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

Ep. + == AE Es 5 | PORT PERRY "WEEKEND STAR" FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2000 - 7 Festival to By Paul Arculus Special to the Star In conjunction with the release of my new book The Steamboats of Scugog, a Steamboat Festival will take place June 9 to | lat the Port Perry waterfront. At the festival, displays and demonstrations will take place showing: Q the use of steam: steamboats, steam powered lumber mills etc., and 0 a display of the photographic and docu- mentary record of the steamboats along with models of some of the boats. | have been working for several years on the task of collecting the written and illustrated record of the steamboat era. | have asked Les Parkes, a well known local artist, to illustrate some of the vessels. These illustrations will be included in the book along with over 60 pho- tographs. A committee is planning a major event involving displays and demonstrations and a variety of activities creating awareness of the steam era. Steamboat owners as well as owners of classic and antique boats have been invited to participate in the event. Already a number of owners have indicated that they will bring their boats to Lake Scugog for the festival. The First Nation Mississaugas who set- tled this region of Ontario in the early eighteenth century were a quiet, nomadic people who lived off the profusion of fish, wild life, rice and fruit which were readily available. They did not plant crops and had no need to clear land. When the European settlers arrived in the 1820's they were confronted with a natural forest which they began to clear in order to provide land for the crops which be a celebration of Scugog's past Perry. had become a part of their diet. By mid-century entrepreneurs became aware of the market potential of lumber, and the land use underwent a change. Five steam-powered saw mills were built at the Lake Scugog waterfront at what is now Port Perry in the late 1840's. In 1851, the Woodman, a 110-foot-long steamboat, the first steam vessel in the Kawarthas, was built at the waterfront. As its name The Crandella, above, is one of the steam- boats that used to ply the waters of Scugog during a period that spanned the mid-1850's to the 1930's. Paul Arculus, right, a local historian and regular contributor to The Port Perry Star, is planning a Steamboat Festival in conjunction with the release of his book on the era in June. It's to take place from June 9 to 11 in Port Staying in Touch JOHN R. O'TOOLE MPP DURHAM EAST We all have been told that planning is the most important part of any job or, to use an old expression, measure twice and cut once. Demographers, futurists, actuaries and all manners of prophets have been planning things for years. However, this week we read how all | the experts have somehow missed the fact that people are retiring earlier and living longer. Imagine someone retiring today on a pension at the ideal age of 55 with an indexed pension. They will be retired longer than they were employed and will make more on pen- sion than they did while working. We all know this will not work. Where are all the experts now that we read how the Canada Pension Plan is seriously under funded? Let us hope that the federal budget takes a serious look at registered retire- ment savings restrictions and tax rules. regarding pension claw backs. All I want is some stability and confidence so I can plan for myself. How can you plan in an age of perpetual and rapid change - this is the central issue. Now that we are looking at the future in this new century, let us examine some of our current approaches in preparing for it. How do we accurately plan for new schools, universities, libraries, hospitals, highways, public transit systems and employment? Canada's first virtual uni- versity (no physical campus) is now online and many of our universities and colleges are offering courses via televi- sion and the Internet. 1 We have hospitals with advanced operating room technology, improved diagnostic techniques, gene treatment and genetic diagnostics. All the fuss and planning on the Y2K bug kept quite a few people busy but what did they actu- ally do? After all, we have been in this systematic top-down planning for over a decade. I ask myself; how are we doing? It is clear to me that the one thing we can plan on is that things will continue to change, so make your plans as flexible as possible. Health care continues to be headlines. Last week, Federal Health Minister Alan Rock, called for a new spending plan to fix our health care system. Mr. Rock should look in the mirror and recall that once upon a time our national health care plan was built on 50 per cent funding from Ottawa and 50 per cent funding from each of the provinces. Today in Ontario, Ottawa contributes 11 cents toward every health care dollar spent. Before Ottawa puts more of your tax dollars on the table to buy your sym- pathy, perhaps they should return the almost $5 billion they have taken from our Canadian Health and Social Transfer Payments (CHST). 