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c tmmmlmjm stux inion sand your tetters to the ecfltor to 9 heritage rdmaihaml3p1m3 or tax them to 2941 538 hoztf wtw iow stand on guard r today how are you celebrating canada day for many this day is a chance to put their feet up enjoy family and friends a barbecue read a book perhaps attend a community canada day event the thought may swiftly cross our minds and swell our hearts about what a great country this is and how fortunate we are to be living here but many of us dont have much world experience with which to compare canada the lines in the song you dont know what youve got until you lose it holds much truth for those of us in this state of awareness in our own national anthem which we sing with typical lacklustre at sporting events viewpoint jo ann stevenson we pledge we will stand on guard for thee fortunately for us our new canadians do know what canada is and they are willing to stand for the values inherent in being canadian their pas sion for this country is conta gious given the opportunity to meet recent immigrants and hear their stories it would be impossible not to be moved a newspaper office is a great way to meet and get to know a cross section of citizens one faced a firing squad five times in his native country in the middle east for having a dif ferent faith than the military dictatorship his family chose canada over all others and struggles today not with racial intolerance but with the apa thy they see around them who cares about canada ask a quebecker the majority of them know what canada is because theyve been forced to look at it and make up their minds about it the majority keeps on voting for this coun try despite strong emotional ties to the culture inherent in their local communities who cares about canada the veterans who celebrated air ontario adam by brian basset the 50th anniversary of their stand for freedom they took risks for us for all canadians they and their families carry deep scars from their very try ing task now they are frail but their message is strong they were willing to stand on guard when the question was asked who cares about canada we at home could have been more involved could have cre ated more political will to help the persecuted jews find refuge to object to the intern ment of japanese and italian canadians today too we could share our ability to live peacefully togeth er find ways to integrate more of our own and the worlds needy into productive lives the tribune weekender edition a afatrolaad oo n patricia pappas publisher jo ann stevenson editorinchief andrew mair general managereditor debrawellbr director of advertising barry goodyear director of distribution vmanoneil business manager pamela nichols operations manager sxquexmie all enquiries 6103100 tax 6404477 6244 main st stouffville ont l4a1e2 umnipmt all enquiries 8529741 lax 8924741 88 brock st w uxbrldge ont l8p1p4 the tribune published every wednesday and saturday is one of the metroland printing pub lishing and distributing group of suburban newspapers which includes markham econo mist and sun ajax pickering news advertiser auroranewmarket era banner barrie advance brampton guardian burlington post cityparent collingwood connection etobicoke guardian georgetown independentacton free press kingston this week lindsay this week milton canadian champion misissauga news northumberland news north york mirror oakville beaver orillia today oshawa-whitby- clarington this week peterborough this week richmond hillthomhillvaughan liber al scarborough mirror todays seniors con tents not to bo reproduced without written per mission from the publisher permit 1247 the long and the short of it its not very often i can think of anything good to say about the metric system but fm glad weve got it im also glad that we still have officially or otherwise chains fathoms furlongs angstroms pennyweights drams bolts bushels cords spans and gigajoules wed bein a real mess if we didnt have ways to measure things of course for several hundred thousand years mankind was in a real mess grok the caveman would run into the cave and announce that hed just seen a plump mastodon stuck in the mud how far away his tribesmen would ask in stoneageese hmmm similarly grok would be unable to estimate how tall or how heavy the mastodon was they didnt have meters or tons he couldnt even say big as a house they didnt have houses either eventually some deep thinker came along and established common measurements twelve inches was adopted as the foot the length of an average mans tootsie a bushel became the amount of apples required to fill a basket which inevitably after a few centuries got us to the erg which my physics book assures me is the amount of energy required to move one gram through one centimetre with an acceleration of one cen timetre per second per second i whatever the hell that means ifs all very confusing but it would be utterly bananas if we didnt have various systems of measurements to fall back on for one thing all our govern ment statisticians would be on the welfare roles we wouldnt even be able to measure time arthur black because we wouldnt know our nanoseconds from our kalpas kalpa thats the longest measure of time known to man it comes from the hindus and is equal to 4320 million years a nanosecond is something that disappears faster than a politicians promise we need our means of mea surement even if we dont always understand the units we throw around financiers talk easily of millions billions and trillions but do any of them really understand num bers of that magnitude just to put it in perspective it takes 12 full days for a million seconds to tick by one billion seconds is the equivalent of 31 years if you looked at the calendar a trillion seconds ago you would see that the date was roughly 30000 bc except you wouldnt be able to find a calendar most of north america was under five miles of ice and where would we be with out percentages we wouldnt know for example that 45 per cent of women wear uncomfortable shoes because they look good revenue canada only gets around to checking about one per cent of our income tax returns 17 per cent of all doctors still smoke 55 per cent of all north amer icans wouldnt take a trip into outer space even if nasa let them ride for free