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The Acton Free Press Wed March A town in mourning Eight of our young people have had their lives snuffed out in acci dents in the last four days and their tragic deaths cannot help but touch most homes in this small community Actomans seem un usually quiet this week but our hearts are filled with boundless sympathy for the loving families of these unfortunate eight Six lively young friends were together m one car helping one of them return home after his truck ran out of gas Two others were alone in their vehicles one of them far from home Also involved is a policeman doing his duty who lives here in Acton too For the policemen and firefighters involved that night will long be a grim memory The cherished people killed in the sickening crash should have had time to contribute to their com munity and their world They should have had success in their work and happy families of their own A few feet of difference and a few seconds of time wiped out these bright futures Tuesday and today flowers by the hundreds are massed by coffins in Acton and Guelph Parents are dazed Friends are crying And the tragedy is shared by all of us The past gives strength Brian Skerrett who knew all the young people involved suggests reading and reflecting silently on the following passage by Bonhoef fer can be comforting to those friends and to the families at this tune of sadness Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute we must simply hold out and see it through That sounds very hard at first but at the same time it is a great consolation for the gap as long as it remains un filled preserves the bonds between us It is nonsense to say that God the gap He does not fill it but on the contrary He keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other even at the cost of pain The dearer and richer our memories the more difficult the separation But gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil jo The beauties of the past are borne not as a thorn in the flesh but as a pre cious gift in themselves We must take care not to wallow in our memories or hand ourselves over to them just as we do not gaze all the time at a valuable present but only at special times and apart from these keep it simply as a hid den treasure that is ours for cer tain In this way the past gives us lasting joy and strength Sympathy for victims About 114 was quickly raised here for Red Cross aid for Guate mala Canisters placed in all four banks attracted the eyes of sympa thetie people The day following the devasting earthquake the Red Cross A further was donated five days later Against this Lenten season St Josephs church is collecting money for churches in Guatemala Father Smye visited these parishes last year and as far as he knows his friends there have survived the disaster Major tragedies as well as our local ones produce a great swell of Sympathy People everywhere do care about each other Need parking places Most of the merchants are well pleased that their voice has been needed by Halton Hills council The Chamber of Commerce bnef made its impact and Mill St will retain its parking on both sides Now its back to the long stand ing problem of off street parking for the merchants The need re mains more than ever as the population grows We are edging up to people here and ally the merchants hope these people will find it easy pleasant and economical to shop at home Hospital care necessity One good thing about not having a hospital in our town its services can be cut on us The town of Milton understood they would be forced to close of their beds but apparently the announcement was in error and the filled beds will remain filled Georgetown hospital has not been instructed to close beds In Guelph where most Acton and district people go for hospital care St Josephs hospital must re duce its staffing budget by but Guelph General is exempted from reductions The possible consequences of closing beds in Guelph for people here were frightening As was pointed out to regional council by mayor Norm Jary the Hal ton patients do not contribute fin Of this n that An old bottle found in a house it was a short story in the Free Press a couple of weeks ago But the comments keep coming in Mrs J C Curne writes from Gait to say she remembers the Caswell family referred to in the note in the bottle Her family lived at the sawmill gate which was then Hendersons mill The location was at the present entrance to lakeview subdivision The family lived there for seven years after coming from England in The more publicity about the search for a Halton landfill site the more interest there seems to be in recycling garbage Many people are beginning to believe better things can be done with garbage then burying People here cooperated whole heartedly when the high school Outers and then the high school band collected paper and glass We have proved that householders are willing Now we need leadership Coordinator Judy McLin is ready able waiting Judy is lonesome She the first of the brand new Acton community services centre and she opened up her office at a m Monday While she expects to have busy and profitable full days soon so far she mostly has peace and quiet She wants that to change soon Open house Open House will be held at the new centre on Saturday March in the after hi Everybody invited come and see the ntw place urges the She and agency representatives board mem will be there to dispense coffee show he two small rooms and chat This week Mrs sits in her quiet office with its empty chairs and hopes anyone interested will drop in Her days so far are set at to but she say it may turn out a more reasonable day is from noon till for instance She hopes to hear what people need and want I since she not settled into any patterns I there New concept 1 his type of tin re is a concept lhat is apparently finding growing favor It unites many agencies who have been finding their roles and files overlapping The provincial government has given its blessing and promised grant The group which first conceived the idea stressed unusual needs The lown has no hospital no health unit office Professionals making calls here reported iny car is my office in Acton It was felt Acton I get its full share of services and people know how to the agencies