Acton Free Press (Acton, ON), December 8, 1976, p. 4

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The Acton Free Press Wed Editorial Dissatisfaction shows It was Hill for Halton Hills again on Monday when the former township reeve was returned as mayor of the town for a second term In Acton the charter councillors G W and were returned with another previous councillor Peter Marks joining the ranks All will be a credit to Acton and maintain the high standards we electors want Another gentleman of council Joe Hurst heads into retirement with the thanks of his fellow towns people Both Ed Wood and Gord Dawe hit a responsive note when they spoke of the problems of regional govern ment The mayor too spoke of a private members bill in an at tempt to change the system A Milton candidate with an region stand polled a surprising number of votes No doubt there will be more about this in the future In Sudbury a referendum asking if people were satisfied with their regional government the answer was a resounding No 20 to I Perhaps this should be on our ballots next election Meanwhile a local group is meeting to see what can be done to improve the situation As far as voting against the government thats a standard reaction Often veteran members such as Tom Watson are put aside in the interests of change There is no doubt the increase in taxes Esquesing much of it attributed to the board of education was the cause of the loss of his seat by the long time school board member Bert Hinton says the costs of education can be reduced Tom Watson declared at the Meet the Candidates night that costs could not be reduced in fact he costs had been cut this year and results were already showing the decision to be wrong Mr Watson is the victim of the voters dissatisfaction with rising costs it remains to be seen what will be done about them Left out in the cold The phones rang constantly at the Free Press Monday night as Acton voters tried to find out the result of the days voting Apparently we made a mistake not arranging for private election coverage We had enquired about facilities in the Gordon Alcott arena George town where election headquarters was We learned it would be necessary to install our own phone line for the one night to be able to phone out results and we felt the cost was too high There were two public phones in the arena that night one that turned out to have a sign Out of Order and the other in constant use We had learned cable TV would be providing the election service and local TV and radio stations were also planning to cover Halton Hills All this coverage proved disappointing Cable TVs results were inac curate and slow and as a result a setup relaying Cable TV results from a home to the Free Press had only one poll heard from by 15 p m while in actual fact many polls were in by then Radio coverage centred on Oakville and Burlington There was no use in people phoning the town of Halton Hills number or the arena number there was no provision for for the public Some Esquesing people even called the old Esquesing town hall where they had always got results in past years Again nothing In Milton the election officials had asked the newspaper par ticularly to offer an election night phone service so the people could get information without calling election headquarters There was plenty of cooperation We apologize to the people of Acton for not providing our own election service Acton people who did not wish to drive to Georgetown arena to see the master boards were left out in the cold again A right to complain Voter turn out was about a third nothing to be proud of One good suggestion everyone who votes should be given a lapel reading I have a right to complain Then let those who didn t bother to vote keep quiet Disruption for the reconstruction program has been endured by townspeople now since the end of October The shopkeepers have Can we afford Santa Santa is an over weight over age over priced myth and Canada cant afford him any more a writer declares in the current issue of The United Church Ob server The Rev Terry Shillington of The Pas Man says the yearly worship of Santa Claus baptises our chil dren into a lifestyle which is prov ing to be suicidal than the incarnation of Christ the coming of Santa Claus symbolizes the spirit of our culture spending and getting In fact Santa might be called the patron saint of a people unsurpassed in wealth yet with an incredible hunger for more he writes This preoccupation with getting things is a lifestyle we can no longer afford We simply cannot go on producing more consuming more and throwing out more gar bage Surely both the times and the gospel make it imperative to teach our children radically different values been concerned They re the people who help keep our town going remember to shop at home A FINE BIRCH TREE near the Legion by the lake was maimed by either someones axe or a beaver recently DUCKS AND SWANS gather at the swimming hole every day for a dunk and a feed The open water at Fairy Lake is home these days for the wildfowl Sugar and Spice by bill Most Canadians art pretty lone buffering We seldom take to the bar rieades sot fire to the flat or hurl bricks the police Canadian men put up with wivesfor years and accept it on the whole with meekness wives only they art many of tin rudest of maten and the most mill of women libbers The husbands still go without much more than an snarled AH right put Ihe blood out Canadian Women put up with insensitive louts of inds for years chips who were about beer and hockev and piker but wary of emotion tallous about Hit finer things in life Nowadiys most husbands ire still louts but quite few have escaped into the esoteric world of