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RET PORT PERRY STAR -- Wed. May 23, 1984 -- 5 (hi Rh ia ' nd Ie Nn LI. ts ap A A NA 4 tr RS Samii (echa POAT PERRY ONTARIO LO8 WO , (410) 905-738) (| Cn eaaer amaze at J. PETER HVIDSTEN Ea Publisher Dear sir: ¢ read th give it away, to those retrain these people who paper, yet he says Advertising Manager . Vamisis of he R aving just read the who won't even try to would have had jobs if, nothing, good luck. Roy Canadian Community Newspaper Association issue of the Star, May 8, get a job. Looking back the elected rep. had please, if you talk as $8. CLELAND 9 OM27i0 COMMING Nubian fssigiabion 1984, I am amazed. The at the Auto Pact, we in opened his mouth before long as your letters, you rE Pa ET itary NDP candidate for Dur- Canada had the lions the jobs were done. If will surely lose in your CATHY ROBB ham Northumberland, share of the deal, over the N.D.P. government bid for power. As you News & Features Authorized as second class mail by the Post Office Roy Grierson raves. on about what his party would do if they were in power. He raves on about job retraining, also better distribution of wealth, ha. Why who represents Oshawa ramblings should be a Fup iruly ru should those of us who did or said nothing, yet column in the Star, he Oshawa. do an honest day's work the years. This situation has reversed itself, and many jobs have gone south of the border. The leader of the N.D.P. Ed Broadbent we are supposed to is so wonderful, why did they lose B.C. then the big loss of Sask. It seems that people got fed up on big promises and no action. Roy's can fill a page of the say ME AND THE NDP, are going down the tube, ROY, after the election you will still be retired. PRNAOIAN COMMU Ye OW 5 Ps fF) [F) Ve (d } Department, Ottawa, and for cash payment ot postage in cash. Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 Subscription Rate: In Canada $15.00 per year. Elsewhere $45.00 per year. Single copy: 35 remember when? 60 YEARS AGO Thursday, May 22nd, 1924 After teaching mathematics and physics in Port Perry High School for forty years, Mr. George Stone is retiring from the teaching profession. Remember those good old days when Pure Wool Tailor Made Suits were only $30.00 and men's Shower Proof Coats made of all wool gabardine only $22.00. 35 YEARS AGO Thursday, May 19th, 1949 Art Brunton has spent some time in Toronto this week representing Port Perry Church of the Ascension at the Diocesan Synod Assembly of the Church of England in Canada. Mr. Lloyd Wright of Cartwright, donated a wolf head and hide which is being mounted for use at Cub meetings. Mrs. F. Fltetcher expressed her thanks to Mr. Wright fér the Cubs at a meeting on May 16. 25 YEARS AGO Thursday, May 21, 1959 Jack Roach of Toronto sang a solo with the band when Edgewater Pavilion opened in Caesarea. Mrs. Elsie Dobson, the Music Supervisor of the Port Perry Public School, took Grades 7 and 8 to Ajax to com- pete in the 3rd annual Music Festival. 20 YEARS AGO , Thursday, May 21st, 1964 Several packages of books dealing with many subjects . were donated to the Public Library by Dr. Lloyd White. Cliff Redman was appointed chairman in 1964 by the members of the Ontario County Pasture Committee. Mrs. Gregory Carter, Regional chairman, conducted the season's final meeting of the Ontario County Catholic Women's League. 15 YEARS AGO Thursday, May 22nd, 1969 Mr. Ron L. Wagner, son of Mr. and Mrs. Lorne Wag- ner, Port Perry, graduated May 14 from Ryerson Poly- technical Institute. Ron placed second in his class with an average of 81.1% in Architectural Technology. About seventy people were present at the Greenbank Centennial Hall on Thursday to elect an executive for the Historical Society. Mr. Wm. Brock was elected as the first president. . A major first in education in Ontario and Durham Counties will be marked on Saturday, May 24th when * Durham College of Applied Arts and Technology will grant diplomas to its first graduating class. Fifty-three students will receive diplomas for the two year Businéss & Techni- cal Program. Grocery Specials (1969) - Sockeye Salmon ... 58¢; Relish ... 12 oz. - 5 for $1.00; Peanut Butter (free kite in- cluded) ... 59¢. 10 YEARS AGO Wednesday, May 22nd, 1974 Over 300 cheering Liberals unanimously acclaimed Norman Cafik as their federal candidate for Ontario Riding at the Sandford Elementary School hall on Thursday night. Regional Council firmly voted against a proposed pri- vate sanitary landfill site on the border of what were for- merly Cartwright and Darlington Townships, on Wednesday. Bray's Black Peppi, a four-year-old, purebred, minia- ture poodle, owned and handled by Mrs. Ruth Bray, Port Perry, was the highest scoring dog of Obedience Trial held at Goraldawn Kennels, Uxbridge. Utica News - Mr. and Mrs. Bert Mitchell are entertain- ing Mr. Mitchell's five brothers, one sister and a nephew from Amsterdam, Holland this week. They were among the guests at the Mitchell-Page wedding in Port Perry on Sat- urday. Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Elford of Prince Albert and Mrs. Dayes of Nestleton, attended the Graduation Exercises at Sir Sanford Fleming College, where Mr. Barry Elford received his second year diploma in Arts and Science. __-- bill smi REVISITING PERTH There's something rather ghoulish about revisiting your old home town after forty-odd years, and giving a speech about what it was like to grow up there forty- odd years ago. The younger people don't know what you're talk- ing about. The people of your own age are either deaf or dead, and don't know what you're talking about either. Well, that was a recent experience. I was asked to speak at a Chamber of Commerce dinner in Perth, where I was reared, after a fashion. Special theme of the evening was the celebration of the 150th birthday of the Perth Courier, the second oldest weekly newspaper in Canada. Perth, down in Eastern Ontario, was a centre of culture and class (rich and poor), when Ottawa was a brawling lumbertown and Toronto was Muddy York. "My speech was the ideal moment for a lapse into rotundic hysteric hyperbole, and plain old bull-roar. I successfully avoided all three, as is my wont. I just told the truth, as always. And, as always, I received a standing ovation. The standing ovation, which used to be a rare and heartfelt response to a speech in which a politician promised new roads, new docks, or a new post office, has become as emotional as a good sneeze. It is now a chance for people to get off their bums, up from those hard chairs borrowed from the funeral director, on which they have squatted for two hours or so, and stretch their arthritic joints. It also signals the end for those who have fallen asleep. You can hear the groan of relief welling beneath the hearty hand- clapping. I didn't praise the Chamber of Commerce. In fact I stuck a needle into them. As a former weekly editor, I know all about the Chamber of Commerce, in another town. We met monthly if we could get a quorum, there were always four of us. I guess that was a quorum: the President, two members dragged out of the pub or off the curling rink, and me, as a reporter. Talk of new in- dustries, new approaches to tourism, and a general up- grading from the parking meters floated through the air for two hours, then we'd all go happily home, for - another month. This one was a little different. The officials talked in hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly government grants, where we used to talk about the impossibility of raising $200 for a tourist information booth. At any rate, the Perth Chamber was gracious and exceeding- ly generous. I think the whole trip didn't cost me more than $100. I also needled the publisher of the Perth Courier, but rather gently. I've been over that route, and publishers get the needle from readers so regularly that they barely feel it, except when it goes to the bone or the heart, which it does every time. What shook me was how old a lot of people were. There I was, feeling a ripe old twenty-eight, and these ancients came shuffling up and saying, "ley, Bill, remember the time we .... ?"' My only resort was to say, '"Hoor you?" When I found out I was mortified. A great strapping chap stuck out his hand and said, "Bill!"" I responded, "Hoor you?" He just said, "Roy"' and there I was confronted, and recognizing a first cousin I hadn't seen since 1945, he just out of the navy, I just out of the air force, having a couple of beers together. We hadn't seen each other, or exchanged so much as a card, since. A few other faces emerged from the bald heads and lined faces: Cam Chaplin, a raw-boned dairy farmer who tackled in 1ootball like a brick wall hitting a heap of marshmallows: Jack Scott, another boy of the same ilk: Kay Lightford, sister of my old college room-mate, and her brother, Grover, a widower with six children who married a widow with four, and who grasped me earnestly by the lapels and told me I should consider marrying again. Aside from a few, it was a fafnily reunion. My big sister, dammer, who instigated the whole affair, put me up for three days and tried to force-feed me. Her son, Pete, an Air Canada captain, just happened to drift up from Montreal and his little sister, Heather, took a jaunt down from Pemsbroke. I used to baby-sit them. My lit. tle sister, a nurse, drove with her husband, some white- haired old guy called Jack Buell, with whom I'd played football forty years ago, floated in from Brockville. We had quite a time, swapping lies and figuring out who was dead, who'd had a stroke, who was divorced and why. We'll probably not ever be together again un- til the day my ashes arrive in an urn. Something unusual, and very moving for me, occur- red at the dinner. I was told that an elderly gentleman, or as some put it, 'an old man" had been waiting out- side the hall for about two hours, wanting to see me. A bit bewildered, I told them to have him come in. And I finally nailed the old evil who had been writing me for years, signing himself, at fir =*, "Your TV Repair- man," and later, over the years just "YTVR." I knew he lived in Westport, Ont., but couldn't answer his blunt and caustic comments, his kind and Sieoiraging notes, his sensitive letter when my wife ied. And there he was. He wouldn't come in to dinner. He had to drive home, in the dark, at over 80 years. He'd come all that way just to say hello, Smiley. He gave me a gift which I thought might be a chamber-pot, with his sense of humour, neatly wrapped. It turned out to be a beautifully handwrought wooden bowl, which I shall treasure. More about him later.