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$5 i / ditoriol comme Gripe, Gri ripe, Gripe -. It could only happen in Canada, a country richly deserving its earne reputation as a complainer par excellence, whose citizens it seems are not happy. unless they are taking pot shots at something or somebody. This'is the case with Canada's Wonderland. The gigantic family amusement facility just north of Toronto is due to open its doors to the public May 23rd, and already the detractors are lining up to get in their knocks. The critics are going to great lengths to find something wrong with Wonderland; everything from the prices, the fact the major ownership is American, the wages that will be paid the small army of young people who will work there, that it does not have a '"Canadian" theme or focal point, that it will create traffic problems, and that it sits on what is described as valuable agricultural land. There may be truth in all of these, but the point is so what. Wonderland is an ambitious undertaking. Hopefully, it will help attract tourists from other provinces and the United States to this part of " Ontario. At the height of the summer season, it will give jobs to more than 1000 young people, most of them students who ir this day and age should be thankful to at least have a job for the summer. -And yes, on a busy weekend, it is probably true there will be traffic congestions on the roads leading to Wonderland. But the same can be said for anything which attracts large numbers of people. It is part of the price that must be paid, but really this is rather a small price. And yes, the cost for a day's outing at Wonder - land for a family of four or five is going to be a little steep. Do the critics expect Wonderland fo give the tickets away? The paying public will be the final judge of whether the prices are too high or if the public is being gouged for such things like a hot dog, ice cream or soft.drinks. : Wonderland probably Is constructed on land which could be used for agriculture of one form or another. If Ontario has any agricultural problem these days, it is not lack of good farmland, but sky-rocketing costs which prohibit young, enthus- iastic farmers from owning and working the good farmland. But the crudest knock of all is that Wonderland is not ""Canadian" in its oral tHe or direction. The cultural bigots hung up on the lack of 'Canadian' identity in everything we do are becoming a bore. Wonderland is not the CBC, for crying out loud, or any of our other so-called national institutions which insist on carrying Canadian "content" to ~ ridiculous extremes. As for who owns Wonderland, those people who are bemoaning the fact that American interests are largely behind it, are the same ones crying the blues because the Canadian government bought an oil company recently and slapped a tax on gasoline to help pay for it. We are not suggesting that Wonderland won't be without its warts, or that it is the best thing to hit Ontario in the past two decades. It may not be everyone, and to be sure, some families after visiting the park will decide that once is enough. 0 . AO NR AN Zz N "Now wist THey'D SHUTTLE THEIR BUITLE AN Jou HE REST OF Ts JUNK Hore |" N 3 But the majority of the criticism levelled has not been fair. Can't the place at least get its doors open to the public before we take up our national pastime of whining and complaining about this and that? ~ Canada is ih trouble these days because nobody can agree on anything. When we don't have the weather to complain about, we are not long finding something else. Why not. I's become second nature to us, much to the amusement of most other countries in the world. Bend the rules for Fox If rules are made to be broken and guidelines are simply meant to be followed with discretion, then surely the Post Office Stamp Advisory committee can change its position and issue a Canadian stamp to honour Terry Fox and the contribution he has made to this country. It seems the policy is that no stamp can be issued to honour a person still living, monarchs excepted, and it is only on rare occasions the Post Office will issue a stamp within ten years of a person's death. Goodness sakes. The whole country has recog- nized that Terry Fox made a unique contribution to Canada in general and the battle against cancer in particular. His courage and determination have been a lesson for all Canadians, young and old. What better way for the government to recognize this than to issue a stamp in his honour. The Stamp Advisory committee says doing so would set a precedent. What Terry Fox did is unprecedented. Sure there have been Canadians who have contributed immeasurably to their country, but one is hard-pressed to find a Canadian who has had as much impact on the country as Terry Fox. We think in this case, it is time for the Stamp committee and the government to throw away the hide-bound rules and regulations. Canada issues stamps with wheat fields, pine trees and mountain ranges on them. But when a genuine hero dear to the hearts of millions comes along, we say 'rules are rules." Come off it. Commission the stamp. We are sure the vast majority of Canadians will forgive the Stamp Advisory committee for over-looking the 'rules' in this case. WAY UP NORTH Dateline: Moosonee. How did a nice boy like you wind up in a didn't wind up here. I came here. And if I don't get out pretty soon, I'just might wind up here. Buried in mud, with taxis driven by not one of those jerks of bomber people who bombed their own troops, we were soul- known us apart. We separated with one of those 10-minute handshakes that drunks . & - ® brothers. place like this? Isn't that the classic : In fact, if I'd thrown away my fancy question prostitutes are asked? Yes. topcoat, let me whiskers grow for five days, Well, I realize the entire world is : .. taken out my partial plate, and gotten waiting for my answer, so I must confess. I } | incredibly plastered, you wouldn't have tidy liquor gently-laughing Indian ladies rolling right over my Irish tweed hat, the only thing sticking out of the mud. Moosonee is not Far North. In fact, move it far enough west, and it could be a suburb of Edmonton. But it's far enough north to be of those towns that are neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, in this democratic, liberal- thinking, decent, next-door-neighbour country of ours. - As a result, it is a combination of a by Dostoievsky and a plan for a Utopian village by Tolstoy. Two-room shacks with the inevitable snowmobile parked outside, and a minute's walk away, super-modern school buildings, store, neat brick post office. Truly beautiful Indian toddlers, supervised by smart, smiling young Indian women. Happy-go-lucky teenageian kids who should be in school but, with apparently no financial problems, smoke, drink coffee or Cokes, and feed the juke box, which . whines the same old songs they're hearing in Halifax and Vancouver. And three tables away, in the same Chinese (thats right; Chinese) restaurant, a grizzled old guy, so drunk he doesn't know whether he's sipping his toast or eating his coffee. Mean, obscene, obstreperous. But they look after him. else, d call the fuzz, and he'd wind up in-the slammer. Not in Moosonee. . When he'd driven everyone else out, he turned on me, the cool-looking guy with the shirt and tie, the fresh shave, the snappy trenchcoat, and the skiing earlugs my wife insisted I wear, even in a Moosonee heat- wave. (Glad I did. If I'd taken them off, I'd have had sun-burned ears, which would have made my old lady think I'd gone to Texas on March break, instead -of Moosonee.) - : Anyway, this almost-incoherent old. drunk zoned in on me, despite my pretending to be a born-again Christian or a . deaf-mute or a retarded senior citizen just out of the funny farm, and went into a lurching dialogue about Kon and how we'd Carre 750.000 Germans in the Falaise ap. Suddenly we were buddies. Kon was Caen, Normandy, 1944. That was my baptism of fire. He was in the infantry, trying to capture the mess of shattered bricks and unshattered Germans. After I'd convinced him that I was a fighter pilot and insist on. And I felt very sad. . Outside, on the street, macho young Indians, sometimes three abreast, sun- glasses, thumbs in denim trousers, some Sey some handsome, some mena aintly. Playing a role. I am proud to say that not one of them pushed me off the sidewalk into the mud. I stepped off, a purely individual choice, into the mud. Middle 'of main street. Water two feet deep. Kids of all colours wading around in it with their 14 inch rubber boots, wildly happy, soaked as seals, oblivious to all else except sun, water, mud, All veterens of World War I should be buried in Moosonee, in the spring or fall. It would be just like Flanders fields. Mud. " Golly, i, sounds as though I don't like oosonee. 's . I love it, I tell why next ch Avi 11