1 urge Ottawa to improve its funding of our health system before they create some new plan. Last week, Education Minister Janet Ecker announced additional support for special education. After consultations with parents of children with special needs, education and other specialists, she has committed: 0 a stronger voice for parents anew standards and accountability a protected funding and board flexi- bility If you want additional information, please call my community office at 697- 1501 or 1-800-661-2433. implied, the function of the Woodman was to bring log booms to the Port Perry sawmills. The timbers were then cut and the lumber carried overland to the harbour at Whitby, where it was shipped to various ports on Lake Ontario and particularly to Oswego and Rochester, to be used in the construction of homes in those communi- ties. Within a decade, a dozen or more steamboats had joined the Woodman. But another change was under way. The land | adjacent to the shores of Lake Scugog was | being rapidly depleted of timber. This | factor, combined the downturn of the | economy and the eventual depression in | 1875 which resulted largely from the col- | lapse of the lumber market in New York, | meant that the steamboats were no longer needed for timber. The steamboats con- tinued their commerce by shipping people and goods around the lake and into the adjacent Sturgeon Lake. Even in the 1870's a flourishing excursion industry was | well under way with dozens of steamboats | churning the waters of the southern | Kawarthas with their holiday passengers. | With the development of the gasoline | engine and adequate roads in the early twentieth century, the steamboats passed | into history. In 1930, the last steamboat to be built on the Port Perry waterfront was left to rot a few metres from where it been built. This event symbolized the closure of that colourful and thriving peri- od in our history. Today there are no evidences of the era of the steamboat. No steamboats exist in this region. The shipbuilding yards have all disappeared. The saw mills have gone. The warehouses have been torn down and the docks have been dis- mantled or changed beyond recognition. The photographic and documentary record has been dispersed into archives and personal collections. It is absolutely essential that an effort be made to preserve the record of this historic period. Straight Talk by ALEX SHEPHERD DURHAM M.P. The only thing the Toronto Police Association's "Operation True Blue" has accomplished is to weaken the respect Canadians have for their police forces and to illustrate how dangerous (or weak) Mike Harris' government is. Police forces have always been viewed as being there for we citizens. This means protecting our children, families, property and those who may be viewed as the weaker members of our society. The elderly, disabled and members of minorities come to mind. We, like the police, were proud of the phrase, "to serve and protect." Now, because of one police union exec- utive that phrase is damaged, reduced to a trite cliche. As a society we entrust our law enforcement agencies with the respon- sibility of upholding each individual's democratic right to walk the streets unharmed or to carry on business with- out fear of being robbed. We have done this because people have the right to enjoy all we have built as a society without fear of intimi- dation. That is why it is absolutely galling - not to mention disrespect to society - that the police union's executive would set out to intimidate the mén and women civilians chose to police law enforcement personnel. Operation True Blue just reeks of the potential for abuse of power as well as the arrogant abuse of authority. The Toronto Police | Association's executive has % had the audacity to tell the public they would hire inves- tigators to dig into the lives of its enemies and to target unfriendly politicians. How many of you reading this column ran, or have par- ents who ran from, other coun- tries to escape intimidation by police states or fascist dictatorships. Every Nov. | | we pause to remember those Canadians who fought and those who died, to uphold civil liberties and democratic principles. The idea was to stop governments who would let its police forces or armies intimidate and bully its civilian popu- lation. The public is outraged, and has every right to be, when civil servants: consider themselves to be above the law and above those society has chosen to make laws. : Why Premier Mike Harris hasn't spo- ken out is beyond me. He, his cabinet, and his MPPs, are responsible for polic- ing in Ontario regardless of how they try to shuffle this issue on'to the backs of the Police Services Board. The good men and women who make up the Metro Toronto police force are being embarrassed by a union execu- tive that forget it answers to, and derives all its authority from, a civilian body comprised of citizens like me and you. The failure of our elected represen- tatives at Queen's Park, custodians of our democratic freedoms, to stand up to police union bosses, erodes the trust we have placed in them. And if we can't trust them to stand up for the public on this issue what can be trust the Harris Tories to stand up for.