imcramt needlepoint going to the ballet and having their done tvery two weeks And tilt wn haven complained much except for Ihe oetdsionil venomous I remember whin wore dways trying to drag me into tin In fael wc are lint everybody ilks ill over us shudder and whimper under a punitive system hut there bomb for the lax eollecior We get royally and rcguhrh screwed from meeb to mi nits from supermarkets In surgeons from to repairmen and we rumble a bit but almost enjoy it is Confucius id vised about rape when it seems able put up with dumb insolence from post clerk- and stupidity from sales clerks and manners from beer and lip from hotel flunkies And we up a bit and fade into the woodwork We accept shoddy workmanship from inadian and go back for more Vc cat fifth rate meals in highway rtslauranls vow we II never go back and stop at the place next lime hoping for a miracle only to be served the greasy badly cooked food watery coffee we got last time in humble and contrite when some jumped up pipsqueak of civil servant or some ulcerous in an employment office tills us we filled out the form proper I we deserve it Maybe it tune we reircd up on our hind legs and started bitching all the second rate goods third rite service that are shoved at Maybe it time we started yelling and publie scenes and demanding proper service and shouting for tht encnl or ihe head waiter and bitterly notedly when we encounter stupidity and insolence and slipshoddiness weren you know A of generations ago anadians patsies for greedy My was on good terms with ihe local merihants Hut ihev had to produce and had to compete and if they didn t lhe were in trouble She trusted people about as far as she could throw them up in the air and she wis fue feet two She had set of scales In the house and she weighed every sack of flour or sugar thai came in If it was dcrwclght shed skin the supplier alive with her tongue And I wasn t always such a dumb com member of the flock myself I remember one incident ft was about two years after war I had spent a year in a sanatorium and was on pension but I was going lo school and working at hard labor during vacations support a wife and kid I had quite a lot of visits to the Depart ment of Veterans Affairs There I was treated by one guy a civil servant something that had crawled out from under a stone This guy would say Take a seat and ignore you for one two three hours He had lost an i the war and flaunted it with Ins sleeve neatly pinned up To him I guess secure With his pension and his forever job doing nothing were scum whose only pur pose was lo irritate him and force him to do a little paperwork One day my flashpoint occurred I d taken an afternoon off work lost half a day precious pay to see a senior official at concerning grants for advanced studies OneArm waved me lo a scat and stood around shooting the breeze and drinking coffee for an hour an hour a half I blew Listen you one armed bastard ve got one lung and I think I ve seen as much service as you have If I don t get to see Mr in five minutes I m coming over the counter He could have cleaned me even with his one arm but he turned pale bustled about and in three minutes I was talking to the boss It was that old civil servant panic about getting a bad report was cruel but I never regretted it That jerk needed straightening out Isn it time we started straightening out all the jerks If anybody treaU me I respond in kind But from now if he 1 11 holler Who with me Report from Queens Park lly Julia Hilton a there has been con siderablc discussion this week about a ruling of the Ontario Highway Transport Board to allow Greyhound Lines of Canada Ltd to run buses on routes between Toronto and Buffalo and Toronto and Sudbury which arc at present served by Gray Coach a subsidiary of the Toronto Transit Commission Gray Coach spokesmen have said that ihe company will appeal the decision to the Ontario Cabinet but the Minister of Trans porta I ion and Communications has told that he agrees with the Hoard s reasons for giving the ruling complaints of poor service by ray Coach and Ihe need for com petition on the routes in Ihe public interest Leonard Moynehan dent of the Amalgamated Transit Union has charged telegrams of support for the Greyhound service from union locals read in the House by the Minister were paid for by Greyhound and hat although more jobs might be provided they would not be In Ontario because Greyhound would then have an across Canada service with drivers from the United Stales or from Winn i peg driving through Ontario A vice president of Grey hound admitted in a tele phone interview reporteil in i Toronto newspaper thai my thousands dolhrs to brine 70 witnesses to Toronto to support the company application I Smith has bus service many small Ontario com munities is threatened by the Transport Board decision lo permit an American controlled company to operate on the Iwo main routes under dis Gray officials said this week that Grey hound will skim the profits from these two money making routes making it impossible for Gray Coach to continue to provide service on money losing routes In the rest of the Province Stuart Smith and other Opposition Members have tried rtpealedly to persuade the Minister of Transportation dnd Communications or Premier lo delay Issuing Greyhound with the necessary permits until the Cabinet has had an lunity to tonsider the major policy change fro lion Minister also announced this week that anyone convicted of rape Indecent assault or trafficking or importing narcotics will be barred from driving a school bus under new provincial regulations which will take in He told the future that regulating a driver moral character will ensure that children