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The Acton Free Press Wednesday Feb Time to respond again When the announcement was made in the Free Press that Hills council wanted to tear down the town hall to make a parking lot many citizens were annoyed When the Chamber of Commerce called a quick meeting the organizers were amazed at the large number of people who turned out The same crowd flocked to the next council meeting to protest the hasty decision Over signed petition sheets asking that the building be saved Things have not gone the way the Town Hall Restoration Committee would have wished since then Council decided to proceed with the tearing down of the town hall stage area to allow for the second storey addition to the fire hall At that time supporters expressed discouragement Then the Heritage Foundation withheld its decision on a grant until council makes a commitment Most of the building remains and can remain It is usable now and will remain so The committee needs money now They are giving something for it too A beautifully prepared print of a sketch of the building as it was when it was new in the 1880s Framed or not The committee is counting on the many people who responded so enthusiastically last spring to respond again Newcomers too might realize the importance of their new towns heritage Details are in the committees open letter to the people on page Unlearning greed Ten Days for World Development will be marked in Acton again this February Organizer Eldon Comfort says noone could put better focus on the theme the Rev Douglas Dittrich now the rector of St Georges Anglican church in Kamloops B C This column written for the Sentinel is reproduced here with thanks Can we unlearn greed In time By Rev Doug St Georges Anglican Church Kamloope We of the affluent industnabzed West must take a hard look at our consumption of food accumulation of goods wage demands the low quality of life in the cities we build our destruction of the environment and waste of natural resources Our frenetic consumption and insatiable demands are unrealistic Ten Days for World Development this year the em is on food Lets stop moralizing about world poverty and question some definitions of development accepting the challenge to adopt a personal lifestyle that reflects a sensible and honest stewardship over Gods creation The crunch will come for us soon anyway Can we learn to ourselves of greed while we still In a thought provoking book Enough is Enough John Taylor Bishop of Winchester compares mans idolatry of growth and all its ruthless and unthinking excess with theBible s theology of enough The author invites us to join the creative task of defying the assumptions of todays consumer society There is something cynical in the argument says Taylor that the best way to feed the poor is to pile even more upon the rich mans table in the hope that bigger and better crumbs wiil fall from it There have to be limits to what we expect and demand These are set by consideration for others and a recognition of our place the whole scheme of things The Biblical doctrine of creation and modern ecology both demand an accountability Progress and development should mean people helping people not exploitation by a technology gone mad and a world of ad vertising bent on creating a mythical society of contrived need To those seeking an alternate lifestyle the Church says seek it in community and sharing There is growing resistance to being en slaved by materialism Join the movement With a greater sense of simplicity we can turn things around Many now realize that even the best intentioned aid given to the Third World changes nothing at all if there is not a change within us The basic cause of economic and social injustice in developing countries is found right here in the developed world If we are rich it is only at a cost to others Are we willing to admit that the world food crisis is not a technical problem but a social one The know how and food to eliminate hunger are already here The Ten Days program calls us among other things to safeguard world agricultural lands Can agriculture truly be a way for people to produce food first for themselves and not as a means to export income Escape from hunger will come not through food distribution but through redistribution of control over food producing resources Much overseas economic aid has rein forced the use of land for export crops We hardly foster self reliance when we condone an economic system which plunders the Third World making us more dependent on importing food from hungry people Get back to 3 Rs Prominence should be given to teaching the three Where did we hear that before heard it in when the Free Press reported Tha annual report of JS Deacon public school inspector presented to County Council presents the following advice for teachers 1 Give prominence to the three with proper development of the physical mental and moral facilities in eluding self control Teach literature before reading and thus avoid guessing and stumbling 3 Insist upon round regular writing evenly spaced in every The blizzard of Since last weeks paper there have been more accounts of ex during the big blizzard While conditions were at their worst It seems that people were at their best There have been many stories of kindness and helpfulness More strangers than we knew of last week were welcomed into district homes when they were un WHAT BETTER way of spending a stormy Saturday night than watching the Maple Leafs with a faithful companion Sugar and spice This week for a change 1 like lo write a nice warm sunny column after bleating in the last one about our dreadful Canadian winters It difficult There s a raging blizzard howling around the house The wind moans then wails then shrieks in frustra tionasitcan quite knock down the sturdy brick structure If been ike the first two tittle pigs my dwelling would be flat by now and I d be bowling across the fields like a tumb ling Couldn make it to work