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Give me a light I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown And he replied Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God That shall be unto you better than Quoted by His Majesty the King in an Empire broadcast Editorial The night of time We have almost reached the end of another year and to some of us that seems like a long time But judged against the enormous sweep of geological time single years or even the Biblical lifetime of three score years and ten are about as noticeable as the ual grains of sand on a beach Most estimates of the age of the earth place it at upwards of five bil lion years Primitive forms of life viruses and bactena first ap peared about three and a half bil hon years ago and most major forms of life had evolved by the last half billion years One of these was the group of animals called the vertebrates animate with back bones Eventually by the slow pro cesses of natural change this group gave rise to true human beings Homo sapiens But this wanst until a mere 50000 years ago Its difficult to grasp the scope of geological history because most of us cant Envisage a million let alone a billion years The best way is to scale everything down to the span of a single year and consider that the planet earth was formed on the first of January Right up until the end of September comprised the era during which the rocks of the Canadian Shield were formed The Paleozoic era came next and lasted until the 25th of November The rocks of southern Ontario belong to this time slot The next stretch of time is called the when dinosaurs lived in what is now Alberta It lasted until the of December Then the Tertiary era began and went on until the last day of the year The Western Cordillera was formed during this time The Quaternary era the last million years of geo logical time takes up the last four hours of the last day In our region four successive ice sheets covered the land during this era Recorded history began with just over a mm ute to go and Jesus Christ was born at less than thirty seconds to midnight In the seventeenth century and long before the immensity of geo logical time was suspected Sir Thomas Browne wrote The night of time far the day and who knows when was the equinox Musical ministers One of the more traditional par lour games starts with a some players a number of chairs equal to one less than the number of players and c a of music The music plays while the players prance around the chairs When the music stops the players rush to the empty chairs Whoever is left standing is out of the game And the game continues until there is only one player In Ottawa theyve taken this old favorite called musical chairs and modified it for political players Several cabinet members occupy the ministerial chairs Every few months the political tune changes and the ministers are shuffled into other chairs Some of the ministers are left without chairs when the music resumes Most of the others fall into chairs that are different from the chairs in which they started All of this is considered good fun in Ottawa But ministerial chairs costs the Canadian public dearly At this very moment virtually no minister in all of tawa truly controls his ministry Most people hearing this news of ministerial eunuchy for the first time are shocked More sur prising however is the fact that some ministers do have at least a partial grasp on their portfolios After all the game of ministerial chairs doesnt provide enough time for the average human to gain con trol of such a complex function as running a government ministry The Post Office for example has had no fewer than six different ministers since the start of 1966 Is it any wonder there has been trouble in the department Even at that however the ministry has enjoyed more stability than National Revenue or Consumer and Corporate Affairs eight ministers each since January 1968 Apparently ministers who understand their portfolios are considered dangerous The upshot of all this movement has been transfer of control from elected officials to senior civil servants At one time deputy ministers existed to translate ministerial edicts into action Today deputy ministers are true directors of their departments while ministers have become figureheads Probably no Minister of National Revenue since Herb Gray October to October 1972 has truly understood the Canadian tax system There are people who believe that this is not cause for concern The civil servants the theory goes are quite capable of running the country That in fact may be the case though the evidence suggests otherwise However our con contends that elected representatives should run the country leadingnot being led by the civil servants Compounding the difficulty the deputy ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister Consequently undue power is placed in the Prime Ministers office Unfortunately the office is the only part of Ottawa which has an idea of the overall picture Democracy is still the most cherished of Canadian ideals But democracy cannot exist when the bureaucracy is stronger than the politicians It s time to put an end to parlour games Ottawa BUI Smiley The The Acton Free Press Wednesday Dec 28 S Deserves a medal Canada is spilt right