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

THE NEW TANNER EDITORIAL with Hartley Coles Decline of railways The railway line through Acton and Rockwood used to be part of the main Canadian National line (CN) from Toronto to Sarnia. Now, as you may have read in the Jan. 14 issue of The New Tanner, CJ has leased the line to RailTex of San Antonio, Texas. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1999 It is now a feeder line for CN which runs most of its freight on the line from Silver, west of Georgetown, to Bronte and then disperses to London, Hamilton, etc. The changing role of the railway in our lives is based on the notorious "bottom line", a euphemism for cut the jobs and the service. Such VIA passenger service as still exists will still use the line but it's a far cry from the days when 14 passenger trains a day stopped a the Acton CN station and Rockwood's as well. And there probably has never been a time when the use of rail- way lines for passenger service is as necessary. Railways, one of the most environmentally safe transportation systems for produce and people are concerned mainly with Another in the series of class photos of Mrs. Kay Alger's classes. This one is the Grade 1 class of 1965 of M.Z. Bennett schools. In back are teacher Kathleen Alger, Eddy Ensing, Paul Hansen, Gary Bannon, Eric Couture, Peter Mason, Russell Elliott, John McHugh, Ronnie Turkosz, Carl Currie. Centre row: Teddy Dumarsh, Scott Bulmer, Susan Peycha, Kim McCristall, Jane Higgins, Jill Scutt, Betty Sojka, Hugh Lowe, Brian Larsen. Front row:Beverly Duval, Jane Pargeter, Monika Schmidt, Christine Pollard, Carol Jordan, Susan Bruce, Gloria Brown, Connie Albano, Carol Grant. Hairloom Whenever Michael O'Leary de- cides it's time to vacate this space for an issue it becomes my problem to dispense words of wisdom on cur- rent events of the week. Since the articulate O' Leary has a style I could never hope to emulate, readers will have to contend with my reactions to what ever fills my noodle. freight. While our highways are clogged with vehicles and the air | is rank with their pollutants, we continue to pile more cars and trucks on badly beaten roads, and continue to cut back on passen- ger services. Sure, we know VIA will continue to run its passenger trains over the local lines until such time as CN decides it is propitious to cut them. We've seen the pattern over the years. Gradually, the service deteriorates, the trains run less fre- quently and the railway applies to the national transportation board to cease passenger operations. It has happened here once and even though passenger trains no longer stop here or in That, of course, leads to an open- Rockwood, they are still accessible in Guelph and Georgetown. _ ing bit of wizdom - To light a birth- For the present anyway. day cake with many candles, use a It should be enough to make bland Canadians stand on their ices of. dy spagtiettl. Funny, F ve feet and yell: "That's enough! Leave the railway alone." Surely a logical. At least as logical as advice they should be encouraged, not discouraged, by those who plot _in an edition of The Farmers' Al- our future. manac which I chanced upon re- One day, if present trends continue, we' ll wonder what hap- mn story called Castration and pened to the railroads. Bumper-to-bumper traffic on congested Other Surefire Ways to Prevent Bald- ness, the Almanac notes people used highways is already here. One way to alleviate it would be to use , use to think you could save your hair, if: the railways more as passenger vehicles proliferate. But don't bet ' : * You at i . on it. As long as the people in charge are determined to lease and : You nk en he sell off part of our national railway system the less likelihood that _ first Friday of the full moon. _ it will be there when real really need it. = You rinsed your hair in salt You poured rum on your head. Or became a eunuch. In the unlikely event that none of these nostrums worked for you and voila you lost your hair, the recipes for recovering it were many. All you had to do was: Smear the bald spot with fresh cow manure. Oiled your head with the venom of a viper caught at the full moon. Cover the bald spot(s) with bear fat. Spread cream on the bald spot(s) and let a cat lick it off. Current wisdom suggests all these Postal service woes The New Tanner keeps getting calls from rural people com- plaining about the service they have been receiving from the post office since the routes were contracted out to the lowest bidder. They keep coming from different areas from people who have never complained before. There have always been complaints about the postal service, especially in the winter months when roads sometimes are impassable, but never in the numbers and anger