available Last week the requested grant of wis cut to by the region but at least the centre is open and operating Funding begun with a S3 grant from Hills Representatives from various igencies are already using the meeting room beside office She their ap pointments Judy falls somewhere between these professionals and the general public She will listen but not attempt to give professional advice She like all the other workers will strictest confidence Anyone with any type of problem is VACANT CHAIR is ready for a visitor to the spankingnew Community Services centre in the Y M C A Coordinator Judy began her job Monday It s a bold innovation for the town and she wants to hear suggestions Drop in says Judy welcome to call here Maybe talking it out will be enough but Judy will know who else to contact if other help is needed problems anything In fact the first call to the new centre was treated with as much respect as all will probably be There s the story The new phone rang for the first time Dave of the Children Aid Society delightedly lifted it Acton Community Services Centre Question Is there a hockey game tonight Quick conference Answer Yes So what if the caller did think he had the arena on the line More apt calls came before long ready The publiL health nurses are all set to use the now First thing local nurse Shirley McKay is planning is a presehool assessment session when hearing vision developmental testing will be done for children She is lining up appoint menLs now She plans to have this program the third Wednesday of each month starting in March Judy McLin thinks she baby silting service for the mothers coming to the clinic if there is i need the high school nurse Is planning to use the private room for in with students who have problems would like to talk about She visualizes group meetings there too presently Dave Mitchell will be there one afternoon a week psychometric assessment are on the agenda for the Board of employees such as Acton who will use thecentre one who found the furniture and lights for the room and is an active booster of the whole plan Local psychiatrist John will schedule interviews here one evening a week The family counsellor for Acton and district will be in the new room one afternoon a week She has been ancially toward capital costs of the General He requested a grant from Halton which gives money only to hospitals within its county borders There seems to be a feeling Ac ton and Esquesing residents who regularly go to should in some way pay their share of capital costs Ironically last weeks Milton newspaper announced two govern decisions The first was to shut down a third of their hospital beds The second was that the town was to receive two grants one for films for the and the other for expansion of skiing at Kelso Hasn t the government its prior lues mixed Sugar and Spice by bif I smiley Some chaps wives go off with a boy friend leaving behind them a broken home My wife went off and came home with a boyfriend So at the moment we have a menage a iroii The home is not yet com pletely broken but it won be long It being smashed bit by bit As she threatened she brought my No l grandson home for a visit so that his mother could continue going to lectures and get her degree tramping about the campus with No grandson strapped to her back Things have certainly changed at the universities these days When I went to college we lived in a monkhkc residence for men Females were allowed in the building once a year for a cocoa and buns parly on a Sunday afternoon It was ex well chaperoned We were allowed to come in at hour but anyone caught with anything as lethal as one bottle of beer in his room was kicked out of residence In Ihe girls residences things were even tougher They had to be in by 30 or some early hour and sign in under the grim supervision of a house mother They got to stay out until midnight once a week and had a late pass unliliam once a month Nobody but nobody going to unl versity was married including moat of the younger professors Entertainment consisted of an well supervised dance totally dry and the odd movie It was a fairly sterile far from murky life not exactly boh mm but we were so naive we thought we were hippy Today university life is so different you think you were in a different era a different civilization Almost every campus has at least one pub some of them half a dozen Drinking in is tolerated if not en Some campuses have coed residences whereyoucan live man apart men or in sin or in anything else that the current fad Smoking in classrooms is commonplace And there are thousands of married students Babies everywhere despite the ill The Lord knows what they live on in these inflated times grants and loans and love I suppose Somehow I can I get too incensed over the new freedom In fact occasionally I find myself thinking wistfully I was born a generation too soon In my day the universities produced some fine graduates but on the whole they were a dull bunch of sticks narrow self righteous and with a sense of superior because of their degrees Then the universities were basically whatever you may hear about people working their way through college From the small towns the sons and daughters of the local doctors and lawyers and teachers might go to college The children of the socalled working class I a chance Todays mixed bag Is a refreshing change Anyone with the intelligence Is able to go to university There ore gaping using the former clerk s office In the town office but there was less privacy there Information The Community Services Centre will also be the place to call for information Housekeepers babysitters where to get things where to go for what how to join something who does what Volunteers are working on lists for Mrs Mel in so she II have everything at her fingertips Co of volunteers could become a major role of the new centre Judy would like to help provide volunteers wherever they are needed This is an area likely to grow tremendously Confidence But volunteers are never used in con nection with professional appointments Mrs points out The doctors who will refer patients to the centre have insisted on that They stress confidentiality Local doctors have been in on the planning of the centre from the beginning with Dr Craig Hutchison the most active and supportive