are safe in every sense of the word The new regulations will also make sure all school bus driven have a safe driving record and their licences will be withdrawn if they late more than nine demerit points on their driving records or if Ihey have been of two or more motor vehicle offences under the Criminal Code in the past five years Liberal MPP for Kitchener James raised in Ihe Legislature the fact that the Minister of Government Services Margaret Scrivener had Indicated In a recent to constituents lhal the Government may introduce entrance lions for universities and has asked Ontario principals headmasters to produce a plan for provincewide investigation of standards in testing marking The Minister or Colleges and Universities has said that university entrance exam inn ions may be introduced that the idea is being studied but he care to suggest hit it will happen next Fall According the Education Minister universities art Inclining in this direction The Provincial Govern is to produce a detailed reiwrt on the follow up care provided for 19 teenagers who have died in the last two years after being released from provincial training schools The Minister of Correctional Services told Lhe Legislature this week that nine boys and one girl bet ween the ages of 14and had died in the year ending March while they were still wards of the province and that there had been ten similar cases in lhe previous year He said teenagers had been free from training schools for an average of 17 months before their deaths Margaret Campbell Liberal St George asked the Minister to include in his report information regarding the caseload of aftercare workers handling each teenager who had died and Stephen Lewis com that the report would probably show that lhe pro- ballon officers concerned probably had such heavy caseloads that nobody had time to look after them I think you will find what is true of all services in Ontario that aftercare is desperately Inadequate Sec you next week The Free Press Back Issues 20 years ago Taken from lhe Issue or The Free Press of December Graduation certificates and proficiency awards were presented at the Acton high school commencement exercises held Friday evening in the Legion auditorium before a capacity audience Presentation of the Honor Secondary school graduating diploma was made to Joseph Jany by principal A Hansen who also presented the Secondary School graduation diplomas to Coon Wayne Currie Edward Norma Elizabeth Jany dna Jennings Robert Donna McMillan Joy Peal Elizabeth Ritchie Lome Saunders and Del mar Watson Intermediate certificates were presented to the following Robert Keith Anderson Albert Benton Helen Cooper James Denny Gail Mary Jane Force Elizabeth Gibson Gibson Carol Hansen Michael Hurst William Johnstone Robert Kerr Oljja Mane Lambert Ruth Lynda Mann Shirley Mason Donald Margaret Morrison Dunne Newton Catherine Norton George Parker Laurie chit I- aye Sagaskie Spiece Helen Valene Ruth Wilson and Marilyn Young 50 years ago from Ihe issue or the Press of Dec 1926 Mr was elected by a majority of in was elected in the towns and Peltit in the township The number of votes polled in Acton in Georgetown in Milton The rural polling places to Dublin and Knachtbull amply maintained tht old time reputation for polling dry votes when the great moral issue of temperance is at stake The condition of the roads had much to do with the outcome of the election Premier G Howard Ferguson was returned as Premier of Ontario The post office department is urging that Christmas mail be forwarded earlier than usual this year Christmas Day falls on a Saturday and unless the mill reaches many places by rhursdiy night they will not reacr their friends on rural routes as there will be no delivery on Saturday Over 1000 citizens voted in the provincial elections but only in the municipal elections Elect id to council arc L E Atkinson John E Thetford and Prank Holmes Wonder whit his become of the old fashioned girl who it this time of year had a dresser full of doilies and fancy work for Christmas 100 years ago Taken from the Issue of the Press of Thursday Dec The afternoon stage between Milton Bronte has been tiken off because of the state of the roads Council met at the Centre Inn on the inst Ten dollars were ordered paid to Mrs Lamb for the use of the council room during the and 10 to the trustees of the Town Hall for the use theieof for Division Court business Ladies seem to have no settled idea yet as to the style of headgear to be worn this inter This state of suspense weighs heavy on the old man mind and purse too While w care not able to of any very extensive building operations in Acton during past season it is nevertheless satisfactory note thit quite a perceptible progress has been made towards filling up tht vacant lots Last year we figured up the cost of new buildings at about 30 but this year total will fall considerably short of that sum owing no doubt lo the prevailing in all kinds of business throughout the county The building operations this year comprise quite i number of private dwellings the handsome brick church commenced last fall by the Methodist denomination has been completed this season at a total cost of beautiful brick church as been erected by the con lists Mr has built an imposing red store and dwelling adjoining two stones with mansard roof at a cost of Mr Ed a frame grocery store Mr ishcr an addition to his tin and stove shop and additions to dwellings and places of business have been made during the se Progress of a much more extensive character is expected during the coming year THE ACTON FREE PRESS PHONE Business and Editorial Office I

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