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

Home Newspaper of Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown 3Z6 Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager Deaf education review is due MIKE TURNER Editor Phone 8772201 J AN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Clan Page THE HERALD Wednesday March 1989 Rules of all roads Substantial accumulations of snow open up a whole dif ferent range of opportunities for those who like to enjoy the winter weather in the great outdoors As has often been the case in other years the greatest accumulation of snow has come at a time when most of us would sooner be welcoming the spring The important thing is to remember not to try and cram more winter fun into a short period of time than is safe particularly if you enjoy snowmobiling As with any motorized vehicle snowmobiles must be respected and the rules of the road must apply to their operation With snowmobiling having risen to the level of populari ty it has in the last several years safety should remain foremost on the minds of those who operate the snow vehicles Yet police departments point out that there have already been more deaths attributed to snowmobile incidents than there were all last year Snowmobiling can be exhilarating for those who enjoy the sport in winter but safety must remain in high regard for Go on impress me Editors Notebook Mike Turner Editor A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I can remember a Grade 7 history teacher telling me something that has stayed with me to this day Im not entirely sure if it was the profound nature of bis statement or the fact that he was a no- nonsense educator that prompts me to recall this little jewel of wisdom but surely its one or the other At any rate he noted that of all the thousands of jets and other air craft that take off and land each day we never hear about the ones that arrive safely the only ones we bear about are the ones that dont arrive safely Or I suppose you could include the aircraft that arrive safely as long as there was something eventful that happened while it was en route I suppose if someone was to im part this bit of knowledge on me to day after Id never heard it before Id probably look at him and go Yeah and But when youre in Grade statements like that seem a lot deeper I suppose what it points to is the idea that with each passing year become more and more jaded We actually challenge the rest of the world to do its utmost if it plans to even slightly impress us At the turn of the last century it was still a pretty impressive deed for man to have actually mastered flying At one time when any sort of airship went up it was news likewise just a few years ago when the United States launched Its space shuttle program there was much excitement People wat ched in wonder as the shuttles one by one made their way into the heavens and returned in virtually the same condition as they were in when they left And instead of dropping into the ocean these peculiar craft landed on an open desert just as jetliners land each and every day until one day one didnt No one will forget the images of that fateful day when one of those shuttles burst into fjames on take off killing all aboard That was probably the last time the space shuttle program made big news I was surprised to hear last week that the space shuttle Discovery was preparing to return to earth from a mission in space 1 found it surprising because I never even knew it had gone up Its strange how we view things today Yes I guess you could say weve become jaded In our informationsaturated age little successes in politics can often be buried either by big events or a mass of trivia Yet a little success can affect a lot of people Take the deaf for example It is estimated there are people in Ontario who are pro foundly deaf 5000 of them children About per cent of the children attend the three provin cial schools for the deaf About per cent are deaf from birth or are deaf before the age of two years per cent have two hearing parents and the cause of the deafness is unknown in 50 per cent of cases Others are hearingImpaired to various degrees On Nov 1 last year Education Minister Chris Ward announced two reviews of hearingimpaired education one internal and one ex ternal with a final report to be completed this summer It may not sound like much but it is the first major look at deaf education in this province since a royal commission tackled the sub ject in the 1940s Remarkably Wards announce ment resulted from the effort of an opposition New Democrat Richard Johnston It illustrates the system working at its best Two years ago Johnston knew little about the subject of the deaf But the more he became informed of it as his partys education critic by an activist for the deaf the more he became enraged by it as only Johnston one of the more passionate politicians here can Queens Park Derek Nelson Thomson Ntwt Servici For instance he noted that in the 1920s there were 17 deaf teachers in provincial schools Today there are only eight There are no deaf administrators and no deaf ad visory groups with clout He discovered that in the three provincial schools two sign languages are taught called signed English and exact sign ed English both essentially spell ing out words with hand motions Meanwhile American Sign Language which tries to draw pic tures by hand movement rather than spell out the words the street language of the deaf is forbidden Nor interestingly is there education in signing itself as opposed to what is signed Mutually iff