Page 4, News, Wednesday, February 3, 1988. Single copies 40 cents EE ainsi cesstbecsonsvpeceasesle cis dinaenss se ehieotansepeaiiinn dl soousaipses ann Advertising ............. sceauecasadb ecassbpasgatskneasisgeseestesaacaostaxsel INE eV MI IAt OPN CC ov. ossseyeccccacssstesecsalbgtceedaat: seks -cosseacacasaseosssssrens pee POU Or PrOdUCction ManaQeF ..........sccccssssseresssesssseeeerees so skstiliat Saila Young out of town $21.00/yr. Member of Ontario Community' Newspapers Association and The Canadian Community Newspapers Association TERRACE B AY The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by: Laurentian Publishing inti Ka Gi wa, Oo seahc tiaeldhar aoeil eniceonatcll Subscription rates per year ; . Ltd., Box , Terrace Bay, Ontario, -2WO. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. in town $15.00/yr. SCHREIBER Second Class Mailing Permit Number 0867 two ane $25 = Sirtere, Poe soared ew CNA Brother's transplant saves sister's life : By Marc Vincent Sandy Heckel owes an important and lasting lesson- and her life- to her brother. Through most of 1985 and 1986, the 41 year-old Bridgenorth resident suffered the final stages of a kidney disease that was leaving her run down, continually ill and could have eventually killed her. As a temporary reprieve she was making weekly trips to Toronto for dialy- sis treatment. Then in an operation in Toronto, Heckel received a healthy kid- ney from her brother and has since almost fully- recovered. The lesson and another side of the story started in April 1986 when Heckel and her brother Gary Johnston were exchanging annual birthday gift ideas. Recalling the moment that his sister made her birthday wish, Johnston said Sandy had been going downhill with the disease and had mentioned on the telephone in a bit of a casual manner that she wanted a kidney for her birthday. . "After I got off the phone, I thought why not...there wasn't really much thought. I loved my sister and wanted to do something for her," he said. It took almost a year between the decision to go ahead and the actual opera- tion and since coming out of the operating room Heckel had gradually improved and returned to a normal life. Heckel in an interview with the Examiner made a plea to local residents to do whatever possible to help other patients waiting for organ donations. The important thing is to make people realize how important it is to get a satellite dialysis machine for the areas and how necessary it is for people to sign organ donor forms on the back of their driver's licence, said Heckel. Friends and relatives should also be assured and encouraged to help brothers, sisters, parents or children with the gift of an organ donation. People sometimes forget to sign the organ donation form on the back of their driver's licence. "I guess they are afraid they will have an accident the next day or something." Unable to estimate how many people in the Peterborough area need dialysis, Heckel can only speak from her experience of travelling to Toronto. "Having the disease is one thing. Having to travel to _ Toronto is something else. : "It's like going to work everyday in Toronto and being sick. It's no picnic." Heckel says she has learned a lot from the experience and is treating what she calls her second life differently. There is always a chance Heckel's body will reject her brother's kidney but at the moment life appears idyllic. "I can do any- thing. I can eat anything I want. That's the best thing to live normally again." Even if there was a rejection there will always be an enormous feeling of gratitude to Gary just for the extra time that has been given through the dona- tion, said Heckel. "I'm very calm now...I learned a lot of patience." Heckel says she now spends more time talking to her two children and has got into the habit of writing little notes of encouragement or just notes to say hi. If it was possible, it would be nice to see everyone lear the same lesson ~ but without the threat of death. It could solve a lot of the tension and frustra- tion in the world, she said. Johnston says he has also learned a new apprecia- tion of life. "I've learned don't demand too much out of life. If you've got your health, be thankful." Never turning back from his conviction to help his sister, Johnston admits he was scared. The biggest fear was not knowing what would happen after the operation. "I guess the hardest part was not knowing what lay ahead of me," he said. It was all worth the effort just to see Sandy get better and better, minute by minute, he said. Arthur Black --- AND NOW, ITS REKINDLE THE FLAME EE gn iy MPP urges minister to extend services The Honourable Lily Munro, minister of Culture and Communications, Dear minister: I urge you to implement the recommendation of Thunder Bay Television to extend regiorial tele- vision news and information ser- vices in Northwestern Ontario. The issue of extending televi- sion services in this area is cer- tainly not new. Numerous groups have peti- tioned government at various. times to extend regionally relevant news and information services to communities in my Riding. Despite- the tremendous increase in television