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page 2 the tribune thursday sept 23 1s71 jamkx thomas associate publisher and kditor b hfa fg r established i88s chabijs h nolan publisher koblkt mccalsland advertising manager pubslied every thursday by inland publishing co limited at si main st stouffville ont tel 6102101 single copies 15c subscriptions s300 per year in canada s900 elsewhere member of audit bureau of circulation canadian weekly newspapers association and ontario weekly xewsnapers association second class mail registration number 0s96 lcanadi associs editorial police office needed here a meeting between the stouffville businessmens association and york regions police chief bruce crawford was held tuesday evening at this time however we cannot comment on what if anything was ac complished since our editorial deadline is monday we can offer one recommendation that we sincerely hope will be considered by the chief that is reestablish a branch police office on main street when the 5man force was removed from the former village of stouffville last spring many feared the result so did we but its unfair to criticize a plan before its been put into practice its now had a fair trial and the results its safe to say are obvious to everyone this area is not receiving the police protection it needs and deserves and it will not with operations directed out of vandorf let alone a further withdrawal to the town of newmarket during the past weekend a stepped up patrol system was introduced here but the efficiency of such operations is still subject to question for indeed while a cruiser is in plain view trouble is non existent but let the officer return to vandorf for any reason and the area is wide open to be specific theres too much waste highway space between vandorf and stouffville for an effective police sur veillance program the solution move the police office here and close the gap schools for community centres do the residents of lemonville wish to retain their 48 year old school as a future community centre if so they should say so and soon deferment of its sale has been delayed for two weeks although tendered prices are now being accepted by the york board of education on eleven other similar properties the question arises however should a school building required by a particular community for public use be subject to the same tendering policy as one that is not whitchurchstouffville councillor betty vannostrand says no and we agree it belongs to the section that built it and paid for it in this case ss no 9 many of the same taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the property a second time at tremendously inflated prices but rather than become involved in a wrangle over legal ownership we say that the school should not be sold at all instead the title should be held by the board and the property leased to the town for one dollar a year in this way if the community centre project should not prove practical the trustees could then dispose of the premises by whatever means they see fit excellent service the vance ambulance service has been sold it will become part of a provincial government operation as of oct 1 the program as planned is still not clear regardless of how efficient the new system may be it will be difficult to improve upon or even match the kind of service the vance firm has provided in the last six years we never once heard a legitimate complaint the same could not be- said for the hodgepodge arrangement that existed previously drivers lost on rural roads patients taken to wrong hospitals and arguments over pay while the dead and dying lay on stretchers like life insurance bill and john vance had a difficult time selling the service to local municipalities including stouffville but they were not discouraged later the province entered the picture now theyre taking it over at this point we can only hope that for the sake of bigness efficiency will not be sacrificed editors mail dear jim your editorial buyer beware is misleading and unfair it is misleading when you ask why after ten years in business is the fuss being made now if you had gone back through your files of the tribune you would have found yourself reporting a fuss compared to which this present fuss is a mild breeze at the time of the licensing of the gokart track the whole community stormed the councjl chambers protesting the installation of a noisy commercial operation in our quiet countryside and we were no newcomers my wife and i were the only newcomers and we had been her for a quarter of a century the council as you apparently do not remember turned us down in favor of a couple of very newcomers men who were elected to serve the people turned against the very people who elected them and instead gave two newcomers the right to destroy the peace and satisfaction which our labour and our money had purchased the attitude of the council of the time was best expressed by one of the coun cillors in a terribly disparaging remark about our community a remark which you yourself reported at the time we people here thought that you were con cerned about us i wonder what has changed you i have always enjoyed the sensitive columns that you write about people i have especially enjoyed your writings about church and your religious experiences some sunday afternoon i suggest that you come out to waggs sideroad on the second of uxbridge and write a column entitled remember the sabbath day to keep it holy when the council imposed this noise pollution on us most of us did our best to tolerate a problem that we could not solve unfortunately the human body cannot adapt itself to noise mr fp kirby chairman of the executive committee of the conservation council of ontario writes in the globe and mail though amazingly resilient to most environmental changes the human body shows no sign of ability to become con ditioned to noise then he adds and documents a frightening statement- noise can be a contributory cause to almost every known disease in the medical books in his final paragraph he says noise at 180 decibels will kill lower levels of sound may kill more slowly yes noise can kill so much for the misleading part of your statement the reason that you have heard no fuss from us is that we have done our best to tolerate a pollution that has now proved to be intolerable the unfairness of your article lies in the fact that as you berate recent purchasers of land near the gokart track so also you appear to show nomercy to the vendors of the land would you be happy as apparently you would to have owned that land and watched the value deteriorate to a point of no sale arthur knight lived across the road from the gokart track at one meeting during that time in which you said nobody had made any fuss arthur who was then a councillor said i doubt that i will ever be able to sell my abejjef handiajeapon iza nn sma wmaa wiw wtmm urnim mmmm mam sugar and spice the ivycovered halls of learning by bill smiley teaching in our school this fall has been a combination of walking the plank and running the gauntlet when school opened about fifteen hundred kids and eighty teachers walked into something that looked as though the irish republican army had been using it for a couple of years as a testing ground for bombs a new addition about the third since i came here was in its