down the middle Ihese days And don mean the Quebec thing It the On the one hand we have people screaming that the cops with the red coats are a bunch of scoundrels On the other we have an equally vociferous group ding their every law breaking deed I agree with both sides for a change I hate the thought of living in a country where my phone can be tapped my mall opened and my property broken Into by a secret police But 1 think people who believe that any police force In any country that can combat terrorists kidnappers and high without breaking the red tape of the law occasionally are extremely naive Every socalled civilized nation in the world has Its secret police as any spy story reader can tell you The only dif ference lies in their and the degree of and rulhlessness employed They run all the way from the bumbling British M I through the slippery can CIA and the sharp French Surete to the Hugged Russian K and the brutal simplistic sadists of some South American counties Among the secret police of the world I Imagine the are ranked about 43lh coming just after Iceland and New Zealand They simply are not devious or rulhlessness enough to stand any higher Despite all the thundering of the not air artists in Parliament the idea of the Mounties as a secret lurking terror in this country threatening the civil liberties of all of us Is almost hilarious They haven enough money men or brains at Ihe lop to be anything more than an irritant They are probably out numbered by members the Opposition looking for publicity dissident former who have quit the Force because they had to get their hair cut and smart journalists who seem to have no trouble turning up the redcoats latest caper whenever they feel like it It s true they have been accused of all sorts of dreadful things most of them illegal They have tapped phones and planted bugs As do Industrial spies and the Mafia and probably a lot of other organizations we don t know about They have opened private mail I like to know how they go about this unless they stand by a post box and snatch the mail from your hand as you re about to drop it in Otherwise they could wait three weeks to get their hands on a likely letter the way our postal service works Briefly The week before Christmas was hectic and we didnt manage to get to all the Christmas parties and special events we had planned to Maybe next year So have lot of merchants but the latter call it having a fire sale Burglary They stole dynamite go the charges No pun intended Not a bad idea really when the dynamite belongs to some bad guys who are known with good reason to be about to blow up something they should not with it They have withheld deliberately in formation from the politicians who are supposed to be keeping an eye on them So If they told the politicians every thing they were going to do the latter would cither try to grab some votes by stopping It or try to grab some votes by taking credit for the act if it worked This is some crazy country when It comes to secret service work Remember that poor Russian spy who tried to turn himself over with a load of documents to Mackenzie King back in the cold war days He was told to go peddle his wares elsewhere and the poor guy walked the streets in winter looking for someone to defect to Somebody finally took him off the streets and he uncovered a huge Russian spy ring in Canada Then we had the massive overkill when a twobit outfit in Quebec pulled a couple of kidnappings What a Hundreds of ordinary citizens were arrested with nary a habeas or a corpus called in and the kidnappers made monkeys of the mounties and the Montreal gendarmes After strangling one of the victims and turning the other loose the hoods were escorted by police to Montreal airport and flown free to Cuba And thus Canada police forces with incredible ineptitude announced to the whole world that the way to deal with terrorists is to buy them off It been going on ever since Sorry but I can all worked up about the and its alleged trespasses It great stuff for the Opposition but it more like Gilbert and Sullivan than the Gestapo That doesn t mean 1 not aware of the potential gravity of the situation Some times I hear a soft click just after I vc picked up the phone Maybe it s the But most likely it s my wife on Ihe upstairs telephone trying lo catch me making a poker date when she going to be out lo sewing class I usually let the other guy talk put down the receiver care fully race upstairs and catch her In the act And when I look my grand boys to see Santa Clausal the big department store I warned them Don say a word to that guy in the red coat with the beard even if he asks what you want for Christmas He probably has a dossier on me When I was 17 1 wanted to go and fight in the civil in Spain Years later yean before anyone else in this country I urged editorially that Canada recognize Red China I once inadvertently voted And you know what those add up to He s a RED as they have said years ago Today the Mounties probably have me down as a potentially delinquent liberal with leftist tendencies in a file marked TOP SECRET Box 125 Ont Dec Acton Free Press Acton Dear Editor I was a little surprised regarding the re action or tack of same of my last letter to your paper However Mrs Gordon from Georgetown wrote In your