this morning Managed to get the old Dodge started barrelled through a drift on to the road I make the hill backed down got stuck while turning was pushed out went the long way around drove for a bit In pure whlteouts finally put my tail between my legs or came to my senses crept home rammed the old buggy into a drift and dived into the house My crazy wife booted and and was just starling off for the eye doctor a five blocks away She Ihlnks I make too much fuss about the weather mainlv because she slays In when It dirty and I Ihe one who digs the car out every morning I told her to go ahead but I wasn t driving her down out back door in the Ice of the house and declared It wasn bad at all that shed walk plying by tone and expression that I was a big chicken and that she raised on a farm was on the real who a little 40mile wind bother them Go ahead Enjoy I suggested She stuck her nose in the air sailed out the back walk got the corner turned purple and almost went flying off like a seagull caught in a squall When she crawled back In panting I form Give no exercise that will tend to deteriorate the writing 5 Avoid so much transcription that pupils become careless as to form size and neatness of letters and words Have all tables learned thoroughly and impress every rule by an abundance of simple problems solved mentally Teach so thoroughly and keep pupils so well employed throughout school hours that home work can be wholly discarded or reduced to a minimum A reader who had saved the clipping from the Years Ago column in April sent it in this week to share its timeliness Oh love lis love that makes the world go round said the Duchess to A lite jn Wonderland Indeed love Is a many thing The romantic affliction comes bubbling to the surface every when Cupid delivers weapons almost as powerful as his arrows in the form of Valentine Cards on Feb 14 Valentino Day Card can be bright and saucy or sweet and mental Any way the thought is basically that of Euripides who wrote more than years ago Love brings bewitching grace into heart The manner in which love has been expressed for several centuries has been complied from the archives of the Gill Packaging and Greeting Card Association of Canada Here Is a selection Love like sunshine after the rain wrote Shakespeare who also cautioned young lovers lhal life was fleeting when he wrote What is love lis not Come kiss me sweet and twenty youths stuff will not en dure Love and kisses were inseparable to Robert derrick Give me a kiss he wrote and to that kiss a score then to that twenty add a hundred more In Ihe late 17th in France Itochcfouchauld observed Lovers never get tired of each other because they are always talking about themselves In W Perks wrote on a Valentine Card lo his loved one The Ire of love consumes my heart hasten comfort impart The object of his affection replied Your Valentine so full of flame I put into the fire It was Scotland a Robert Burns who wrote But to see was to love her Love but her and love forever Had we never blindly never met or never par led we had been broken hearted better to have loved and lost sympathized Tennyson than never lo have loved at all Some American writers didn t view the subject quite so roman tically Scratch a lover and find a foe wrote the acerbic Parker Love is like the meosles oil have to go through it some one said before the discovery of antibiotics Robert Frost put it differently Love he wrote is an irresistible desire lo he Irresistibly desired Perhaps the most popular message of Valentines Day has been and may always be a simple Will you be my Valentine Whos surprised able to proceed further Some of them had been involved in ents At least one town man has been back to visit since The concerns of the day abated when expected travellers made arrangements to stay where they were or made it home safely Then the night was given over to staying snugly inside Fortunately Thursday was mostly sunny so the groundhog would see his shadow Another six weeks of winter Whos surprised As far as the farmers are con cerned theyd rather the dhog stayed sheltered all year round For them groundhogs are a downright nuisance causing mil the power stayed on except for a short interruption in one area If it hadnt we would all have been in need of those wood burning stoves extolled at the library last week Storm after storm has struck this area this winter but January 26 brought the worst of the bunch People will be telling their grand children what happened to them in the blizzard of 78 lions of dollars damage annually The groundhog monax is found all over North America It eats a wide variety of wild plants clover alfalfa and garden vegetables Their natural enemies the bears lynx wolves and cougars are scarce around here and the groundhogs pretty well have the fields to themselves Groundhog holes are treacherous too It is interesting to see in the so Years Ago column that bears were depended upon then to predict the oncoming spring Wonder how that change came about Anyway over the years Cana dians have maintained a natural interest in the length of the winter ahead said it might be a good idea to call the doctor She did and learned that he sen sible man had started for town turned around and gone home for the day and all appointments were cancelled If she tried to make it to his office and back we d have found her dead in a drift In about three days rom my second floor window the only one that isn frosted over I watch the show One bewildered bird tail blown inside out goes by on the wind like an arrow slams into a tree grasps a branch Is caught again by the monster and tossed out of sight Into the spindrift Must be some sort of a miniature turkey who t know enough to go south with the rest of the folks and thinks he has it soft because somebody is gorging him daily at a feeder Wham One of the shutters has torn loose swings open against the window frame then slams back against the brick wall This goes on at irregular intervals all