technology, Northern residents still do not have access. to regional program-- ming, have no means of communi- cating with one another or the rest of the province through television, and do not have a method of feed- ing local news to Canadian net- works. The great irony of this situation is that we are fully informed of the daily events in Detroit, but we still can't find out what's happening in our Own communities. Your ministry has a pivotal role to play in this matter. Any effort which will ultimately help to alle- viate the social, and cultural isola- tion of these communities, must be encouraged. Again, I urge you to announce your program to implement such a service to Northerners. Sincerely, Gilles Pouliot, MPP, Lake Nipigon. Civilizations' that may not have been dusted since Cromwell's time. It was a thrill to realize that Sam Pepys, Chris Marlowe, even Bill Shakespeare himself might have sat at the self same stool, staring into a similar overpriced "I am inclined to notice the ruin in things, perhaps because I was born in Italy." -- Arthur Miller Well, my last name isn't Miller and I never got to snuggle up to Marilyn Monroe, but aside from' that, the playwright and I are practically identical twins on the subject of ruins. I lover 'em too -- probably because I was, born in Toronto, where old buildings are considered pornographic, some- thing to be torn down and ren- dered into parking lots as quickly as possible. I don't think I got to see a proper ruin until I was about 25 and went hitchhiking across Europe. Never could keep my mouth quite closed at places like Stonehenge and Cordona and the Roman Colisseum. Heck, I didn't have to go that far back. I could sit in a seedy old pub in some one-lorry town in the English countryside playing the rubber necked colonial as I drank in the sagging roofbeams, the crazily canted floorboards, the pint of warm draught ale. It was never very hard to tell the locals from the tourists -- the locals always ignored the relics that surrounded them. I remember passing through a tiny hamlet in Kent and spying the strangest tower I have ever seen. I think it was a tower. It stood, or rather, leaned, on a bare patch of ground right in the centre of. the hamlet. Architecturally it looked like a very young child's first experiment with clay, except that it was about 20 feet tall and obviously very old -- there. was moss growing up one side of it and here and there the butt ends of rotting timbers poked through it's flanks. What made the tower totally incongruous was the door at the base of it. It was a perfect- Fallen Arches wooden jamb -- except that it was no more than three feet high. An adult would have to get down on his hands and knees to enter. I stood and looked at that tower for a long as I could bear it, then | did what any dopey, gawk- ing tourist would do -- I went into the nearest pub, ordered a pint of bitter and in my best, uninterested tone asked the barkeep what the tower outside was all about. "Wot tower would that be, sorr?" And this I swear is true: that I had to take the bartender to the window and point out the erection that was not thirty feet from the door. "Oh, THAT" he murmured, massaging-a wattled jaw, "I don't really know, sorr... H't were always there..." I suppose you could become that blase, growing up in a land choc a bloc with antiquities -- maybe it's a healthier attitude than the undue enthusiasm we North Americans exhibit towards what some wag called "civiliza- ---tions fallen.arches.... . >) as "It may very well be that in our zeal, some ruins are being "loved to death". The famous prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, France have been closed to the public -- carbon dioxide from tourists' breath was causing the pigment to fade ard disappear. Similarly, tourist traffic at Stoneheange in England has become so intense that a couple of years ago there was talk of hanging up a "Closed" sign and erecting a duplicate site nearby. It would look exactly like Stonehenge except the slabs of rock would be made of plastic. Fortunately cooler heads pre- vailed -- but I wonder if it would have worked? I wonder if tourists would have flocked to photograph a polyurethane Clonehenge? After all, we flock by the millions to Disneyworld and Canada's. Wondérland and what are they -but mountains and jungles and castles of plastic? And then there's that recent bul- letin from federal historians in Ottawa _-- the one asking - tographs they might have of the ruins at the country estate of for- mer prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. You may remember that at great expense the slightly dotty King imported the remains of European turrets and battlements, then scattered the rubble around his Kingsmere estate outside Ottawa in an effort to make the place seem more Old Worldish. Problem is, those ruins are get- ting...well, ruined. The original crumbling arches and mouldering walls are crumbling and moulder- ing beyond recognition, and the historians hope they can work from old photographs to restore them to their original err, um, ruinous condition. Well, it may seem whacky to you and me, but I'm sure Mackenzie King would under-