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-I PAGE 4, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 1984, WHITBY FREE PRESS whitby Voice of the County Town Michael lan Burgess, i The only Whitby newspaper independently owned and operated by Whitby -Pu Publisher • Managing Editor y residents for Whitby residents. blished every Wednesday by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography Ine. Phone 668-6111 The Free Press Building, 131 Brock Street North, P.O. Box 206, Whitby, Ont. MICHAEL KNELL Community Editor CONWAY DOBBS Advertising Manager Second class Mail Registration No. 5351 The downtown merchants are to be commended Those of us who have resided in Whitby for a number of years. know how long the revitalization of the downtown core has been an issue. It seems that during every municipal election over the last decade or so, budding and Incumbent councillors have always _made it an Important part of their platform. But, quite frankly, nothing ever seemed to work. We still weren't attracting people to the down- town core. It seemed that many local residents - whether they've been here for 10 days or 10 years - have done their shopping and given their support The Prime Minister told the Commons recently that he doesn't think the Japanese-Canadians who were in- terned during the Second World War should be com- pensated. Mr. Trudeau was clearly afraid of opening a Pandora's box of group grievances, and made the point that if we compensated the Canadians of Japanese ex- traction we might not know where to stop. He deplored what had happened to Japanese-Canadians, he said, but he felt that the objective of government should be "justice in our time" rather than undoing the injustices of the past. And he compared what happened to the Japanese-Canadians with the wholesale deportation of the Acadians to the United States in 1755. i unders- tand what Mr. Trudeau is saying, but i don't buy his comparnson. The deportation of the Acadians took place almost 230 years ago, well beyond living memory. And i suspect today that you could find very few descendents of those Acadians who have ever even thought of compensation. They're Americans now, and they probably don't think of themselves as anything else. What happened to the Japanese-Canadians, on the other hand, took place little more than forty years ago, and there are few Japanese-Canadians today who do not still feel demeaned by it. The Acadians were the innocent victims of being citizens of the losing side in a war of occupation. The Japanese-Canadians, for the most part, were Canadian citizens of the winning side - no different than any other Canadians ëxcept for their country of origin. They were a law-abiding, industrious, loyal part of the Cana- dian social fabric. Without warning, they were uprooted from their homes and businesses on the Canadian West Coast and thrust into primitive internment camps in the B.C. interior. In retrospect, it was an act of paranoia. Ottawa, like the rest of North America, was reacting violently to the treacherous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Our natural outrage was fuelled so vigorously by an American pro- paganda machine which became unabashedly racist in its new, wild exuberance that we lost sight of the fact that the so-called Japanese-Canadians on the West Coast were Canadians, pure and simple. The adjective began to obliterate the noun it modified. And so Canadians were dragged out of their homes by their own government, herded into colonist cars and banished to the B.C. wilderness. Their homes and con- tents, their cars and their fishing boats were sold for a fraction of their true worth. The compensation given to them after the war was so inadequate that it was an insult. These were not spies, or even Japanese sym- pathizers. They were Canadians like the rest of us, and we put them into internment camps because of the col- our of their skins. They can never be compensated completely for what we did to them. The National debt would be quadrupled if we did. But surely there should be some compensation here, if only to preserve a prin- cipIe, a principle that the Prime Minister has dismissed. to places such as the Oshawa Shopping Centre or some other shopping mall. Those of us located in the downtown core have watched potential customers just walk, run or drive on by and merely fumed in silence. It also seemed to us that many businesses closed their doors within months of opening, another sacrifice to the shopping mail gods and other normal failure reasons such as lack of capitalization, promotion and good management. However, last week this newspaper saw something that hasn't been seen in downtown Whitby for many years. The merchants of the downtown core have banded together and decided to do something about their fate. They have decided that it just might be possible for them to change the downtown core and make it once again a vital and vibrant part of Whitby. What they did was put their money were their collective mouth ls. They authorized the Whitby Central Business District Improvement Area Board of Management (hereafter referred to as the D.I.A.B.) to double the additional levy they pay on ,top of their property and local business taxes. This means that the average special levy will go from just over $33 a year to just over $66, and will, in effect, double the D.I.A.B.'s budget to $20,000. With the -money, the D.I.A.B., in conjunction with Whitby Town Council and the Government of Ontarlo's Commercial AreaImprovement Program will give downtown Whitby a face-lift. By the time the surgery is completed, $500,000 will have been spent to improve the streetscape, provide ad- ditional parking as well as other important projec- ts. But the task will not be left there. The D.I.A.B. and its Individual members plan to undertake an aggressive marketing and promotion program. For the first time in many years, the downtown business community is going to communicate with the people that live in this town. It's a start. lt's even a good start. The merchants that are taking an active lnterest and role in this revitalization project deserve the applause of the community. They are looking beyond the needs of themselves and their businesses to the needs and aspirations of the town they call home. This newspaper ls pleased to see In evidence a sense of unity and purpose. Perhaps after ail these years, the spark has been struck that will lead to the revitalization of the downtown corer. Perhaps more so than at any other time In Whiit- by's 129 year history, the revitalization of the downtown core is important. The downtown shapes the character, atmosphere and life of a community. It is the heart and soul of our town, which is why the Whitby Free Press originally chose to locate in the downtown core. Whitby is -growing. In this year alone, this municipality accounts for 48 per cent of the residential growth in the Region of Durham. New people are coming here every day. If we are to keep them, and welcome them as needed mem- bers of our community then we had better give them something to come home to. One step in this process is the revitalization of the downtown core. These new people, indeed, all of our people, should look to the downtown core as a place to find goodg and services of ail kinds. But it also should be a place to be attracted to. The sights and smeils should be such that they keep coming back week after week until they call Whitby home. The work is still before us, but the merchants of the downtown core and the current leadership of the D.I.A.B. has proved that change is in the air and Is, indeed, possible. They deserve commendation and support. Their efforts will keep Whitby's small town flavor alive despite the record growth we are experiencing. But downtown merchants be forewarned: 60 bucks a year will not solve ail your problems and replace a properly aggressive promotion cam- paign, or poor management, or under capitalization. If you don't do ail the other things right, like many architects and others have told us many times before, streetscaping will only make the drive to the shopping centre a little nicer.