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YÂ¥ es=mm : 467 Speers Road, Oakville, Ont. L6K 3S4 845â€"3824 Fax: 845â€"3085 t Oakville Beaver Weekend, Sunday, August 7, 1994 â€"8 Classified Advertising: 845â€"2809 Circulation: 845â€"9742 or 845â€"9743 $ The Oakville Beaver, every We and Friday, at 467 ‘ s Ian Oliver Publisher ,-,Mm“wwwmm Puing 4 Advertiser, Ba Wmmmmlmwwm%m ’ Norman Alexander Editor s 1, o Neve Newmarketâ€"Aurora Eraâ€"Banner, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, !Mm“ Cgaflaflonbhedor Today, Oshawahiby This Woek, Poterborough This Week, Ricimend Ti Teri Casas Office Manager All material published in the Oakville Beaver is protected 'l‘lmcolet Production Manager w%hm:irmummflzmmfim (ing sR ising is accepled on the condition that. in the event of a typographical , that portion advertising space occupied by the : f :7-". mfi-m%:%mmhfiwm%dm% be 2. l or services al the wrong price, goods or services may not be cold. o marely on oer is woll and may be atany ime." _ _ . | se en in en en n Saving history ometimes it takes a person of vision to see the possibilities in a building. Just such an individual is businessman Bill Masson who, in moving his human resources company here from Toronto, gave the historic granary new life. The story of the last rubbleâ€"constructed granary on Lake Ontario could take up pages of copy and hours of time to tell. No one paid much attention to the structure until developers in the early 1970s started making noise about building a huge hotelâ€"condominium complex on land encompassing the site of the granary. There were pleas to save the building and in the end, the developers and town came to an agreement whereby the town would approve a revised development scheme for the south west comner of Navy Street and Lakeshore Road, with the proviso that the old granary structure be saved. And so it was...sort of. Two decades have come and gone since that time and throughout it all, the modest has been the location of various businesses and as many attempts to try and keep the building a piece of living history. But its numerous incarnations did nothing to preserve its unique and rustic appeal. That is until Masson decided that he‘d like to work closer to home and eliminate daily commutes. So impressive is the renovation work that the building was actually included in a spring tour of old Oakville homes. That‘s a tribute to Masson who could have more easily turned the interior into a common business office. We should all be glad he didn‘t. Loss of innocence EpiTORIAL We‘re a broadâ€"minded people. s i > s o Tace this past week with barel We can accept the fact that a n important date in Canada‘s history took place this past week with barely J Icoholi s s _ . | person can be an alcoholic, a a mention. Aug. 4, 1994 marked the 80th anniversary of Great Britain‘s |. dope fiend, a Wife beater and laration of war against Germany.. Canada soon fell into line. Six months later, Canada sent over the first of its military contingent that was eventually to number 600,000 soldiers along with another 9,000 in the Canadian navy and another group that made up 25 per cent of the British air services. The carnage was so great that 1 in 10 Canadians in battle were killed. It was called the war to end all wars but it wasn‘t. It only set the stage for a second conâ€" flict in which more young Canadians would die before their time. l Life expectancy Life expectancies at birth ? } even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn‘t drive, there‘s someâ€" thing wrong with him. â€"Art Buchwald uchwald speaks the B truth. The phenomenon that separates us from a couple of thousand centuries of : forbears is not television, mediâ€" * cal insurance or unlimited access to Tilley hats. It‘s those buckets of chrome and plastic that sit in our driveways. Our cars. Without cars, most of us could not live or work or shop i where we do. Canadians don‘t ‘ like to live cheek by jowl, stacked on top of one another the way they do in Hong Kong, d States: S 69 Tokyo and Mexico City. We‘re y ' f 64 _ [ . wideâ€"openâ€"spaces folks. We 69 like room to stretch, breath a ~Ba 10 little. § 66 That means mobility. And in Canada that means the automoâ€" bile. It also means commuting. Canadians routinely travel disâ€" tances to work that would cause a European to question our sanâ€" ity. According to a recent 2 Statistics Canada study, nine i out of ten workers travel a sigâ€" nificant distance to get to their jobs "and most of them get there by car". 2 _ The commuting adventure 4 varies according to where you i live. Vancouverites spend the * most time at it, an average of an % hour a day getting to and from in the most populous countries 1950 and 1993. % increase Country 1950 1993 Slowly growing countries Quickly growing countries Nigeria France ______ tss 77 . 49% _ 2 48 sR es : w en t m e i es OWRA . y f“’",’,",'/"g | Arthur BLACK their jobs. Toronto‘s right behind at 59 minutes, followed by Montreal at 54 and Winnipeg at 51. You want to live in a Canadian city but not waste nearly an hour a day on the road? Move to Halifax. Your average Haligonian makes the round trip in 38 minutes. But 38 minutes or 54 minâ€" utes or an hour â€" any way you clock it, that‘s a heckuva lot of time to waste, sucking up exhaust fumes and drumming your fingers on the steering wheel. Just think of the millions of manâ€"hours squandered in rush hour traffic jams every working day. Think of the waste of gas. Think of the air pollution. Think of the boredom. It doesn‘t have to be that way. Take my situation. I live 115 kilometers from my office in the city. Getting from here to here and back eats up five hours of my working day. Most people think I‘m nuts but I‘ve been doing it for eight years now and I rather like it. I use three different means of travel for variety: I drive, I take the bus, and I walk. First, I drive from my house to the bus station. This takes 25 minutes and allows me to pass ui /' ,,"” | ) J ,‘Z'./(/ ",“I’,’;‘-J ( Wt ,#."%;[”7"5)‘,’./" Om 4e yA ?/(/{’/,»!//%//’/{f‘m,/ Commute to TO got you down? Iry this 115 km trip to work through beautiful rolling counâ€" tryside. I regularly see a deer, red tailed hawks, and the occaâ€" sional lumbering porcupine. Once I saw a Wolf. At the bus station, I park my car, grab a newspaper and a coffee and settle back to let my Gray Coach driver deal with traffic snarls, black ice, conâ€" struction slowâ€"downs and sundry fourâ€"wheeled maniacs that lurk on the highways and byways. An hour and a half later I arrive at the bus termiâ€" nal. From there I trudge the city Streets for 30 minutes until I‘m at the portcullis of Fortress CBC, where I work. At night the routine is reversed. s Why do I like it? I get a halfâ€" hour walk, I get to read the paper and sip my coffee and do the crossword puzzle. I get to have a snooze if a feel like it. Mostly I don‘t get ulcers and/or heart seizures from havâ€" ing to deal first hand with trafâ€" fic, the way I would if I was foolish enough to drive the whole distance. About this time next year my commute will become even more umm . . . elaborate. I plan to move to an island off the coast of Vancouver, where I‘ll be working. My commute then will involve a bike ride, a walk, a bus ride and a ferry crossing. An even longer commute no doubt. But there are compensaâ€" tions Any commute that allows you to see bald eagles and killer whales can hardly be long enough. 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