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Meech Lake is an obsession Home Newspaper of Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown 3Z6 Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone 8772201 DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager I lit Page THE HERALD Wednesday ember I9H9 A waiting game Our political leaders at Halton Region seem to be totally incapable of making a firm decision on the Sunday shopp ing issue Last week Halton councillors not only ignored over applications from retailers asking for Sunday shopping they ignored everyone else Haltons administration and finance committee wants Regional council to petition the province to take back the responsibility for Sunday shopping Halton Hills Councillor Rick Bonnette said the Sunday shopping is going to be a circus no matter how you look at it Hes right And our politicians are building the tent The Region is not prepared to take a stand on Sunday shopping one way or the other despite being flooded with calls from businesses asking for a decision Haltons business manager Brent Kearse said grocery stores are calling every other day Everybodys playing a bit of a waiting game he said It is ridiculous to leave businesses hanging not knowing when Halton will take a stand Now theres talk of having a referendum Fine If our politicians cant make a decision let the people decide Halton Region Chairman Pete Pomeroy is right when he said it was a dirty trick that forced the decision on regions The provinces decision to pass on Sunday shopping to regions was spineless But that doesnt mean municipal politicians cant roll up their sleeves and deal with the issue Mr Pomeroy said a referendum would not represent a majority of people since elections generally dont have a 100 per cent turnout But its those same elections that put our politicians in power If elections are good enough to elect mayors and councillors theyre good enough to make a decision that those mayors and councillors wont or cant make Where poppies grow Fields is featured so prominently in our daily lives Earlier this year during a visit to Europe I was fortunate to visit several military cemeteries in the region known as Flanders in France Theyre impressive Theyre wellkept and every small town seems to have its own way of maintaining their military cemeteries And more often than not people were stopped by the roadside going over rows and rows of crosses or gravestones In France those military cemeteries are treated as national monuments Most towns have signs pointing the way to the cemetery This Saturday at 11 am marks the 70th year of the end of the Great War The war that inspired the 43yearold medical officer a Guelph native to pen those famous words after a 17day battle in in April The war to end all wars didnt And fighters were back in the tren ches a scant years later Each year on Nov we visit cenotaphs lay wreaths and remember those who died in defence of freedom Its important that the youth of today learn their heritage their beginnings and of the heroic deeds of their forefathers so that we dont fall prey to McCraes words If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep though poppies grow In Flanders Fields Brian MacLeod Editor Notebook Queen Pad Thornton TORONTOThe obsession here with the Meech Lake accord and Quebec hides another reality there are other parts to the coun try Almost every day Lake is an issue of interest among reporters and Ontario Premier David Peterson is constantly bom- with questions concerning- the latest twist in its epic journey to ratification or rejection It is a symptom of the narrow QuebecOntario focus of our media that the election of Stan Waters in Alberta as the peoples choice for senator went almost unnoticed Certainly no one in the media pestered Peterson for his views on the subject And yet it was a watershed event Not only was it the first time in Canadian history that common people had a say in who they wanted for senator which is itself remarkable but it had two pro found symbolic effects The first was that all those who ran in the race and only the New Democrats who want to abolish the Senate boycotted it whether Conservative Liberal indepen dent or from the new Reform par t endorsed the idea of Triple- Senate That is Senate in which the members would be elected where they would be effective meaning retain real power and equal meaning there would be equal numbers from each province It would be a way to Rive western Canada genuine representation in the federal government something it currently lacks dominated as Parliament always is by a QuebecOntario alliance For westerners for instance the test for effectiveness of Senate reform is whether a new Senate could prevent Ottawa ever again imposing something like the Na tional Energy Policy upon objec ting western provinces The second message sent by the Alberta electorate came in whom they picked More than 600000 voted and per cent of those chose Stan Waters the Reform party candidate who finished far ahead of the other candidates The Ottawa political establish ment is horrified External