be in by march 5 1976 first prize is is was namedchairmanof thecentennial cok 100 second will be 50 and third is 25 a t kjki s for the past year it has been my job eyery week to pull out the musty old issues of the tribune and scour them for bits and pieces i feel are suitable for the 30 years ago column between the sneezing and rubbing of watery eyes musty paper throws my sinuses into a frenzy i have managed to learn a fair bit of what the world as reflected by the village of stouffville was like back then several years before my birth the period i first covered dealt with the last days of wwii hitler had been defeated and an ultimate allied victory against the japanese was by then inevitable c then the japanese surrender was chronicled with surprisingly little mention of the atomic bomb since then i have been and still am leafing through the early postwar era i get the impression it was a brief period of un- bridled optimism which as we all know now soured into that ugly period known as the cold war reading the papers from this time one gets the impression that everything was right with the world and that there was in the general view no problem that couldnt be solved with the application of modern technology hardly a week went by without some fantastic new development being trumpeted in retrospect some seem incredibly naive in one issue there appeared a story speculating that the newly invented wonder drug penicillin might be marketed in a lipstick r form presumably this could by its mere application cure any diseases or infections not actually requiring surgery ddt was touted as a marvellous in vention that would free us all the minor annoyances of insects and would eliminate crop damage caused by bugs as we now know ddt lhas been widely banned because it was discovered it builds up to dangerously high levels in the food chain stories appeared telling of new con struction methods that were going to make housing so cheap everybody would be able to afford their own home a promise that has certainly gone unfulfilled as anyone who has priced houses recently can attest to 7 in thosedaysthe paper had an enjoyably a look at attitudes 30 years ago by john montgomery a folksy style that would be nearly impossible to duplicate now without coming across soun ding rather affected humor was a staple and it seems there were always some funny anecdotes being brought out the stories involved local people and although their names werent always mentioned i suspect it would be a safe bet that everybody in a village the size of stouffville knew who was being written about v articles ignored the formal newspaper style and took a decidedly conversational tone and the writers had obviously never heard the phrase objective journalism because their stories openly expressed indignation at wrongdoers i one particular example was the story of several young fellows who would nowadays be labelled teenagers who knocked a ladys hat off one halloween night the resultant blows her outraged husband dealt the young rowdies were unabashedly described as richly deserved it came as a surprise to learn that only 30 years ago the main street of stouffville had j never been paved and that the local churches all had stables instead of parking lots there are some things though that ap parently never change with alarming regularity the paper documented the local clergys eloquently dire warnings of the j imminent moral collapse of youth youthful boozingwas decried arid harsher punishments were demanded to stamp out the alarming increase in lawlessness i i- the general impression being that the young were going to perdition at a rate never i- before encountered in the cibiiized world it now seems somewhat ironic to con sider that the immoral youth being lamented and editorialized over three decades ago are now for the most part the middle- aged parents who are being sermonized about how their children are going fullbore along the expressroute to hell and damnation r 9 thirty years ago this week excerpts from the tribune from january 31 1946 first car dr john button who occupies an apartment in the button block on main st and will shortly open a medical practice here has brought the first postwar car to stouffville a 1946 chevrolet 10 million goldfish come in all sizes at the stouffville gold fish co plant here and there are over 10000000 of them sold in a year famous bull the famous bull del zonto 1 bought at the worlds record price by george rodanz arrived from its yankee home to reach stouffville early tuesday morning about nine oclock the famous animal and 13 other purchases made by mr rodanz stepped down the gang plank to be loaded in trucks and escorted to their new home at ringwood farms cameras clicked aplenty for photographs to be shown later begging trouble womens fashions came under the gun- of dr gordon jackson moh of toronto last week as he warned toronto people to dress warmly as a- safeguard- against pneumonia which is continuing its record breaking incidence he described womens clothes as silly and just a way of asking for trouble this weather is treacherous if you dont watch it said dr jacksonit is warm one day and freezing the next but women must be stylish and the first thing you know they are changing fur coats for- cloth ones and wearing todess shoes to plow through slush up to their ankles that is just asking for trouble f hospital officials report their wards and rooms are filled to capacity pneumonia and other emergency cases are being taken as fast as possible and there are long waiting lists for cases not so urgent they say i vyv 1 j