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"A Family Tradition for 131 Years" PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, July 15, 1997 -7 I ETTERS A little dust beats polluted wells To the Editor: Some townships are using Domtar's Roadbind to keep the dust down. Why? Because it's cheap, and it solves a pol- lution problem for Domtar's Recycling plant in Trenton. Once it killed fish in the Trent River. Now, with Ministry of the Environment approval, it is spread on Ontario's roads. But the User's Guide sug- gests it's dangerous stuff, not to be spread near marshes or streams. It makes a mess of vehicles. It dries and blows across the and. It will get into the water table, into cisterns and wells. Scugog Township wisely doesn't use this product once considered an environment- threatening waste. But Brock uses it. And so does Manvers Township, Victoria County. Scugog has asked Manvers to stop using it on boundary roads. Residents would be wise to advise their councils to err on the side of safety and stop using a material that kills fish, and could do long term harm to our environment. A little dust is better than polluted wells. B.A. Rogers RR2 Blackstock AIRY DRAIN College dream threatened by fee To the Editor, : Well, I don't know where to start. To say the least, I am very disappointed with our govern- ment. My sister and I are both single mothers on social assistance, and we want to go back to school. We have been accepted into a college course, but we have no hope now of making it there. There is a $140 fee that we have to pay up-front until our student loans come in. My sister called social assistance and they told her the government had made some changes to the system, and they are unable to help us. All we wanted was for them to lend us the money, so we could go to school. They said it was out of their hands and they couldn't help. We figure we were both turned down because the government has decided that our education isn't important. You, as the taxpayer, I'm sure find this very important. Why should you have to pay to take care of us and our children when we are perfectly able to go to school, get an education? Is $140 going to stop us from getting an edu- cation? You know what the scary part is? It probably will. Robyn Turner Oshawa Got something on your mind? Write a letter to the editor by Jeff Mitchell TESTING... IS THIS THING ON? WELL, SHUT MY MOUTH: Has this ever happened to ou? g You're at a summit of world leaders, forced to kill time because one of your colleagues has overslept and is running late. So, you spend the time in conversation with the guy next to you, slagging the late-comer, who also happens to be your international neighbor and, for all intents and purposes, leader of the free world. Unbeknownst to you, however, a nearby microphone is live, and picks up your comments for transmission around the globe. Boy! My face would be red! But Prime Minister Jean Chretien simply shrugged off his unintentional editorializing on U.S. President Bill Clinton, the press tells-us. : -..Which, come to think of it, was his way of dealing with a broken promise on elimination of the GST, a near- catastrophe in the Quebec sovereignty referendum, continuing unemployment and child poverty, a scathing report from the Somali Inquiry panel... Do we detect a pattern? SPEAKING OF DUNCES: It's the editor's fault. Writers quickly learn that phrase, and practice it well. It's handy. And it was my fault that a front page article on efforts to send needy kids to camp last Tuesday bore Rik Davie's byline when, in fact, the piece was penned by writer Heather McCrae. My apologies to both of them. FOR SHAME: Here's Jeer for TSN, which failed miserably last Tuesday night when it rebroadcast Fox TV's signal from Baseball's All-Star Game. There were London, Ontario's McAuley Boys, in all their glory, sweetly singing our national anthem in front of the thousands of fans in Cleveland. Where was TSN? Gone to commercial. Rather than stick with the anthem -- as the French-language CBC did -- they followed Fox's lead and got back in time for the Star Spangled Banner rather than risk any slip-up in switching signals. Tsk-tsk. (Thanks, however, to Canuck Larry Walker, for adding a chapter to baseball lore by reversing his helmet and stepping to the other side of the plate after an errant pitch from Randy Johnson sailed over his head.) FINE FESTIVAL: Thanks go out again to the Scugog Chamber of Commerce for providing an astonishingly full slate of events for the 25th anniversary of Festival Days. They keep finding ways to make the time-honored bash | You can fax us: 985-3708 exciting. And thanks to The Boss for great weather. Random Jottings S| by J. Peter Hvidsten «A CRAZY DAYS OF SUMMER 1 About a month ago it seemed es like those lazy, hazy, crazy days ~~. of summer would never arrive, but they arrived with a vengeance this past week. It couldn't have come at a better time for our family, as we were enjoying a week of holidays being tourists in the Kingston area, along with day trips to Wonderland and other nearby attractions. One of our kids favorite places to visit is Northwood Exotic Animal Ranch. The ranch, located just north of town near Seagrave just saving 'after lunch one day last week we FY 2 a A AIDE Er RAIN SA EA IR ES Sa Ba 8h MOTLEY 5 ved in time to exp feeding time for the a) $ RR LO Rp I TRS NER THREE TI ee SRR at NE . make Nortt their home. A deer which had been killed that morning in a traffic accident was to become a gourmet meal for a family of four lions. As it was dropped into the pen from a front end loader, the carcass barely hit the ground before it was smothered by the hungry beasts. Not a sight for the squeamish or faint of heart, but a fascinating thing'to witness. And while the kids enjoy walking the grounds and seeing wild tigers, jaguars, wolves, black, polar and grizzly bears, monkeys, buffalo, leopards, etc., it's the goats and deer that they seem to enjoy the most. There's really no reason to travel all the way to the Metro Zoo to see these exotic animals when they are so close to home. Anyone who hasn't - ventured to. Northwood yet, should make it a destination this summer. SLOW NEWS SEASON: While spending some time at Country Acres Mini Putt and Driving Range last week, owner Lennis Trotter asked me why the media tends to play up stories that are of so little importance. He was referring to the recent "foot in mouth" situation our PM found himself in last week after being critical of the the U.S.A. and president Bill Clinton. He just couldn't understand the large amount of ink the story had gamished. Unfortunately for the media, summer time is one of the slowest news periods of the year, and stories which may have been lost on page 10 on a normal news day, now find themselves as the lead story of the day. You'll notice in most papers this time of the year, 'there are a lot more feature and good news stories because of the lack of local hard news. That's just the way it is with the media. FANTASTIC FESTIVAL: By all accounts, this year's edition of Festival Days went off without a hitch and not only did the event raise money for the Chamber of Commerce, it provided plenty to do for local residents and visitors to the community. ' The three day festival takes a lot of planning and work, and once again the community benefits from the efforts of the hard working directors of the Scugog Chamber of Commerce. Congratulations!