His group has already contacted Mrs McLm She is following up In her own quiet way Prom US Judy was born at Mount Clemens Michigan went to school there and then to Macomb Community College where she received her degree following a twoyear social work course She also took a course in child development at Wayne State University Then she married a Canadian John McLin and they came to Mtssissauga for a year She worked in a bank then and then when they bought a town house in Acton she was transferred to Milton She did volunteer work with the Children Aid Society for a year She t satisfied with the job in the bank I wanted to work with people she found I enjoy talking to people and they say I a good listener Her husband now works in Milton Her hobbies are crafts and reading nothing too strenuous She and her husband have three pets a Seal point blue Siamese cat an orphan cat from the States and a dog who a cross between a terrier and a poodle breaches in the rigid walls of the old hide bound university traditions Standards in the vers ties have been lowered but think their end product the graduate is just as bright a whole lot more sensitive a good deal more tolerant and far more articulate even though bad spoken than the large majority of my contemporaries Today students arc not as polite but they are far more honest They are not as moral but they are far less inhibited They ore not as steady but they are for less afraid They arc not as couth but they are far less prejudiced They are more likely to kick over the traces not an likely to be led by the nose Perhaps that why about SO per cent of the male population of Canadian uni versitics vanished into the armed forces after began It was like getting out of prison Courses were excellent but narrow Most professors were pompous and few were teachers Students were for the most part not taught to think but only toregur gitatc It was a rather shallow and snob bish inworld out of the main stream of life Not so these days Rigidity has been shattered channels have been widened and experimentation is welcomed per haps too much so There are fresh winds blowing And one of the freshest is the new status of women on campus In my day the females were with few exceptions grimly headed for a spinster life in a classroom or rich girls there to have fun and get a husband Not so today There are thousands of young women of all colors shapes and sixes heading with determination for the bench or the operating room or the news paper offices or whatever but heading for a freedom to be a person I m glad my daughter t a mother of two 30 years ago Shed be stuck at home keeping house and bringing up he children instead of off to lectures gallantly baby on beck The Free Press Back Issues 20 years ago Taken from the tome of the Free Press of Thursday March IS 1856 J Deveau manager of the local Theatre announces this week that Theatres Canada Limited has acquired the Theatre here Immediate action to put Actons dog population under control hurried by rabies scare was taken by council After considerable discussion on steps that could be taken to make the control live council decreed that all local dogs should be tied up unLI further notice Coun cil will try to arrange to have Humane Soc iety service in Acton After a lengthy debate members of county council agreed to survey the entire hospital situation In county Events at Acton as winter wears on strike a wide variety of activity Bantam playing in Kitchener The two clubs the Ladies auxiliary and members of the boys and girb gym gathered to see a film on the centennial of the Y in Pans debating teams were honored the annual banquet of the Junior Farmers Trophies were presented to George Green less Mac Sprowl Lloyd Vivian and Roy Ford Earl and Art Bennett were their coaches Miss Beryl escaped with minor burns when a explosion occurred in the kit of her home C was guest speaker at the regular meeting of the Home and School Association MissL Goodwin explained the teaching of music 50 years ago Taken from Ihe Issue of Ihe Free Press March 1926 The annual meeting of the Chamber of Commerce last Thursday evening had a fairly good attendance The election result as follows honorary president M McDonald president 1st vice- president C H Harrison 2nd vicepresl dent E J Hassard treasurer L B Shorey secretary Garden executive com mittce J K Graham A Mason H S Holmes J M McDonald A T Brown The members discussed the proposed in crease in rates of the Bell Telephone Com and requested that the council oppose any increase in the business rates Acton employees of the Shoe Company held their annual entertainment supper and dance in the Town Hall on Fri day and they and their friends who were provided with invitations were provided with a full evening fun Thursday all day rainstorm filled many cisterns which had become low All radio owners without a license will be fined by the government from now on At the March meeting of the Women Institute a committee was named to get estimates on erection of a booth at the park High school honor roll Muriel Cross man Olive Cooper Archie Kerr Mary Chalmers Addie Hurst Fred Day Stewart Stewart Harvey Young Nellie Young Lois Malone Ivan Meryl Muriel WO years ago Taken from the Issue or Ihe ree Press March There are presently ten prisoners in the county jail Last Friday from the country furnished the loafers of our village with free entertainment After a considerable am of ruffianism they were separated and both parties w were glad to hear are doing as well as could be expected under the cir A serious accident which may prove fa lmm Thompson A number of boys coming from school jumped upon a wood sleigh and when nearly opposite Scott store young Thompson cither fell or was pushed off and the hind bob of the sleigh passed over his in a sleigh and at last account lies in a condition What makes thi matter worse is that his mother is just now to bed with serious illness The total number of children enrolled in the Acton Public School during the months of January andFebniary is 1 There are children in Ihe section of school age who have not yet been enrolled this year We arc compelled to omit editorials this week to make room for communications During immigrants are re ported to have settled in Canada THE ACTON FREE PRESS PHONE Business and Editorial Office