cult- comprehend signing dialects are developing too To these problems can be added disputes within the deaf communi ty itself between supporters of signing for instance and those who believe mechanical aids will eventually be able to bring actual hearing to everyone supposedly deaf In short you have a picture of deaf education as being fragmented and confused So what was Johnston to do Not being a government member he couldnt raise the mat ter in caucus which is where government backbenchers tend to make their views known in order to avoid embarrassing ministers in public So he moved a resolution during private members hour last May which called for a review of deaf education with the aim of im plementing reforms He even at tached a Nov deadline for the government to respond As noted above the Liberals did and in a way that met most of Johnstons objectives It isnt that the government had to respond to Johnston mind you Normally ministers simply ignore the opposition which naturally is one of the great frustrations of sit ting on the opposition benches But sometimes they listen It can be a result of concurrent events in Johnstons case years ago he called for hearings on fami ly violence just when such violence was receiving major publicity But for the deaf it was simply that the case was so overwhelm ing Johnston said If there had been any sign of denial it would have blown up in their faces The opposition would have labelled it another symbol of flagg ing Liberal reform instincts And it might be true that such cynical reasoning influenced the Grit decision But they also pro bably just thought Johnston had some good ideas Except on some ideological touchstones bil- ingualism for instance the Liberals do listen to people On the other hand they likely needed Johnston to call the matter to their attention in the first place Another view on the Slowpoke reactors Dear Sir The Durham Nuclear Awareness Projects letter in your March 8 edition announced with pride their role in stopping the use of a Slowpoke reactor at the University of Sherbrooke hospital Your readers deserve to see another point of view This reactor would have provided the hospital with an economically heating source and a source radioIsotopes for treatment and diagnosis in nuclear medicine claims its position is based on environmental concerns however they appear to ignore the en vironmental impacts of alternative heat sources such as oil coal or natural gas related to acid rain and the greenhouse effect Even heating by hydrogenerated elec tricity can have impacts through flooding of large tracts of land and in some cases mercury contamina tion of water also says that there is no satisfactory method of storing or disposing of the Slowpokes waste is Incorrect in that- Canada has been effectively storing similar wastes from nuclear elec tricity generating plants for over 30 years in water pools located at the plants and more recently in concrete canisters These facilities are licensed by the regulator the Atomic Energy Control Board for long term storage Regarding ultimate disposal there is a major study under way into a concept of disposal in hard rocjc caverns located one kilometre below the earths surface The Federal Government is presently arrang ing for a full environmental assess ment of the concept which will in volve active public and regulatory participation Pregnant women children and sick people would not be exposed to any risk by a Slowpoke reactor The radiation levels associated with this type of facility are negligible The reactor core is located under 12 meters of water and even in the Authorized Per sonnel Only areas levels there would be only a small fraction of the natural background radiation that of us face daily There are no adverse health ef fects associated with the Slowpoke reactor The probability of an acci dent is extremely low since the design is inherently safe If anything unusual occurs the reac tor would automatically shut itself down The operating experience with the Slowpoke reactor installa tions at seven Canadian univer sities has been excellent also questions why the government continues to fund the nuclear program at a level of million not the million quoted when no new reactors have been ordered in the last 10 years The lack of reactor sales reflects a world wide situation which resulted from a low elec tricity demand growth in the late seventiesearly eighties This situation is rapidly changing in North America For example in Ontario over the past five years the demand has been increasing an nually at four to five per cent conj- pared to the earlier zero to two per cent If this growth continues new generating stations will be re quired by the year 2000 Investing in the nuclear business makes good business sense In Ontario alone by the midnineties electricity con sumers will be saving about billion per year by utilizing nucleargenerated electricity In addition this government support has resulted in the development of other important nuclear technologies such as in the medical diagnostics and treatment areas with immeasurable benefit to the public Environmentalists should be supporting the slowpoke reactor since it definitely has a role to play in dealing with the above en vironmental concerns I hope that in time organizations such as the Nuclear Awareness Project will recognize this fact and start to sup port the program I would strongly encourage your readers to con sider the environmental impacts and risks associated with all of the alternatives in meeting our energy requirements P Burroughs Terra Cot ta