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THE HERALD Wednesday July 12 1989 Page 30 years ago Dons Edwards of Edith Street in Georgetown married Robert John Walker of Stewart town in a quiet ceremony at St Paul Anglican Church in Norval The parents were Mr and Mrs Walter Edwards and Mr and Mrs Cecil Walker Reverend James Maxwell officiated the pro The was spent in Niagara Falls and rounding areas Georgetown resident Donald Taylor son of Mr and Mrs J H Taylor was selected to represent the Ontario Agricultural Club at the American Foundation Leadership Training Camp Sloney Lake Oceana County Michigan Mr Taylor was selected on the basis of his work in Halton County Other participants includ ed a representative of each state m the Is While at the camp Mr Taylor participated in a series of activities including courses in Christian ideals personal tions personal enrichment leader ship principals and practices 15 years ago By a margin of approximately 2 votes the provincial Libera candidate for Frank defeated Progressive Conservative incumbent Terry OConnor the 1974 provincial election Although two polls have yet to report any results Philbrook was declared the race winner having received votes compared to Mr OConnors total of 21556 This result is the reverse of the previous election in 1972 That year Mr 0 Connor defeated the Liberal incumbent Whiting Only 2 200 votes separated the winner and loser in this election 10 years ago At the annual Adventure in Citizenship Club dinner GDHS stu dent Alice Armstrong showed slides of her to Ottawa Ms Armstrong was one of students from across Canada chosen to see the sights of the nation capital Trip highlights included meeting the Governor General s wift Mrs Ed tours of a variety of public buildings the Museum of Man and a lunch at the Chateau Launer Hotel The Rotary Club sponsored the tnp 5 years ago Dave Kentner was reelected as the president of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce for another term His position along with that of vice president Brian went uncontested The other elected official was Bruce Mcln tyre as the Chambers first vice president Walter Biehn was ap pointed to the position of secretary treasurer The Halton District Health Coun cil named the leading causes of ill health in Halton They were heart disease cancer of the digestive system lung cancer motor vehicle accidents suicide injuries to muscles or to body s bone structure falls alcoholism pregnancy and abortion tions congenital anomalies and types of illness following birth Colonel kept busy dismantling bases By GIL HARDY Ottawa Bureau Thomson News Service When politicians and top brass decide to close a military base Col Gerry Zypchen is called upon to pick up the pieces and truck hem away A 32 year veteran of the armed forces is director of in planning and ordination the nuts and bolts of base openings and closings These days most of his time is spent on the latter The governments decision to close or scale back 14 bases part of a reduction in defence spending announced In Aprils budget will keep Zypchen busy The day after the budget he began the paperwork for the orderly dismantling of a military My job is to assemble the data from all the special staff supply people maintenance operational security and communications peo ple I make sure theres direction for what they have to do Zypchen said In an interview at Defence Department headquarters The 49yearold combat engineer from Hafford Sask has been through it all before He assumed his current posting two years ago when the department was shutting down some 18 radar bases as part of the modernization of the North American air defence system Its a bit of a science because its a bureaucratic exercise but every base has its own unique situations What Is common to all base clos ings is the disruption to military personnel and civilian employees Peoples feelings are hurt and lifelong careers are ended Im fully aware that the people stationed there have an emotional Involvement and its going to affect them quite heavily So Im sen sitive to that particularly to the civilian employees said Bases are usually shut down bet ween June and August the active posting period for all military per sonnel That avoids dislodging families during winter afid allows children to complete school years Civilian employees are offered transfers to new departmental jobs or given retraining or early retire ment benefits Of some civilians employed at the radar stations almost all were offered new jobs elsewhere Several dred chose early retirement in stead Base artifacts and memorabilia must be transferred Unit colors may be laid up in local churches or returned to Ottawa for storage or in the National War Museum Altar cloths and other clesiastical effects from the chapel are moved to another base or stored There is also a web of agreements that bind a base to its community Hydro and water easements leases and lieu of taxes must all be rescinded or redrawn Environmental concerns play a much larger role in base closings than in the past Zypchen said that in the 1950s and 60s bases were simply abandoned with no concern for the pollution left behind Now a fullscale engineering study is done to identify fuel and oil spills garbage dumps and buried storage tanks Contaminated soil is dug up and replaced tanks are ex cavated and backfilled and all material is taken from the site The department also removes all loose asbestos If an asbestos- wrapped pipe has been cut into the break is sealed to prevent fibres escaping I think we have a fairly good record at the sites When we leave they are environmentally clean said Base equipment must also be disposed of Large appliances that are wired in such as dishwashers usually remain more portable items are removed What Is left behind often depends on whether another use has been found for the base The department will transfer equipment Including vehicles if it will help make the base economically viable in its new role -LETTERS- Power cars with methane gas Dear Sir When are we going to switch to methane natural gas as fuel for our cars Are we waiting for the next oil By then it will be too late for setting up a distribution net work While here hardly anybody uses it as car fuel in Europe it is one of the most used combustibles for cars as well as for home heating In my recent trip to Italy I discovered that all my relatives us ed either methane or propane gas as the primary fuel drove two different converted cars myself and the only draw back is less space in your trunk In exchange you gel much more And its cheap For a full load of methane costing approximately I could dnve a Volvo 456 for 320 km In addition you can still use gasoline if a methane distnbutor is not handy Most