The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

It Wei THE ERA Serving York County Since 1852 HASKELL TERRY CARTER JOHN Time to unveil park plan Georgiiia needs sewers in the Cook Bay area and knows it the province through its Ontario Water Resources Commission admits this and is doing a technical study on the problem yet this same Ontario government through another branch may be preparing to scuttle the whole The area has been designated farm and re creational by the TorontoCentred Region Plan Georgina Regional Councillor Bob Pollock point ed out last week see story page There isnt much farmland left it has all been divided into building lots so that part of the provincial scheme is a forlorn hope but the recreational designation is a good idea says Mr Pollock The problem is Queens Park hasnt said how or where it plans to buy these parks or when it will do it Until Georgina receives some word it feels it cant plan the townships even though the municipal affairs department and York Re gional government are both urging it to do so and it cant go ahead with sewers in a lakeshore area that may soon be frozen as parkland People living in the area mostly commuters and people who have purchased acre build ing lots in other parts of the township mostly commuters and people planning to retire there are also caught The TorontoCentre Region Plan the villian of the piece is over a year old The status report issued last month failed to throw any light on the park problem Surely doesnt have to wait another year or more for the next report to find out what the province plans How about a hint Mr We must look after our own People who do wilful damage to public prop erty particularly in parks and to recreation equipment have cost Newmarket taxpayers a pile of money this summer and the toll is still mounting Most of the damage is evidently done by chil dren but their parents must share the blame Children act in public the way they are taught to act at home People who see vandals at work also have a responsibility to do something about it to step in themselves or in serious cases call the After all anyone living in town must pay the repair bill through taxes Recreation Committee Chairman Ray said recently he knows people living adja cent to some parks have witnessed acts of van dalism and simple shrugged them off They dont want to become involved It is this irresponsible attitude that has forced Mr Twinncy committee to post cash rewards for the of vandals in town parks as though they were bank robbers or other more dastardly types Surely we can look after our own better than that NEWSROOM NOTES Alone against that truculent trio dave haskell Basher Groves meets his Waterloo in a couple of weeks Maybe I should say that Basher meets his in a couple of weeks For on Saturday Sept sometime after noon hour Basher and I will resume our water jousting on Fairy Lake This time the occasion is part of Newmarkets Autumn Festival activities firefighters Some of you dear readers may remember our previous jousts The first one was last October when I vanquished Basher and his motley crew of camp followers with one bunt of my joust- he now denies hich is all right with me This latest by Four Eyes makes him a double defector and scurvy knave to boot A socalled return match on Fairy Lake dur- ng the winter was an inconclusive test of joust- Basher wedged his big fat behind in a weighted snowmobile trailer making it impos sible for me to dislodge him He defeated me in the snow joust when my trailer struck a fro zen rut as his jousting pole grazed me again and old Mr VandenBergh will be at the helm of the Pubs Tub again propelling me to victory Mr VandenBergh and I have spent much of this summer going over the sketches Mr is able to make nifty and feints with a simple flick of an oar During Va the water As it cle nltorgh would flick i BILL SUGAR AND SPICE Things to do if one year to live Dont worry Not me I hope to live for at least two or even three years more Hut I sometimes wonder what I would do if I were told that I had exactly one year to live And Id like you to think about what you would do This is not a new theme but its always an interesting one when it comes up in fiction or philosophy or just a plain gnhfest Lets suppose Suppose you have been to the doctor and have learned that you have a fatal illness make up your own anil will die in approximately one year You wont be sick or in pain until the last hour and youll out quickly How would you spend that year What you would do would certainly reveal very clearly what sort of person you really are facade that most of us wear daily There would lie the initial shock of course Humans have some weird idea that they are immortal until they finally are stricken by some deadly illness But after the shock wore off Then wed see a separation of the men from the boys the sheep from the Some people would become constant whin- en Why does Cod have to do this to me Ive contributed to charity And so on Some of these would become so bitter they would turn against God their friends and relatives A pretty sour way to go Some would be so depressed they would crack up mentally become vegetables Others would adopt a fatalistic epicureanism if theres such a thing Their attitude would be If Im gonna go Im gonna enjoy it They would escape into alcohol drugs sex not necessarily in that order Some people would become instant Chris- Hans or whatever They would be filled with a terrible fear of the afterlife and would spend their twelve months on their knees in church and desperately doing good works in an effort to make up for all the bad works they had done in the rest of their lives Now pot ones of us gentle reader would fall into any of those class is where would we fa First decision I would make would be not to waste one second of that year If every second in the year were used fully the one year could be more rewarding than all the previous ones put together Next I would make a superb effort to love my neighbor as myself This is a tough one In the first place extremely difficult to love oneself Most of us seem to but many of us secretly despise ourselves In the sec ond place some of us have appalling neigh bors we dont But Id have a good whack at it not as a hedge to make sure of get ting through those nearly gates but because I believe in it Good old love My first action would be to divest myself of all material possessions except a tooth brush and a few clothes Would even get rid of my razor The proceeds 1 wouldnt give them to the poor The hell with them They can go on welfare and it would be only a drop