that has been exhibited in the last few weeks. Many of the callers complain the level of service is meagre as compared to when rural carriers were hired and paid by Canada Post. The service declined, they say, when Canada Post decided to : i let the contract out to the lowest bidder and an Ottawa firm asi aed ae -- picked up the contract for Rural Routes 1 and 2, a firm which has is hairidity, err, beg your pardon, he- routes all over Ontario. The former carriers were offered jobs at a redity. And where could you find a much lower rate than they received as contractors with Canada Chart during a full moon? I thought " age eopatra found the last one in a Post, which was not overly generous. Some quit in disgust after pasket. And it bit her. years on the job. Others stayed but just until another better So conventional wisdom nowa- opportunity appeared. days says bald guys should join Until the remuneration for the job makes it worthwhile the groups like Hair Club for Men. Or Ss, bald spo Coles' Slaw ; by Hartley Coles maxim: The Lord created only a few perfect heads - the rest He covered with hair" I suspect my wite is cheering for - Bill Clinton to be impeached so she can boast that she has already talked to Al Gore, the new president-in- waiting. And shook his hand to boot. It happened one summer when she and I visited Ottawa on a mini holiday. After visiting the Rembrandt exposition in the Na- tional Art Gallery, we sawa long line of limousines stopping at the new memorial. Sensing something big was afoot we joined the rapidly grow- ing crowd clustered around the site. Noticed on the steps were several men speaking into their sleeves, which we suspected harboured hid- den microphones. "What's going on?" I casually asked another man who looked knowledgeable. "Dunno," he an- swered, "looks like some big shot is going to land." "Yeah," said another tourist. "The Mountie told me it was Al Gore and Pag ro] The wife told me | have the body of a " until the next day. That's ts and Al! a (vice-president of the U.S.A. and his wife). Going to lay a wreath." Since there was a military band there, plenty of Mounties and dark- suited secret servicemen, military brass and Sheila Bn the infor- mation seemed plausible. As I turned to relay this information to wife she had disappeared into the crowd for a front row view. Before I could push my way in doors opened on the limos, and the vice-prez and his wife were mount- ing the steps for a brief ceremony, which included the national anthems of Canada and the US, some speeches and wreath laying. All of this I observed from the crowd's fringes beside a young man T suspected was secret serviceman because he kept talking up his sleeve. When the ceremony ended and the principals started to descend the steps I spotted wife in the front row, directly in the part of the U.S. Vice- President. Sure enough, when Al Gore got alongside the wife he put out his hand to shake hers and said some- thing about Canada being such a beautiful country. Then he met sev- eral Americans visiting Ottawa in the crowd whom he also traded greetings with before the party stepped into their limousines and sped off to some other ceremony or luncheon. This all happened before I even had a chance to accost Sheila Copps who was in her element and looking after Tipper Gore, whose blonde locks shone like the burnished hel- mets on the honour guard. "Handsome, isn't he?" wife ob- served after we managed to get to- gether. "Who?" I sweetly asked knowing all along she had upstaged me but good. "The vice-president, of course," she replied sweetly. I can't swear to it but I suspect she never washed her right hand 'y I think she's dumping Slick Willy into the ashcan in favour of Al Gore as Presi- dent of the U.S. : : : 7 ; B : wear a rug, have surgery or flaunt twent ear old. After all she shook his hand. How level of service will continue to decline and carriers will continue your baldness like Yul Brenner. Bet- ed y many people, even Americans, can to use a revolving door. ter yet, content yourself with the old oie say that? 3 Publisher sae a Ted Tyler Distributed to every home Editorial in Acton and area as well as Hartley Coles adjoining communities. Frances Niblock Ellen Piehl eer ee 59 Willow Street North eae eogee Tyrer Every effort will be made to see advertising copy, neatly Acton, Ontario Marie Shadbolt Vicki Pope Bayiz8 Composing (Sd 9) 853-0051 Fax: 853-0052 Maggie Petrushevsky Penny Zurbrigg Advertising and Circulation presented, is correctly printed. The publisher assumes no financial responsibility for typographical errors or omissions in advertising, but will gladly reprint without charge that part of an advertisement in which an error may occur provided a claim is made within five days of publication.