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

nh dg i? Ce - i AE PARI TF SPR Sw Sd MELAS Sri Xd £3 eS 7 -! Si 2% i 4 B= Sas rt MPR PA mg BROPNTX -- ry v0 A2 RAR APU EIATS ¥ OLN) RXR SS § 3s RTA ASAT L Ba YY ARS Rel aa SN] . RARY Xs sewer l PERI Si ty ve y iia BY Far Yast 3 k Ade EIST att le DSL BARA OS OPE HA NRIA TT LR SEAT Leave Maternity Unit Alone The Durham Region District Health Council should reject the recommendations in the consul- tants report which call for the phasing out of the maternity unit at the Port Perry Hospital. There may indeed be a dollar savings if such a drastic step was taken, but at what price. The board of directors at the hospital has already spoken out strongly against such a recommendation, and statis- tical evidence indicates that women in Scugog Township are choosing to have their babies at their local hospital. The number of births at the hospital has remained fairly constant over the past five years, and statistics also show that the very small number (about three per cent) of women who do go elsewhere to have their babies are referred to. specialists because they are "high risk" patients. Physicians working in Port Perry also consider maternity an important aspect of their practise of family medicine. In fact, of all the doctors here, only one does not take maternity cases at this time. In short, if the hospital wants it, the physicians want it, and most important the public in this community wants it, there is no reasonable argu- ment to be made for phasing out the maternity unit. It is simply not enough to look at dollars and cents, as the consultants appear to have done, and come up with a recommendation to close the wing, just because it looks like there might be money to be saved. Following that kind of thinking, why not close the whole hospital and ship all patients to Oshawa or Ajax? While we are confident that the Health Council will opt for the status quo and leave the maternity units of Port Perry, Uxbridge and Bowmanville Hospitals alone, we cannot help but wonder why the consultants included these recommendations in their $49,000 report. Even more perplexing is the recommendation for Ruddy Hospital in Whitby that it cease to be an active treatment facility and be converted to chronic care and psychiatric treatment. It looks like the minister of health has ruled that out already. This leads to the question whether the Health Council got good value for the $49,000 spent on the hospital role study. The major recommendations look like they are either unreasonable or impractical and certainly very unpopular. On top of this, the final report was not available to members of the public, the media and the health council at the annual meeting of the council last week. The report was still at the printers. Maybe it should just stay there. ' Canada Day We got our own flag a few years ago. With a couple of minor changes, we now officially have O Canada as our national anthem. We have our very own day, July 1, to celebrate Canadian nationhood; and if the Liberal government has its way, we'll have our constitution, the British North American Act, home for good within the next year or so. Yes, after 113 years, two world wars, a great depression, a referendum in Quebec and continuous bickering over who owns the resources, Canada is marching down the road to true national indepen- dence. To be sure, there are a few obstacles still in our path, but when one thinks about it, the mere fact that we are still alive and kicking after 113 years, is by itself cause for some kind of celebration. 8 NH BaVas X40 RARE PL i ARN Fak 'editorial poge Canada Day, the flag, the official anthem, the constitution are all tangible pieces of evidence of our nationhood. What is still missing, however, is a will from the 24 million people to think of themselves as one with common goals and aspirations, a community of interest and spirit. - In a fashion typical of this country and its people, the celebration of our 113th birthday has been somewhat low-keyed. Unlike our neighbours to the south, we don't fly the flag from every roof-top, or roll out the marching bands for a parade along main street. It is not our style, not the way we are accustomed to doing things. But very likely our approach is for the better. That's not to say we don't have a lot to celebrate on Canada Day. Despite our internal squabbles, there is no better (Turn to page 6) / N Time FOR A PRACTICAL BIRTHDAY PRESEN) \) \ | \ TT bill A CELEBRITY'S LIFE You have no idea how tough life is for us celebrities: signing autographs, beating off groupies, phone ringing with congratula- tions and requests for interviews, trying to be triumphantly modest. I'm certainly glad my celebrityness lasted only one day. Two days and I'd probably have started thinking I really was somebody worth knowing. I did start charging students one dollar a piece for autographs, and had a fair little run there until one of them reminded me that they could get a free signature just by reading the nasty remarks I make on their report cards. That was the end of that bonanza. To the bewildered, your old, broken- down, favourite columnjst was the subject of a profile in a national magazine called Today, and the phone has never started ringing since. Some people thought the article was dreadful. An old colleague was disgusted ley because the magazine printed how much I make a year. My wife was furious. The photographer who took my picture scrunch- ed up the drapes he drew behind me for a background, and they looked as though they needed ironing. My assistant department head was annoyed about my picture, because the art department of the magazine had not used the air brush to wipe out the wrinkles, jowls, and other appurtenances of wisdom and maturity. A bright young colleague, who writes well, expressed the opinion that the article was badly written, and was attacked furi- ously by other colleagues who thought he was jealous. He wasn't. He was right. It was a bit choppy because the editor had obviously been busy with the scissors, to make the thing fit around photographs and into the space alloted, as is their wont in a magazine that caters to a typical TV audience-mentality. But those wonderful people, my com- pletely uncritical students, thought it was great: first because my name was in big type; second because it was a national magazine; third because my picture was in it; fourth because they got a little reflected glory. They'd have been just as happy if I were an axe-murderer, as long as I hit the media. So, one day my Grade 9 thought I was just that snarly old grey-haired guy up front who kept telling them that a verb has to agree with its subject. The next, I was in the same magazine as Richard Burton, and my wife was taking on the dimensions, figuratively speaking, of Elizabeth Taylor. Personally, I have some scores to settle about the article. For one thing, it was too innocuous and kindly. The writer, Earl McCrae, is a cracking good sports writer, who has done some fine hatchet jobs on sports figures in Canada. Least he could have done is carve me up a bit, and let me get into a slanging match with him, via the public print. It was as though McCrae, usually as soft as a sword, had muttered to himself "Poor old sod; he's over the hill. I'll use the butter instead of the salt." This is the same writer whom George Chuvalo threatened to punch right through the wall of a gym when he had written a piece about George, the perennial punching bag. Another guy I have a bone to pick with is Ray Argyle, who owns the syndicate that distributes this here now column. At one point in the article, he called me a "monument". Well, I'll think of something to call you, Mr. Argyle. One adjective in the article is going to create endless amusement for old friends of my wife. It is the word "languid". Mind you, it's rather a neat word. Better than pudgy, pugnacious, bubbling, feisty, or any of those other over-worked magazine-article words. But my wife is about as languid as a Roman Candle. We were at a big wedding the weekend the article came out. About halfway through the reception, I was fairly bubbling, fairly feisty and pleasantly pug- nacious. I drifted over to where she sat, deliber- ately looking languid, and observed, "Mig- awd, you're looking languid tonight." She marched straight to the bar and had me put on the Indian list. (Oh, yeah, somebody is going to write that that is a racist remark.) You'll be glad to know that the wedding turned out well. I drove to the reception while she map-read. She drove home, but I couldn't see the street signs. We drove around a strange city for an hour and a half, completely lost. Finally, I saw a car and a place beside it that seemed to be open. "Stop! I'll ask where we are." I nipped out, went up to the stopped car, and demanded of the two police officers inhabiting it, "How, in the name of all that is holy, does one find the Royal Connaught Hotel in this misbegotten city with all its stupid one-way streets?' The cop was a modicum of decorum. "If you'll just look to your right, sir, you'll see that you are parked directly in front of it." So much for being a celebrity.