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PAGE 4, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1984, WHITBY FREE PRESS whitby Voice of the County Town Pub Michael lan Burgess, Publisher.- Managing Editor The only Whitby newspaper independently owned and operated by Whitby residents for Whitby residents. blished every Wednesday by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography Inc. Phone 668-6111 The Free Press Building, 131 Brock Street North, P.O. Box 206, Whitby, Ont. MICHAEL KNELL Commun ity Editor CONWAY DOBBS Advertising Manager Second Class Mail Registration No. 5351 deserves praise for his accomplishments Le DeVoir was not Inaccurate last week, it Is the Rights and Freedoms. end of an era. WIth -the retirement of Prime Bringing into law the basic rights.of ail citizens Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canada comes to brings us that much doser to a mature state of the end of apolltically stormy 15years. nationhood. Perhaps noother man has polarized this nation In the debate of the charter, Trudeauhimself as much as he had. But to give him credit, perhaps gave the best of ail possible justifications for no other Canadian leader has forced us to establishing basic civil rights when he said: "We examine our country's role on the world stage or must establish the basic principles, the basic our own relations with our neighbours within Con- values and beliefs which hold us together as federation.,Canadians 80 that beyond our regional loyalities His vision of Canada, his "Just Society" is not there is a way of life and a system of values which necessarily a bad one. Above ail else, Trudeau make us proud of the country that has given us wants Canada and Canadians to be the masters of such freedom and such immeasurable joy." their own house. His greatest achievement in this Not since Sir John A. Macdonald or John regard has been the patriation of our Constitution Diefenbaker has a Prime Minister of Canada pur- and the enshrining of the Canadian Charter Bf sued a fundamenta Issue with uch patriotic fer- vor. bgHowever, it s ironic that a French Canadian ........ u~ aaaPieMnister couid not get French Canada tal support such fundamental freedoms. But, on the n ther hand, it was Pierre Trudeau and not Claude Ryan who defeated Ren pLeveque and the Quebec separatist movement iln the 1981 sovreignlty- association referendum. thQuebec is stil part f Confederation and thanks ta Trudeau Canada still has the opportunity to hea its wounds and become astronger nation. . wyManyarf his critics have attacked Trudeau as being responsible for this country's economic n. troubles over the past decade.nitshouldbepin- ted out that these troubleswere notCanadas alone. We found ourselves in the midst 0f a world- .When i was a young man an 'd i had flot yet learned wide economic slump s0 Trudeau alone was not respect for mffy eiders, 1 was party to a dirty trick ofl responsible. an old night editor i worked for. Hus newspapering began in the days of the telegraph, and even into the 1950's, he viewed telephones nervously and with suspicion. He had two of them on the desk in front of him, side by side, and one night, when he'd gone to the washroom, we switched the receivers on the two phones, putting them in the wrong cradles. The phone would ring. He'd pick up the appropriate receiver, and would get nothing but dial tone. The effect on him was ail we'd hoped for, and at the time it seemed a welcome diversion from an endless pile of obituaries. Now that the technology of my youth is obsolete and I too hve become fuddy-duddy, bewildered by video cassete recorders and even stereo turntables, I wish I'd recognized the benefits of mercy earlier. l'm getting what I deserve in spades. I can't run anything anymore. I begin to long for something, anything, that works with a simple on-off, button. One of the banes of my existance is those automatic telephone answering machines. I gabble for a living, but those merciless machines, with their 30 second beeps, absolutely defeat me. i can't remember who I am, or what l'rn calling about, or my telephone number - not in time for the machine to record it anyway. Now there has been an improvement in the telephone answering machine. It's a machine, already big in the United States, which actually calls people, puts a ques- tion to them, and records their replies, ail untouched by human hands, and computerized. They're used in the States to collect bills, sell carpet cleaning, or re- mind people that the church needs money. Surprisingly, perhaps, I know ail about them. We had such a machine for a very short time here at Global Televisiona few years ago. At the behest of its owner, we used the thing to poli people on the burning ques- tions of theday. As i recall, people~did not take to it kindly. We'd listen to the tapes when the machine had completed its survey, and even when the question was noncontroversial, the more innocent among us learn- But thatwwasrnothins taothe kind afFresponsenweign anerimemeinisterunouldonottget FrencheCanadahto machineuwenttbsrserfunddmbngan prondnmspeBpteointth your trther hnddaurtstupidiserreyTwereatrund notaCnaune That didRyan weogatfeateofRhenthingeanethedgroundsetha we werepaearningmmoreeabout that1pe1psevrhognhtyo us ha w rai anedtaher.An w wretoin Te finaasl as tho?" tntyt heaieswouesrndbeomaastrngroaton Pragresngisenptnaiblesfargthdsthonntry'srecsnomen trouble ovrteps eae.I hudb on Our econorny is a fragil one. We are·one of the largest countries, geographically speakIng,:ln the world. Yet, our population is one of the smallest In the world. We have fot enough people to rmanage our own resources and..because of this we have had to rely on foréign investment and have been subject to the whims of the economic policies of foreign governments as wel as the fluctuations in currency exchange rates, It is difficult to prejudge history, 100 years from now Pierre Elliot Trudeau may go down as one of our greatest leaders and statesmen. Perhaps time will soften our attitudes about the man who made his one finger salute a national pastrime. As the organized polîsters have been telling us for years, Trudeau is the most unpopular man in English Canada today. Even our own Member of Parliament, an opposition spokesman, has been dancing in joy at the news. Even those who have disagreed with hirn on so many issues must take the time to thank him for his accomplishments. His greatest legacy will be that he forced Canada and Canadians to find themselves and establish once and for all who they were and what they stood for. He truly took us from our collective adolescence as a minor post-colonial power to a mature nation trying to find the answers to*the issues facing it. Pierre Trudeau also recognized that it was his time:to go and so gave up the post that he clearly loved-so wellI.He was true to his personal maxim: "La raison avant la passion," (Reason before passion). All Canadians should wish him well. ~fr I .4 -u i~ 4 > ~/~? ~ P.E.T