Affairs Minister Joe Clark said Waters was an extremist and his views were dangerous He didnt say what they were but the news report quoting Clark characterized them as strong and right- wing ON BANDWAGON The Ottawa media establish ment is already on the bandwagon with doyen columnist Marjorie Nichols for example calling Waters an antienvironmentalist antifeminist antiintellectual boob who shouldnt be eligible to sit in the Senate Actually so far he sounds good What ib wrong with strong right wing views such as support for a balanced budget for spending cuts and for an adequate defence being represented in They arent today Besides anyone who can jolt the cozy little club that is the Ottawa elite PCs Liberals New Democrats and media com bined cant be all bad More important as columnist Don Braid said in the Calgary Herald Reforms views on mat ters like Quebec probably reflect the feelings of more than half of all westerners Heres a sampling in quotes as given by Braid One that all regions of Canada are entitled to equal status in con stitutional and political negotia tions Quebecs demands arent the only ones that should be con sidered Two that freedom of expres sion is fully accepted as the basis of any language policy This is the opposite of Quebecs Bill 101 which makes French the only language of public life Three that every citizen is en titled to equality of treatment by governments without regard to race language or culture This means an end to official favoritism towards Quebec French in federal jobs No wonder they consider Reform extremist The blindness of central Canada is nowhere more evident than in Petersons refusal even to consider Senate reform until Meech Lake is secure He declines to stretch the hand of friendship west at least until the east is satisfied Too bad CRASH Organic grains are prairie gold Many of you who tune in to the radio each day will likely have heard that dramatic advertise ment for the sports network ing the Montreal Canadiens On the wall there is a sign the announcer says To you from failing hands we throw The torch be yours to hold it high Its an effective advertisement and it makes us all pay attention But perhaps we can put things a bit more Into perspective if you were to read the next two lines of the poem from which those words are borrowed If ye break faith with us who die We dull not sleep though poppies grow In Flanders Fields Saturday is Remembrance Day Iff fitting that John McCraes famous poem In Flanders Rennie MacKenzie Jtfm Members of a small western grain co op think theyve discovered a rich new seam in the fields of prairie gold A growing number of producers are making the switch to organic grains for environmental and healthconscious consumers Elmer Laird president of the Canadian Organic Producers Marketing Coop in Girvin Sask reported a fivefold increase in sales of chemicalfree grains this year and has asked the Canadian Wheat Board for a separate pool to market and ship organic products Laird says the 143 members of the coop arent having any pro blems selling their wheat and oats Our problem is guaranteeing buyers a steady supply he remarked But the growing coop expects that wheat board assistance could give it a much bigger chunk of the organic grains market Canadians have been slow to ac cept the organic grains We dont sell a lot in Saskatchewan Laird commented However sales in the coops oldest market Ontario and Quebec are picking up with renew ed interest in oats as a health food Two large Canadian grain com panies are now advertising for organically grown cereal grains But Europe is the ripest of all markets Led by the West Ger mans the Europeans are grinding up whatever their own growers can cut in a season and then looking far abroad for more And they are pay ing premium prices for the chemicalfree grains An English miller who is now one of the coops biggest customers told Laird that the Ger man consumer market for organic cereal products is a year ahead of Britains and Britain is running a year ahead of Canada The coop was formed six years ago after a group of organic growers were brought together in an effort to meet a West German buyers demand for 75000 bushels of their wheat The deal fell through but the growers sensing potential in a marketplace In which per cent of consumers report allergies to food additives preservatives or chemicals ac quired a provincial charter to operate as a coop and set tight standards for membership Two years ago the coop opened a processing and cleaning plant at Girvin It has since been expanded to include a stone mill and retail store The plant is working at capacity and most of the grain ordered by foreign buyers is pro cessed by commercial cleaners before being loaded into sealed plasticlined 20tonne containers Laird believes Prairie farmers have a good edge in the interna tional market The western soils arent laden with mercury lead and other metals spewed by heavy industry However he feels western growers especially those Saskatchewan are hooked on chemicals and apply heavier doses on their fields than fanners in other regions of the country