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p 4 the tribune saturday september 6 1997 st the tribune saturday september 6 1997 vol 13 no 36 opinions send your letters to the editor to the address below editorial welfare of students not priority in strike with a ratification vote still to come its a little early to start handing out the laurels when it comes to the resolution of the strike by york region public high school teachers to call it a strike even stretches the bounds of definition since the teachers never walked a picket line and were in fact only on strike for the last two weeks of the summer that an agreement was reached early on the first day of school is a credit to provincial mediator kevin burkett both the york region board of education and the ontario sec ondary school teachers federation say it was burkett who made the deal possible he did his job superbly and deserves the congratulations of all york region students and parents that being said there is still a long way to go in the trust department between the regions high school teachers and its board bitterness will still remain said union negotiator jim mcqueen in thursdays tribune no kidding what we have here is two groups of very intelligent adults behaving very badly lost again in these negotiations was the welfare of the students yes the teachers maintain the key issue was class size and how it would affect the quality of education thats a noble principle but what impact would a strike have had on edu cation and those students they care about as for the board it sounds more and more like a belea guered manufacturer struggling with budget cuts adminis trators and trustees should remember they have the profound responsibility of educating our next generation they are not making widgets murphys law explains marijuana use anything that can go wrong will murphys law right wrong everybody thinks thats murphys law but it isnt its finagles law murphys law first promulgated by a us air force engineer in 1949 states if there are two or more ways of doing something and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe then someone will do it the fact that finagles law has been swallowed up and rechristened mur phys law is a priceless demonstration of murphys law in action the original murphys law has spawned a litter of mongrel offspring theres murphys corollary which states left to themselves things tend to go from bad to worse and murphys constant matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value not to forget the quantized revi sion of murphys law everything will go wrong all at once well i hate to make the murphy waters any muddier but im here to tell you that there was a canadian murphys law long before the us air force version and our version help us keep stouffville among top terry fox towns dear editor when it comes to this communi tys contribution to cancer re search we are definitely on the map stouffville has been in the top 20 out of a possible 1153 participat ing communities in ontario in the last two years in raising money in the name of terry fox your pledge or donations will help us exceed last years total of 25000 please join us on sunday sept 14 for this years edition of the terry fox run for cancer research registration gets underway at 12 15 pm at the rec centre with the official start at 1 pm participants may complete the 10 km route in whole or in part anytime between 14 pm by letters walking running blading or cycling we are happy to report that many area schools are participat ing in their own terry fox event this year we extend a special invitation to parents of these children to join with their families on sunday to reinforce what they have already learned about terry fox he was a remarkable canadian for more information please call 6404705 please help us make this years event our best ever sandy schell kennedy organizing committee terry fox run for cancer stouffville was a helluva lot more powerful as a matter of fact thanks to our murphys law thousands of people in canada have criminal records they otherwise wouldnt have and they owe it all to emily f mur phy of edmonton alberta back in the 1920s mrs murphy was a juvenile court judge and a scrib bler of sorts penning several articles for macleans magazine she was also an idiot a flaming racist and a zealot slightly to the right of attila the hun emily murphys pet bugaboo was the demon drug marijuana she wrote about it under the pen name janey canuck some of her pearls of wis dom included the observation that marijuana users were nonwhite and nonchristian wanting only to seduce white women behind these dregs of humanity thundered mrs murphy is an inter national conspiracy of yellow and black drug pushers whose ultimate goal is the domination of the bright- browed races of the world guess which side of the hash pipe mrs murphy lined up on the scary thing about mrs murphy aside from the fact that she managed to infiltrate the canadian justice sys tem is that nobody dismissed her for the raving lunatic she was on the contrary macleans eagerly published her frothings she got a publishing contract and put out a best- selling book about marijuana and because of mrs murphy mari juana got demonized a relatively harmless barnyard weed metamor phosed into the demon drug a fiendish fix which mrs murphy assured her readers has the effect of driving smokers completely insane the addicts lose all sense of moral basic black arthur black responsibility and are immune to pain become raving maniacs liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence using the most savage cruelty a gullible canadian public and government bought every word mrs murphys incendiary ravings were the single reason marijuana was declared illegal in canada a decision was made without any scientific basis nor even any real sense of social urgency placing can nabis on the same basis as the opiate narcotics and it has remained so to this day my words nope thats a quote- from justice gerald ledains royal commission report of 1972 let me leave you with another quote this one comes from charlie mackenzie retired but not forgotten leader of the regrettablydormant canadian rhino party and the chap from whom i poached the story of emily murphy charlie sez we should look at it this way in 1923 marijuana smoking was relatively unknown in canada no one outside of a few jazz musicians used it to get stoned today according to the rcmp five million canadians use it for no other purpose if no one smoked it in 1923 when it was legal and five million smoke it today when its not somethings gone wrong ergo murphys law now that just breaks me up but somehow i dont think mrs murphy would be amused stouffville tribune weekender patricia pappas publisher andrew mair editorinchief julie caspersen editor debra weller director of advertising mike rogerson retail advertising manager stacey allen classified manager barry goodyear director of distribution vivian oneil business manager pamela nichols operations manager 905 6402874 til 905 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