glorious death throes that means it might be finished in six months it was begun a year ago it wasnt so bad during last winter and spring because most of the construction was outside brick piling and steel work in fact it was quite lively especially in the spring with the italian workers ogling the girls through the windows and being ogled back and drinking beer on the job and yelling and laughing but during the summer the termites the inside workers got into the mausoleum and the result for a while at least is complete chaos the termites are the electricians plumbers floor and ceiling men and others of that ilk if you arent tripping over an electric cable or walking through some freshpoured concrete youre liable to be showered with sparks by a welder working overhead the library isnt ready there is no cafeteria and the gym is not finished these are pretty important areas in a school that size did you ever try to teach poetry with a jackhammer blasting a few feet away its like trying to have an elegant garden party in the middle of a monsoon did you ever try to teach anything in a farm dont you care about us old- timers or the property in which we have invested all our savings although i have commented unhappily about previous township councils i must add my sincerest appreciation of the protection and the services that recent councils have done their best to provide for their electors so when you conclude your editorial with the hope that the uxbridge council will cooperate i want to reassure you in the light of their recent actions i feel certain that they will cooperate with us wp wees room that has one naked light bulb at the back and is so full of somebody elses junk equipirjnt that you couldnt see your students even if you had lights just to compound the confusion the numbers of all the rooms have been changed thus my old room 269 is now e202 or 204 im still not sure which time was when a little gradeniner would ask sir can you tell me where mr jacklins room is i would answer with sublime confidence sure just along the hall to the boiler room turn right and its about three doors down on your left now i havent a clue where mr jacklins room is i think hes moved somewhere and the place is so big i couldnt tell the kid how to get there if 1 did know it took me half an hour to find the new staff lounge which turned out to be a square bleak underground hole with no windows and a couple of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling in the proposed cafetorium a bastard word if there ever was one the windows were sealed off because it would be air- conditioned then it was learned that it wouldnt be airconditioned can you imagine what it will be like in there with the smells of cooking and five hundred bodies on a hot day it seems to me that school architects are in a class by themselves like car penters who would never tackle anything bigger than an outdoor privy perhaps i wrong them perhaps they are hampered by rigid budgets but i cant imagine any firm that specializes in designing schools being asked to build something that combines aesthetics and utility however theres always a bright side to things the public address system is not working the bells are not working these are two boons and i hope they never get them working none of the teachers has gone stir- crazy yet despite the architects fetish for windowless rooms in fact theres a certain gaiety and esprit de corps among the staff the sort of thing that always emerges in a great disaster like a bombing blitz or a paralyzing blizzard and the kids love it kids love con fusion especially in their teens when they begin to resent bitterly regulations rules and rigidity they can wander through the ruins pretend they got lost chat with the work men and be late for class thats living mm growing older by jim thomas the village of brougham was once my beat i covered the community religiously stopping by every monday morning pad and pencil in hand to pick up all the tid bits of news available those were the days when i knew almost everyone most by their first names and if i didnt mary mathews the local correspondent did regardless of how dead the weekend might have been mary mrs mathews to me always managed to glean a few interesting items out of the area mind you the doings within the w a and w i sometimes were stretched a bit even to the hymn numbers and who pronounced the benediction but never once did she let me down on occasions i would help her out dropping in for a chat with bob miller the hamlets renowned softball star elsa storry known and respected by 1 everyone township clerk lloyd johnston and a few of the natives that often congregated in he shade of the big verandah that semicircled the old municipal hall a onetime tavern but a halfhour on a monday morning was not enough no sir brougham deserved better than that after all the village was the recognized seat of local government and for better or for worse the communitys identity was related to weekly occurrences within those chambers oh the verbal battles that often went on there i can still recall one such meeting when sherman scott then the reeve and a very tolerant man crashed his gavel down on the desk with such force a lady reporter seated on my left screamed out in fright and shot two feet straight in the air there were a few laughs too like the hot and humid night in july when councillor harry astiton rose dramatically from his position of im portance to answer the phone his ap parel included a pair of black rubber boots turned down at the tops a pair of red and white striped shorts a white turtleneck sweater and a brown un dershirt that stuck out in the rear like a rock roosters tail but all this is changed mary mathews has departed to her just reward the municipal building is empty forlorn even the protective verandah is gone so are the local gentry that once sat in its shade i know for i revisited the community saturday a bit embarrassed to return for a few hours once a year the event was the annual history in action day on the grounds of the brougham museum i wandered about the park where the parade chieftan noel marshall was busy putting the entries in their proper place i felt awfully alone but then a familiar face it was bill newman high on the m p pole but still close to the common people he extended his hand in a farmery shake and called me an old grit i suddenly felt better friend no 2 doug morden of greenwood driving the miss united appeal float and mobbed by a bevy of beauties some guys have all the luck i said put my bid in two months ago he j replied friend three ward 2 councillor jean mcpherson riding atop a wagonload of grain howyoudoing jim she called out as the team clomped by she had remembered there was hugh miller he also hollered hello so did sherman scott and bill storry and mac middleton and on and on all sounded the same all looked a little older as i was about to leave a hand tapped me on the shoulder i turned around and there stood the prettiest girl id seen all day remember me she asked you took my picture when i was in grade 3 nine years ago the only appropriate response seemed like wow but i quickly reconsidered youve changed i said finally i mean you look great youve changed too she replied i recognized the camera she didnt elaborate she didnt have to what a way to end a day m j i v t