day My wife knows perfectly well that when the wind dies the shutter will be in the halfclosed position a real eyesore and that nobody Is going to wade through that snow with a ladder and fasten it back I gently remind her that the same shutter blew off completely last winter and lay near the front steps until well into September before being put back up Rrowrr There goes a snowmobile hell for leather with someone who thinks he Captain Marvel at the wheel If some body comes out of a that em bryonlc Knlevcl will go straight Into him at miles on hour Oh well One less No cars about now after a few idiots Iried to make the hill and all wound up backing ignominiously down There goes the oil truck lumbering through Wish I owned about four of those and 1 be sitting In my southern con dominium right now chortling as I waited for the mall to arrive so 1 could count my cheques Taxi company has obviously taken the phone off the hook Don blame them Send a driver out for a dollar and a half call to some crazy old lady who wants to go shopping and wind up with a towing bill There goes another tow truck They re having a field day And they can have it I happy sitting snugly at home waiting for the soup to boll Called the school Hardly anybody there But we teachers Express We re supposed to get through I could walk It a only a mile uphill and I d probably only get a heart attack or pneumonia They probably dock me a day pay for not trying to get through in my car and going in the ditch or running down a pedestrian There that poor devil down the street shovelling Every time I look out this window he s shovelling tirelessly Can never be sure he real More like a ghost who has been assigned this job for eter nity Instead of coal in the Other Place This Is worse Wife worries about sisterinlaw living alone In the country Worries about her father hoping he won t try to get around the rural mall route today Worries about her daughter who must bundle herself and The Boys venture into the storm to deliver them to day care herself to practice teaching assignment Tell her not to worry There we can do about it In fact am rather enjoying the storm the cutoff feeling The not going to work feeling A good Is rather like a purge Cleanses the spirit of that dally grumbling about the weather The Free Press Back Issues 10 years ago Taken from the Issue of the Free Frets of Wednesday February In a special presentation Acton District High School Board was given a gavel though this Is the final year of the board existence Fifteenyear board member Duncan Moffat was given the walnut gavel and base by secretary Fred Salt Mr Moffat Is chairman of the board Former secretary Billy simply used to borrow the public school board gavel for the Inaugural ceremonies The department of education gave tenta live approval for the proposed addition to M Bennett school Acton Public School Board trust heard that grants were available on of the estimated cost of Steven Van Fleet and Diane Bousfield were Judged lo be the best public speakers in town Steven was announced to be the top speaker with his speech about The Atomic Bomb Diane was in second place with her speech on Music Both attend Robert Little School Other finalists are Barbara Pratt Ron McGinn Joanne Jean Matanlc and Robert McMillan 20 years ago Taken from the of the Free Press of Thursday February IKS Acton council at their regular meeting on Monday night agreed to engage a firm of solicitors to draw up an agreement with Canada Packers and Company regarding the Installation of a sewage treatment plant Charles Alexander Sandy Best the man voters sent to Ottawa last June with a large majority over his closest op ponent was given the nod once again to be the Progressive Conservative standard bearer for the March 31 federal election when Jammed Into the Milton town hall for the Friday nomination meeting Mr Best nomination was unopposed by those in attendance and they cheered and whistled as his acclaim to the position was announced Ken Dick Milton solicitor was chosen Liberal candidate for the upcoming federal election at the nominating convention Saturday evening which political observers described as Fred Salt has left on a four to five week business trip taking him to Mexico Panama Honduras Jamaica and several Dick family spent Sunday with Mr and Mrs Donald McLean and the Don Brown family It being the wedding an of the Beswicks and McLeans 50 years ago Taken from the Issue of the Free Pre of Thursday Februarys The I O play was greeted with a full house The cast included Frances Hurst Mrs A K Eugene McPherson Jessie Norton Jessie Ander son Charles Kirkness Vera Hurst James Mane Lenta and Mrs Ray At the regular meeting of the Lakeside chapter of the I O E Mrs James was elected regent Mrs Burnley and Miss Jessie Anderson vice- regents There seems a difference of opinion as to whether the bear saw his shadow or not The ley roads have made motoring al most impossible The open air rink at Rockwood is pretty well patroniicd 100 years ago Taken from the Issue of the Free Press or Thursday February 1878 The second masquerade carnival came off on the Acton skating rink on Tuesday evening The attendance of spectators was large and that of the maskers was a large increase over the last carnival The Acton and Milton brass bands were in attendance Some of the costumes were gorgeous while others were comical in the extreme We would like to see some of our town loafers take a buck saw and make them selves useful But in general loafers are high toned folk professions A tea meeting will be held this evening In the Methodist church Silver Creek Mr D R Lee the dentist left Acton on Saturday last for London where he will re main for about three weeks Any person having a toothache can call on him when he returns and have It extracted without pain These evenings young ladles and gentle men may be seen studying astronomy after the skating rink has closed THE ACTON FREE PRESS PHONE Business and Editorial Office Copyright 1978