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Whitby Free Press, 6 Feb 1980, p. 5

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Between You and Me1 By RUTH CHAMBERS Many thought.s corne to mmnd after a day in the country, driving over old familiar roads to the west of Toronto. For many years we had a summer home in a tiny hamlet by the river Nith, a tributary of the Grand River which flows through Gaît, Brantford and Paris. This hamlet, much smaller than a vilage was surrounded by beautiful willows, weeping willows many of which had been planted i double rows with a path in between, a place of beauty and magic for child and grownup alike. To go back to old haunts at any time is to see change and progress. One becomnes alrnost disoriented when a well known road suddenly takes a turn to bypass towns and villages with their lovely old homes and interesting shops. No chance now for these store keepers to keep up with the times and they must miss the truekers, the regulars and the tourists who stopped to buy and pass t.he time of day. The general store stili exists, often far from town or city. Here the townsfolk walk to shop and pick up their mail. The savings must be immense; no music to lure you, few fancy packages, just staples in the food line and aIl the other goods one needs at tone time or another. A place to linger and listen to latest news, gossip about the neighbours and always talk of the weather. At home, a root cellar full of home grown vegetables and a fruit cellar well stocked with jars of fruits and pickles. Back in the city not s0 very long ago the butcher, the grocer and green grocer who anticipated your every wish as soon as they heard your voice over the phone. Everything delivered to your kitchen door, carefully and neatly set down and ail you had to do was put it away. Will those days ever return? Most unlikely and we may forever drive to the super market, walk up and down aisles pushing a cart being seduced by music, colour and packaging alI the way to the cashier where we wait in line. Then, back to the car burdened down with countless bags to be stored insmde only to be removed some time later and into the house. A saving, doubtful but certainly a waste of time. Just a progression of thought, a natural thing when you go back in time. The Grand River partly frozen flowing through towns and cities, under bridges and along side the country roads. The floods of the past hopefully over after much thought and money were needed to correct the destruction of the mar- shes and many trees which helped to stem the tide in the WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEI)NESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1990, PAGE 5 About wandering down old memory lane ~.4 & . - ~Yp ~ÂJ. When you bring in a film to be processed & printed at MBM Photography You receive a FREE FILM KODACOLOUR & FUJICOLOUR FILM, Siues 1101 126 & 135, w processing and printing YOUR CHOICE *A REPLACEMENT KULLKodak) (1 coupon) *A 5x7 ENLARGEMENT IN DELUXE FOLDER (1 coupon) *A DELUXE PHOTO ALBUM (3 coupons) (You rece ive 1 coupon for each roll) WE ONLY USE KODAK PAPER M.B.M. PHOTOGRAPHY 131 BROCKSTN 668-6l11 QUAUTV PROCE$INODOIVE BT BENA 1 Hespeler and Preston a great deal. They are one, Cam- bridge by name. Regional government I guess was the cuiprit here. Likely due to this upset or in part Brooklin and Whitby retained their identity and their names. They too could have been swallowed up to become one large com- munity with one name. Brooklin, small as it is refused to have it's name eliminated and won out. It was a hard fight but a well won battle. The Oshawa Area Planning and Development Study (OAPDS) in 1968 was terminated in 1971. 1 guess the idea was to have a buffer zone on the east side of Toronto as it was growing and spreading s0 rapidly. They no doubt felt that the area from the Village of Pickering to Bowmanville would create th.is buffer. This study was scrapped due in part I would think to internal wrangling and thrown back to the province who cre.ated regional government. So thankfully we have ail been able to keep our own names and identity. Each city, town and village are so very different and I'm sure proud of their dif- ferences. This is as it should be and hopefully it will remain. At the end 0f the day a visit in an old, old house and tales of treasures in this case, letters, pictures, note books and ledgers. Are there any gems in Whitby pertaining to the town itself or the surrounding area? So often when old homes are sold the contents such as the papers mentioned above are thrown out. We accu.mulate so much during a life time that at some time we feel we must " tidy Up" and "set things ini order!1" I've done this and thrown things out which should have been kept. Our archivist will care for and treasure anything you may have to donate to the Whitby Archives or if they are from another part of the province t.ake themn to the On- tarîo Archives -in Toronto. I am going to do this and both pictures and papers can be photostated if you want to retain the originals. spring time. The Nith, a gentle, winding river twisting here and there covered many more miles than the roads did. We spent a good part of every day in that water, clean and warm with a sandy bottom and neyer a weed to be seen. We had a small sand beach at our special place and across the few hundred feet of water a bank of cday. We would swim across, take a handfui of cday and put it on our faces to have it harden into a stiff mask. Then into the water again to wash it off and to admire our new found beauty. Little did we know that women spent time and money in beauty shops to have the same treatment. So this brings to mind acid rain fish, lakes and rivers. Pollution was unthought of then but I hear that now no one ever swims in these rivers; most likely it's against the law. A few weeks ago a lecture on acid ramn by a professor at the University of Toronto. A disconcerting talk which gave us ail a terrible feeling of helplessness but hopefully in time something can be done; otherwise it does not bear thinking about. We were told about the breed and numbers of fish a few years ago and now, in ail parts of Canada. NOt so long ago there was a decision made to raise smoke stacks so that the suiphers and carbons would be carried up and away and in this way there would be far less pollution. It back fired. Now rather than localizing the problem we are sending ahl these commissions across the seas and to our neighbours to the south. The same thing is happening to our country, hence acid ramn across the world. A northern European country is suing several countries to the south of them for this reason. So now 1 guess the simple solution is to lower the stacks and localize the pollution. Why couldn't we have guessed that these pollutants once high in the atmosphere might travel for many miles until atmospheric conditions allowed them to return to earth in the form of acid ramn? What is in a name? Too many hundreds of people in Gaît, Get' Fitness is a national issue. %N cail ht Body Polities. (qi1:"VAL Roues: Mon -WED9 6 TOURSIhi 9 8 SAT 10 - L -- - mmmir - m

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