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THE HERALD Wednesday May 2 1990 Page LETTERS- 30 years ago A record was set when over 1400 people attended the 1960 Rotary Show Boat at Georgetown District High School in two weekends Logan MacDonald who was in charge of ticket sales reported the record sales The largest audience ever to watch the show in one night people took in the final performance April 30 The cast celebrated the shows success later at a party held by Mr and Mrs Ralph Mr Ursel was the director of the show and Mrs was a member of the chorus Mr and Mrs Matthew Arm strong celebrated their wed ding anniversary when they were honored at a famil dinner May Mr Armstrong is one of Georgetown veteran garage owners His sons John and thur work at the highway garage location About 18 people attend ed the family gathering including the Armstrong s grandchildren Ronald and Douglas Mr AW Benton was honored by the town for years of work Mr Benton was commended by Deputy Reeve Wilfred Bird and was presented with a ring by councillor Wilfred Leslie on behalf of the Esquesing council Mrs Benton was cited for her co operation in allowing her hus band to spend many hours at his work and was presented a bou of flowers by councillor Geof Leslie Reeve C Sinclair ed for the evening and added his thanks to the assessor 20 years ago An estimated 300 people started and 500 people finished the Halton and Peel Miles for Millions raising 000 May 2 It was estimated that of the marchers were from Georgetown and the surrounding area Mrs Helen Van Sickler a Georgetown official on the walk said close to 2500 forms were pre registered April 29 The first walkers to finish were a threesome who started from the Brampton Fairgrounds at 6 a and completed the route ex actly six hours later They averaged five miles an hour The last walkers across the finish line staggered over at p Special services at the First Baptist Church April 5 marked the 100th anniversary of that church Sunday School Brief histories of the Sunday School were read out by Mrs Mary A threetiered cake was displayed on the communion table and was cut by Miss Norma Thompson Miss Thompson has been teaching Sunday School classes for 28 consecutive years s files 10 years ago Van celebrated one of those rare milestones when she reached Her family held an open house to celebrate the occasion Friends and family dropped by to extend their good wishes in person Five generations of family dropped in including Rosen Ionson Joyce Snider Welch Roy and Ms Van great great grandchildren Morgan and Stacey Welch Herald publisher Bill dokimoff invited Halton Hills Mayor Pete Pomeroy to start the presses to run the first papers off the new presses For the first time in many years the Herald was being printed in Georgetown The Herald recently moved into its new building on Guelph Street Mr Evdoldmoff was hoping to hold a complete open house later in the year Don Boufford a research technician with the Ministry of Natural Resources at the Ontario Forestry Research Centre and Mike Hall from the Credit Valley Conservation Authority were helping plant some of the 1 hybrid poplars comprising an ex penmenta tree plantation on CVCA land south of Sideroad 27 Seven types of Aspen and Cot clones were being used in the plantation to test disease and insect resistance 5 years ago Halton Plowman crowned a new Queen of the Furrow at the Boyne Community Centre Apnt 23 Deb bie 20 is the daughter of Bill and Rita Deenik of Norval She has just finished her second year at university She is enrolled in the University of Guelph for four years majoring in hor ticulture The Kinsmen Club obtained a new film on Cystic Fibrosis The group planned to show the film a 30 minute feature on Halton Cable The show is about Kinsmen involvement in Cystic Fibrosis and Michelle Breakwell an energetic young teenager who died of the disease The narration is provided by BUI Robinson formerly of Toronto Canadas debts to foreigners increasing Continued from Page is serious or very serious The result is lost jobs lost exports and cancelled investment The exporters association com plains there has been a massive deterioration of Canadian com compared with the United States We are now in the worst position in years MONEY OUTFLOW Meanwhile the strong dollar discourages foreign travellers from coming here and tempts Canadians into cheaper vacations outside the country causing another outflow of funds And high interest rates are at more foreign investors They have bought scads of Cana dian bonds and snapped up domestic firms There are recent signs some bond money is now flee ing the country because of con uncertainty That outflow will tend to keep the rates up The cumulative effect is an in crease in what owe foreigners especially as a share of our na tional debt A decade ago about per cent of the debt was owed to ourselves in the form of savings bonds and other instruments Now close to half of a much larger debt is owned for foreigners who are less likely to roll over their in vestments year after year Is this increased foreign share a problem for the future Perhaps A Library of Parliament study on balance of payments says if foreign capital is simply used to finance current spending with no return it could put an undue burden on future generations If however it s invested in long lived assets hospitals schools highways and industrial plants it could yield benefits greater than the costs the study argues Clearly become more reliant on foreign cash But how much of a burden this will be depends on how politicians decide to spend the money Family opposes widening Street to five lanes Dear Sir My parents and I are adamantly opposed to the proposed widening of Guelph Street to five lanes bet ween Maple Avenue and Main Street The amount of traffic passing our home is already considered congested How can engineers pro fess that widening the road would solve congestion problems when it would only encourage more truck drivers to use the expanded road Also the road was not built to commodate the excess amount of motor vehicles passing by In the traffic survey conducted by the Town of Halton Hills did they ever consider tabulating how many of the trucks NEED to through Georgetown Why was a proposed by pass which would keep out those trucks having no purpose in town rejected in Presently students going to and from school at Sacre Coeur and Georgetown District High School have very little room to walk on either side of the highway If the existing road were expanded both schools would be physically closer to the highway and increased traf fie as a result of expansion would put students in greater jeopardy of being hit If new school crossings were included in the proposal would an be able to stop in enough time to avoid hitting a child Also who in their right mind would tackle jumping out in front of 18wheelers on a highly con gested five lane highway every day as a crossing guard A crossing guard is only