letters to the Editor column expressing her gratification as to the jty care etc shown her mother in Jean Rest Home and commending the staff so And unless there has been extensive changes most of that staff was trained by Mrs Catherine Kelly I find it both pathetic and amusing to hear and read of the comments of persons signalled out for the Queen Silver jubilee medal Most recipients seem to be unaware to why or how they were singled out for this recognition One fellow in this county received his for apparently his interest in judging flower shows Others have been good citizens who served at I am sure for more than ade quate remuneration and received theirs with of course proper humility Well I like to have seen Mrs Kelly receive some sort of recognition for her years of more out put of human decency and kindness than a dozen of those deserving paragons ever thought of Her dedication to her patients when she ran her Nursing Home for Extended Care and I assure you a hell of a differ ence from a Residential Home where good souls there need only minimal super vision was really something to deserve a medal not silver but pure gold And when you choose a citizen of the year good people of Acton with the pos list of candidates you choose why not put Mrs Kelly at the top of your lisf Am I partisan Damn right I think it high time Acton is aware or should be of one of her better assets and am more than proud to call her friend She probably kill me for all this but luckily we re expecting lots of snow and hopefully she not be able lo get hold of me til Spring Merry to all at the good old Free Press Our readers write Reade foregoes increase Chairman and Councillors Regional Council of Mrs flfunro and Gentlemen This letter will serve as my notification that I like Councillors Munro and am turning back the proposed stipend increase I insist of course that any future group calculations are to be performed such that my Increase cannot be rcdlvided among those who still see fit to accept fur increases My reasons are as follows The present stipend is more than ade quate for the demands of the office 2 The present stipend is in the top 33 per cent among the regions surveyed in the chairman s report Corny as it may appear there stilt exists a valid concept of serving and time without expectation of substan monetary reward To those who argue that this office requires full time work thus justifying the existing stipend and more I can only re spond that I hold an alternate view more over those who subscribe to such an argu ment merely provide a classical case of Parkinson Law in operation Despite the likely cries of grand standing from some of my colleagues I have chosen this method of stating my position with the hope that at least some taxpayers will be concerned enough to express strong to their represen as to the need for this continual In crease in stipends It is my conviction that cost control in government cannot be attained solely through resolutions Prerequisite require ments are example and leadership by the elected representatives starting at the grass roots level G Councillor Enough of postal disruptions Following is a letter which MP Frank Philbrook sent to the Postmaster General with copies to Prime Minister Trudeau all MPs and Senators Jean Claude Parrot President CUPW Robert Letter Carriers Union and all media and filed for publication here Dear Mr Minister The reaction I am hearing from my con is loud and clear They have had more than enough of re peated disruptions in postal services and they want their Government to put a slop to these trying events Is it fair to have senior citizens kept waiting for their old age security pension cheques Low income families without their family allowances Small businesses without their invoices and regular pay ments of bills Interruptions of mail vices now seriously affect all Canadians and the general Canadian economy Until a few years ago Canada had one of the best postal services in the world We had good reasons to be proud of it That is no longer true Canadians in and elsewhere now A Happy New Year to all of us r T tell us that they regard the Post Office with scepticism They anticipate problems at the most inopportune time They want the postal system to serve Canadians well again starting now I know that you and the Government of Canada will do your utmost to make this happen In the spirit of the Season I remain Yours Sincerely Frank Memberof Parliament This and that In modern civilization subways are not safe streets are not safe parks are unsafe but under the arms we can have total protec tion Heavy use of alcohol has been implicated in the development of certain cancers especially of the upper digestive and respiratory systems In studies done by the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario it was found that per cent of deaths due to the combined group of cancers of the mouth larynx pharynx and esophagus occurred among alcoholics or persons with a heavy alcohol use In a follow up of more than individuals treated between 1951 and 1963 it was found that cancer of the mouth larynx and pharynx was five times more frequent among alcoholics than in the general population Think about it drinkers THE ACTON FREE PRESS PHONE 2010 Business and Editorial Office Copyright 1977