in the bucket anyway And I wouldnt leave them to my family either They could go to work for a change Id quit my job take the whole of my estate in onedollar bills and burn them one at a time to the screams of anguish from cmlookers That would be cutting the umbilical cord of the system and Id be free for the first time in many years Then don the knapsack pick up the begging bowl n wooden salad bowl and take off Id see every inch of Canada I could see And I would savour every sight sound taste touch and smell even whiskeybreath and onions I could come in contact with in this most wonderful of worlds Might die in a ditch but whats the difference How about you Put down carefully briefly what you think you would tio with a year to live Send it to your local editor Id like to reprint some of your ideas Hey I might even get a divorce remarry and make some other woman life miserable for a year Just an afterthought iviftness of light ning would thrust the jousting pole at the fish The fish thereby stunned would lie retreived and thence deposited in our creel One calm day on Hie Holland River we managed to bag six pike four pickerel three bass and a water snake Another day we bagged five beavers but threw My opposition this time is just about the same except each of them has gained a lot of lard around their bellies and backsides Their training program seems lo consist of sitting alone at a table at the Legion raising a glass container containing some amber fluid This truculent trio does not invite anyone to join them and anyone passing by receives a threaten ing glare From time time their three shining bald irads separate and persons silting nearby hear Such whispered words as Torpedo dynamite leadtipped pole and its Old Ontario J new living In Rive Drive Pork he during the four years sine his none disappearing eld buildings Jem corners in Churchill en Hwy buildings have only recently been re- her THE Readers ERA pace is reserved for the comments drawings of The lease feel free to send yours a All we is that you include Gravel help the present condition not deter him It takes disagree A gravel great skill and on Eagle St Dear Editor and washboard Your paper report- lions develop causing Councillor as vibration of adjacent saying Eagle St would buildings not be paved this win- Secondly the present but would be a condition of Eagle is a el road and that would challenge to the fast tri be an improvement The rough road does speeders and and clouds sign reading 30 mll- hour Strictly is not to bo tak- managed lo perfect the Jumping The Trick is accomplished by getting a to jump out of the water This is done in several ways We were the most successful in gelling fish to jump by skittering a beer bottle cap BILL GAMBLE was a Main St loiterer but I couldnt get caught Picking up on the report in last weeks Era Mating that Unruly groups of young people are scaring away shoppers from Main St This was a charge made in council Councillor Aub rey Smith was nudged by the sudden convic tion that i wouldnt die happy until I had seen at least one scared Newmarket shopper So at peak shopping hours on both Thursday ami Fri day evenings I leisurely patrolled one side of the main drag I can report now that Newmarket possesses the most courageous bunch shoppers this side of the Merlin Wall not a quivering lip in the lot of them As a matter of fact is a loiterer and believe me I loitered interminably unmo lested and of by storeownersl 1 was almost bulldozed into oblivion by a score or so of myopic shoppers However better had been trampled to dealh In the uncontrollable stampede of grocery- buyers than having endure the emotionally agonizing ordeal heaped upon me by those whose store portals 1 blocked No one called me a loit erer This was sad II was the first lime I had been publicly accused old age Apparently be a loiterer you must be teenager lint my sojourn In the creditcard jungle wasnt a complete loss I learned something learned that if you have a buck or two to spend along Main St you are exempted from the bylaw even if you stand in one spot for hours deciding where to spend them I learn ed that the real menace to our society are the ostensibly respectable shoppers who transport their purchases half way along Main St in shopping carts then drive off in their ex- pensive limousines leaving the cart on the side walk or someone to trip Isolated cases Perhaps so but then I ima gine that the things Councillor Smith saw the young people do that hed be ashamed to tell in council could also be termed isolated ranted 1 observed one or two small groups of young people along the street but in no way did they Impede my progress Nor did 1 see or hear anything objectionable in what they were And I got to wondering just what council expects these young people to do They object anachronism which in meant driving around In old tarsi They dont waul them standing on the streets And since the alternative to standing or lingering on the streets would be driving along them it would seem Hint what council Is really saying is slay home A short time ago when the kids had The Spot to while away their spare hours in doing their own thing people objected So the council of thai time had a brilliant Idea they took 150- out of a fund slated or the building of the Cane Parkway purchased the Newmarket Mot ors llullding The Spot Later another council paid a wrecking company to tear it down then left It as a pile of rubble which some people use a parking lot back on the Admittedly the Hoard Education permitted the use of the high school this year but as one 10yearold said to me and he was cold sober by the way Were almost seared to frequent the high school In case they take the rest of the Cane Parkway cash and tear it down as well As far as police patrolling in Newmarket Is concerned I believe that it is more than adequate We would be incorrigibly insular and hidebound to oven suggest removing police from cruisers where they have instant access lo ratio communication and making them walk the stre ets armed with a billy and whistle Such a ploy would be a huge step In retrograde It Is little wonder that our young people are becoming increasingly confused One govern ment a mere few weeks ago gave 18yearolds the right to drink and vote Now a subordinate government tells them they cant stand in the Granted there may be problems such as has been described by Councillors Smith Cook and Blair at the last council meeting But I believe that one concrete way to solve them would be to give young people a council It is my hope that our next slate of councillor will In- dude two 18yearolds