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6 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, December 4, 1990 The Port Perry Star 235 QUEEN STREET - PORT PERRY, ONTARIO PHONE 985-7383 FAX 985-3708 The Port Perry Star is authorized as second class mail by the Post Office Department, Ottawa, for cash payment of postage. Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 Subscription Rate: InCanada $25.00 per year Elsewhere$70.00 per year. Single Copy 60¢ EDITORIAL Publisher - J. Peter Hvidsten Editor - John B. McClelland News/Features - Julia Dempsey News/Features - Kelly Lown BUSINESS OFFICE /f-- Office Manager - Gayle Stapley | i Accounting - Judy Ashby *C A =| Billing Department - Louise Hope \ Z Retail Sales - Kathy Dudley, Lynda Ruhl, Tracy O'Neil ADVERTISING Advertising Co-ordinator - Valerie Ellis Advertising Sales Representative - Anna Gouldburn Note: No ads accepted If any balance owing over 45 days. All advertising subject © publisher's approval Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association Ontario Community Newspaper Association Published every Tuesday by the Port Perry Star Co. Lid. Port Perry, Ontario PRODUCTION Annabell Harrison Trudy Empringham Darlene Hlozan tT AE he REA p----s---- Editorial Comment SAND-BAGGED Paul Pagnuelo has been sand-bagged before, but the one that hit him last week really hurt. Pagnuelo is president of the Toronto/Peterborough Line Passenger Association, a group that has been battling for commuter rail service to Toronto for the last several years. The first sand-bag hit last January when the federal gov- ernment slashed VIA services and one of the cuts was the train that ran from Havelock to Toronto each day. He felt he was sand-bagged again by the former provin- - cial government of David Peterson, which refused initially to pick up the slack and put a GO-Train on the tracks. Peterson, in the waning days of his disastrous August election cam- paign, finally promised GO-Train service on that line for next September. Pagnuelo and the Passenger Association believed that NDP leader Bob Rae would do better than that, with train ser- vice coming early in the new year. Not so. Last week, Transport Minister Ed Philip an- nounced that there will be no GO-Train service on the Peter- borough-Toronto line. Instead, the province will subsidize pri- vate bus companies to provide transportation from Peterborough (with a stop in Port Perry) to Oshawa and con- nections with the existing GO-Train that runs into Toronto along the Lake Ontario waterfront. Pagnuelo was livid with anger at this announcement, and fired off an angry press release accusing Bob Rae of breaking his election promise to extend Go-Train service to Peterbo- rough. And Pagnuelo said that commuters will not take to the bus service the NDP has in mind, even if the fares are subsi- dized by the provincial government. He says bus service from Peterborough to Toronto for commuters has twice failed to generate public support in the last few years, and there is no reason to believe it will do so ir February. Aside from what he terms a broken promise by Bob Rae, Pagnuelo can't understand why GO-Trains are not running on the track from Peterborough to Toronto. The stations are al- ready there, the track bed has apparently been up-graded by CP over the summer months, and there are commuters who would gladly pay the price to "take the train." In fact, Pagnuelo's group last spring asked an indepen- dent consultant to take a hard look at commuter rail not just on this line, but on several other former VIA lines in southern On- tario that got the federal axe last January. The consultant found that with some proper marketing, some realistic fare structures, and a few other innovative ideas (bill-board ads on the trains, for example) the line could oper- ate with a reasonable degree of economic self sufficiency. Take a look at a map of the Golden Horseshoe. Areas to the west, north and east are now served with commuter rail into Toronto. But there is a giant gap in this service, a gap that includes a huge area northeast of Metro Toronto, stretching through Scugog Township, Victoria County, all the way to Peterbo- rough. Pagnuelo says the people who live in this large area are being treated as "Metro's poor second cousins" by the NDP government. And he's right. The Province will find $70 million over the next five years to improve the Toronto subway system, and has reacted favourably to longer range plans at a cost of some $5 billion to improve public transportation all over Metro (sub- way lines, subway loops, busways, etc) But the best it can manage for the northeast is to subsi- dize local bus carriers on a system that twice has proven to be a failure, ignoring a perfectly good track that already runs from Toronto to Peterborough. No wonder Pagnuelo and members of the Passenger As- sociation feel betrayed, bitter and sand-bagged. This issue has a more far-reaching impact on Scugog Township and points north-east of Scugog. (Turn to page 8) CASE DISMISSALS > --_---- -------- ee a My recent trip to Florida really opened my eyes to the vast differences between Canada and The United States. This was the first time | had travelled to Florida via four wheels instead of wings, and 20 hours on the highway sure makes one no- tice everything around them. Although Interstate 75 is pretty much the same as travelling Highway 401, a few things did catch my eye that | found interesting. After about four hours into the United States one of the first things that came to my attention in the flow of traffic, is we Ontarians have the most boring license plates, unless they are personalized. Why is our license plate just a plain, white rectangular piece of metal stuck on our car? They really don't say too much about our country. Kentucky has a horse and jockey on theirs, Georgia has peaches inscribed on their plates. They have plates that say something about their state, and gives the plate a little personality. And on top of it they can put any plate they want on the front of their car, as law gy requires them to have a plate on the back. One thing that | found really noticeable about American drivers is their preconceived notion about Canadian drivers. Americans tend to think we all drive like we are 120 years old. The dead give away being the bumper stickers on Florida vehicles that read "When | get old, | am going to move to Ontario and drive slow." | don't believe it is that we are slow drivers, | think it's that they do not drive under 80 miles an hour. Or, maybe its the fact that when a car is trying to merge in the traffic, we allow them to pass because it is a little unset- ting to cut someone off who has a shotgun hanging in plain view in the cab of their truck. Of course there are a couple of things about their highways | do enjoy. One being, if you are lost, or simply miss your turn, you can pretty much do a U-turn owners you darn well please. This saves staking out peoples driveways, and service station entrances to turn your vehicle around, and it sure saves a lot of unnecessary driving. My other personal favorite is little reflectors that divide the highway lanes. These are a great help when driving in fog and rain. It was great to be driving in the fog, and to know you were actually still on the road, and not in a farmer's field. Too bad these could not be brought to Canada, but the snowplows would destroy them in the winter months. So, The United States have a few menial lit- tle things that make their country a little easier to get around in. To me they do not really mean anything. They do not have the things that are really important. Sure everyone says that gas, food, clothing, alcohol, tobacco, and everything elise is cheaper, but that is only because we are visit- ing with a Canadian paycheck in our hands. To an American who makes a lot less than us in a week, things are as highly priced as we feel everything in Canada is. If we were to recieve a paycheck in The States, that we re- ceive here, we would be considered pretty well off, but that is unlikely to happen. To me the important things are missing in The States. One major disadvantage they have is their health system. It must be a de- pressing scenario to have to spend your week's paycheck to take yourself, and the children to the doctor for a routine check-up, let alone if something serious were to happen. | was reading a clipping out of a recent Ann Landers column, and | was astounded when a man wrote that it cost him over $6,000 to have a splinter removed from his toe. Itis be- yond my imagination to think what it may have cost if the man needed heart surgery. Many think Canada is in bad times, that they are having a hard time making it from day to day, but | would much rather be living here, than south of the border. In Canada, we can enjoy four seasons, a secure health system, and the security that every Joe on the street does not own a hand- gun. A beach house overlooking the sandy beach and ocean may look like heaven in a two week visit, but that security can be taken away in a short breath. I'll let them have the sunny weather, I'll take Ontario anyday.