present approximate ly three hours each day therefore what happens when a crossing guard is not present and a child needs to cross the highway Presently senior citizens also use the same crosswalk as the high school students Consequently they would face the same blens My parents and I moved to Georgetown in 1983 from At the time was becoming a highly congested cultural subur ban wasteland The clonelike at mosphere of cities such as Mississauga made them devoid of personality while we found Georgetown to be unique in their efforts to main individuality yet welcoming hospitality to newcomers However under the guise of progress and pseudo- development Georgetown Will lose that once sought for uniqueness We have spent the last seven years of our lives restoring our 135year old home to support the histonal heritage of should such progress continue a fast dying Georgetown The intent of this letter is not on ly to voice our opposition to the widening of Guelph St and conse quent destruction of our home but also to propose an alternative We propose that a by pass be con structed from Trafalgar North along Sideroad 10 go ing east otherwise what happens to the historical value of this town when five lane highways are con through unique features which have drawn people to Georgetown in the first place Sincerely a very concerned citizen Marion C Kester Bonnette wants GO in Acton Editor note The following let ter to Transport Minister Bill was filed with The Herald for publication Dear Mr Minister I was elated to learn of your deci sion to extend the GO train service from Georgetown to Guelph The purpose of this letter is to request confirmation that Acton will in deed be a stop along the route and to offer my assistance in this regard In the local Chamber of Commerce conducted a survey which concluded 35 55 people would regularly use a commuter rail service to Toronto There is every reason to believe that a similar survey conducted today would show a considerably higher demand level In fact the 84 survey did not include the rural community and hamlets ding Acton Also Acton s popula tion will be increasing by almost 35 to over the next few years commuter based families will constitute most of the in crease In the past the Town of Hills has indicated a willingness to participate financially in the provi sion of a rail shelter Also the Town Canadian National and the Hide House are currently discussing changes to Actons rail and siding configuration Mr Minister as you must be aware many benefits will accrue from this much needed stop in Ac ton One important albeit indirect example will be the relief factor on the Georgetown GO parking lot Already over its capacity this lot must serve a significant increase in Georgetown s population in the very near future Currently several dozen Acton residents park in the Georgetown GO lot look forward to working with Mr Walt Elliot MPP Chairman Peter Pomeroy Mayor Miller and your Ministry on this most exciting endeavor Sincerely Rick Bonnette Regional Councillor Acton Hills Write us a letter The Herald wants to hear from you If you have an opinion you want to express or a comment to make send us a letter or drop by the of fice Our address is Guelph St Georgetown Ont AH letters must be signed Please include your address and telephone number for verification The Herald reserves the right to edit letters due to space limitations or libel You can sleep through the Bomb I hate to depress you on a nice day like this but I just heard some truly ghastly news If Canada comes under nuclear attack tonight your clock radio is not going to beep It s yet another m a long line of revelations that point straight to an insidious conclusion if the nuclear holocaust ever arrives it may not have much of a side to it at all Granted we haven t spent a lot of time worrying about nuclear war in the past few months not with the Soviet Bloc collapsing faster than the Meech Lake Ac cord Mainly we ve been wrestling with an even more distressing pro blem how on earth are we suppose to cope with a world in which evil empires out to get us after all For nearly years the western world view has been based on the premise that those satantc com mies were plotting to blow us all up All of a sudden there s no one to be paranoid about which is ter ribly unsettling Thank goodness for the Iraqis If they weren t scheming to build The Bomb we might all have to relax and sleep at nights But I digress We were discuss radioclocks and the way they fit into Canada s overall civil defence strategy According to a story that ap peared in the papers the other day this strategy is in an utter shambles Apparently the government has never come up with the money to implement a scheme drafted five or six years ago by which a high pitched beep would be broadcast over radio and TV to warn us of an impendirg In one of those marvellous strokes of bureaucratic whimsy this system was named the Crisis Home Alerting Technique or CHAT for short It has such a reassuring ring Much more reassuring than something like the Danger Alert Nuclear War Guaranteed or DANG for short Still you can see that the absence of this system leaves us facing a dire and dismal prospect If the end of the world arrives tonight we re liable to sleep right through it Now granted Canada still has its network of air raid sirens install ed back in the 1950s But it seems the Department of National Defence sure whether the system will really work or not In the first place it has never been properly tested for obvious enough reasons You could hardly turn on every airraid siren in the nation and then try Ha ha just kidding Moreover the system has fallen into disrepair According to the news story it is known that bees make honey in some sirens and squirrels find them an excellent dry place to store nuts There s actually something curiously reassuring in this when you stop to think about it It nice to know those nasty air raid sirens are serving some purpose We haven t exactly followed the injunction to beat our swords into ploughshares But at least all these years of military spending have created some nice condominiums for woodland rodents And this leads right down to the heart of the issue In the nuclear age where s the point in a civil defence system in the first place Why bother trying to survive a nuclear holocaust It not as if you re going to step back out into a world that has breathable air or drinkable water let alone a decent pizza restaurant that delivers Indeed If human beings are ac tually dim enough to get themselves involved In nuclear war then surely the only valid reaction is the NGN Response which stands of course for Nice Going Numbskulls This is why Ive always believed that civil defence initiatives should be restricted to a taped message to be broadcast over loudspeakers around the world if the missiles get launched Attention ladies and gentlemen The human race has just decided to blow itself up Funny old things humans Have a nice day