importantly methane is polluting while propane is on ly less polluting than gasoline If methane was used the Exxon Valdez disaster would not have happened Canada is a producer of methane and we could be energy self sufficient A few years ago I found only about eight methane distributors in the Toronto area and do not believe the situation improved The government should car conversions to natural gas as it did for home heating fur naces I would not mind an a few hundred dollars to help reduce the mam cause of air pollution to reducing the national debt and save my own money in the long run Perhaps the solution is too ob vious or perhaps this plan goes against the interests of the biggest multinationals growing on the ex of oil resources However our government should promote what is good for the peo ple what is good for the in of the ever growing multinationals Giuseppe Gori Acton Cancer Society tops 100000 mark in 1989 campaign Dear Sir A sincere thank you from the Georgetown Unit of the Canadian Cancer Society The campaign objective for was We are pleased to report that at the end of June over has been received and the proceeds from two special events art yet to be finalized It is very ap parent that our final figure will be well in excess of the objective To you the residents com businesses and a sincere thank you for your generosity at campaign time A special thanks to Neil Young Classics Against Cancer and Bill Smith Invitational Golf Touma menu You are well aware that the results of this very successful cam paign could not have been ed without the super volunteer help of the vanous chairpersons cap tains and canvassers Again many thanks to each and everyone Sincerely yours EH TediGorth Campaign Chairman Halton Hills Unit Government is squandering millions Dear Sir Do your readers know that Prime Minister Mulroney government is squandering millions upon millions of our tax dollars every year For instance the federal govern ment doled out for a banana newsletter in the French Riviera The federal government also spent to study the social value of lawn ornaments and 540 to study the fool as a transitional figure in Western Civilization Other government grants go to political pressure groups who should be funding themselves through voluntary contributions The Mulroney government for in stance funds antidefence groups big unions and radical feminist organizations Business big and not so big also gets government hand outs Most of these hand outs are un necessary and represent an outrageous waste of our tax dollars at a time when deficit reduction has become a top priority Canadian taxpayers shouldn t be forced into funding banana newsletters studies on lawn or or political pressure groups If the government cut these grants it could save millions of dollars reduce the pressure for bigger government and help lessen the deficit Yours truly David Somerville President National Citizens Coalition Shouldnt we be smarter Weirs View By Ian Weir Newt Service It was pretty depressing to receive scientific confirmation of the fact that I am dumber by the day Granted the notion that I am getting steadily stupider is not a new one Dear Heart assures me she has held this theory for years She maintains she was convinc ed I had reached my limit the day I tried to clean a pile of cigarette ashes off the rug with a wet sponge and has been repeatedly astonished by my ability to top this But now theres actual scientific proof Environment Canada has just confirmed that levels have been generally reduced by all the lead spewed into the atmosphere automobile exhaust According to a spokesman one Grace Wood Presumably were not as smart as we would have been Well this just make your day Actually Ms Wood makes it sound as if shes only mildly dismayed by the discovery Possibly this is because she was quite intelligent to begin with Using a bit of intelligence pro bably doesnt matter much to those who started out with plenty of marbles to rattle It a tially bigger concern for those of us who are already down to the sional clink The irony of course is that ours is not the first society to run afoul of lead Histonans insist tghat the decline of the Roman Empire was hastened by mental impairment causeu by leaden drinking vessels Just think about that one the Aorld s mightiest empire brought to its knees by lead cups If the Romans bad only had Tupperware we might all be speaking Latin to day Indeed historians go so far as to blame lead poisoning for the madness which afflicted so many of the later Roman emperors witness Nero who fiddled while Rome burned and Caligula who once appointed bis horse to the Senate Now granted theres no indica lead emissions in Canada have caused problems of this magnitude Neros fiddling while the city burned is only loosely analogous to Michael Wilsons fiddling with tax rates while the rest of us smoulder And no prime minister has ever gone so far as to appoint a horse to the Senate not both ends of one anyway But it s still pretty depressing particularly considering theres another theory which holds that human intelligence has been steadily declining since the Renaissance even without the help of lead This is supported by the prodigious feats of memory that were common during the Renaissance for instance rival theatre companies pirated Shakespeares plays by sending out spies who could memonze per formances word for word A few decades later the poet Milton memorized the entire Bible and most of the Classical epics before going blind Compare this to our own society which a mere handful of the best and the brightest can remember their Social Insurance Number Another lesser known theory holds that the human peaked just before the invention of TV and has since been dropping two points with each rerun of Threes Com pany But anyway Its all particularly depressing considering that ours is a society which clings to the myth that we are getting steadily smarter the opposite is true were go ing to have to reexamine the great scientific advancements of our era Do Black Holes really exist for instance or are todays astronomers just forgetting to take the lenscap off the telescope The one tiny consolation is that we re all getting dumber together As such we don need to worry about being taken advantage of as our continues to drop Even the most leaddeadened consumer should be able to hold own against a formerly slick car salesman who assures him that the little blue twodoor will have original kilometres Just as soon as the odometer Is rolled back So here we are facing the gloomy truth thanks to lead we live in a society in which potentials will never be reached in which we are doomed to grow more sluggish and less efficient with each passing day Well Kind of explains the post office doesnt it