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T Ifl Ml IT the HERALD Two reporters two solitudes Home Newspaper of Halton Hills- Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Street Georgetown Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager BRIAN DAN TAYLOR Editor Advertising Manager Phone 8772201 Sc4a4ClailMillRcKblrmNmbfTflU Page THE HERALD Wednesday March 7 Waste Not Our hats are off to Diane van Valk Shes the woman who is taking an active role in attempting to reduce the amount of waste going into landfill sites by attempting to set up a centre for broken appliances along the lines of the Salvation Army Ms van Valk appeared before town councillors Mon day to plead her case She wants to set up a project called Waste Not a nonprofit waste reduction centre She argues that appliances that are repairable are thrown in the garbage needlessly Said Ms van Valk When people learn that kettles dont belong in the gar bage they will start to use common sense and use facilities like the proposed Waste Not centre Shes right Were only at the beginning but theres a tremendous amount of education needed to get people away from the idea of throwing every thing they mink they dont need anymore in that green plastic bag in the corner Ms van de Valk hopes the centre will be selfsustaining in three years Such a centre would likely need the services of a repair person and someone with a knack for making the appliances appear pleasant After all not many people will purchase a dilapidated toaster but someone with the right touch might be able to make these appliances attrac tive to lowincome families Ms van de Valk said the centre would require a 17000 startup contribution from the town It is taxpayers money but it seems to be a worthy project Were spen ding 1 million a month in Halton to dispose of our garbage now And as Coun Marilyn Serjeantson said It s nice to see someone offer a solution without asking for for a pilot project The town is acting responsibly by being tight with tax payers money but this is one project thats worth a se cond look Well miss Betty Hie friends and colleagues of Betty Fisher who speak so well of the former town councillor and former executive director of the United Way in todays story arent exaggerating They speak the truth As a reporter I covered town council for two years and I had plenty of opportunity to watch Bet ty Fisher inaction Bettys friends and colleagues said she was a tireless worker for the community that she helped establish the United Way as an im portant community service in town that she always spoke her mind that she wasnt concerned about getting her name in the paper and that she was someone who liked to make sure the rules were followed Theyre right on all counts But what I liked most about Bet ty was her sense of humor She ap preciated a good joke or a humorous story and she shared her humor and optimism with the peo ple she knew One of my first encounters with Betty came after she stood up at the council table offering an emo tional defense of the Board of Education after some coun cillors had attacked that body for spending too much money As the former chairperson of the board Betty wasnt going to sit idly by She stood up and offered a zealous explanation of why the board faces different spending problems than other municipal bodies After that meeting I approached her simply to ask her if she was indeed once chairperson of the board a minute she replied with a smile What are you going to write She called me the next day to give me the gritty details of how the board of education operates She wasnt interested in getting her name in the paper or having her own voice heard above others she genuinely wanted to talk about the board On another occasion Ill never forget meeting Betty at the bottom of the stairs before a council meeting at the old Trafalgar Road room Bent over in laughter at a column I had written on another councillors Liberal leanings she chuckled Whats wrong with be ing a Liberal You just knew she appreciated the humor And its that humor Ill miss most A stickler for detail Oh yes Her favorite expression at council might have been point of order Mr Chairman But its that atten tion to detail that allows reporters into the budget meetings now She was one of the councillors who pushed for those meetings to be public Betty Fisher demanded and got the respect of her colleagues She earned it The Glob and Mail recently ran two articles entitled A tale of two regions and their treatment of The newspaper sent one reporter to deepest southwestern Ontario and another to the interior heartland of Quebec Their reports are illustrative of a dual standard in Canadian repor ting on Like the bilingualism policy itself the articles were unfair They perpetuate the stereotype of the tolerant and the in tolerant anglophone It isnt that any one paragraph written by the Globe reporters in question anglophone Gene Alien visiting Quebec francophone Aubin coming to Ontario is in itself inaccurate Instead there are unspoken assumptions about what is impor tant and what isnt when it comes to story writing and editing Based on these parallel stories francophone and anglophone reporters dont go looking for the same things EDITORS NOTE Second of a twopart series examining the bil ingualism Issue In Canadas large neighbor to the south By KEVIN BELL Washington Bureau Thomson News Service Language tensions in Canada have become a principal weapon for US lobby groups that are try ing to make English the official language of the United States The controversy over the Lake constitutional accord and Quebec separatism is frequently mentioned in newsletters issued by US English and English First two groups that want English as the only language in government DUALITY For francophones it is the linguistic duality of Canada that is important Hence Aubin inter viewed three francophones about their experiences in southwestern Ontario Anglophone reporters on the other hand seek stories about tolerance and intolerance those being the current concerns Allen therefore preferred to speak to francophones in Quebec to get the real story on minority rights He recorded no conversations with Quebec anglophones The tone that interviews give to his piece is best caught by quotes from a Sarnia francophone who claiming good friends who are Englishspeaking added certainly would not call racist but Ann yes the old some of my best friends and but qualifiers The francophone feels put upon One has no idea what the anglophones in the areas where Allen visited felt The people whose views he chose to record reinforce the establishment viewpoint that Quebec have the good life while Ontario francophones are oppressed The francophones self proclaimed continued will ingness to accommodate the local Englishspeaking minority is em phasized These Quebec towns are legally Frenchonly but Allen is more im pressed by the Englishlanguage services they volunteer about their informal approach to minoritylanguage rights based less on statutory rights and It is only a matter of time before news of the furore over English- only resolutions passed by Ontario communities such as Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie make it into upcoming editions of these newsletters Did you know Canadas federal government spends million per day on official asks a recent English pam phlet The organization also reports that per cent of Canadians and per cent of believe it is likely that Quebec will split from Canada in the next 10 years It quotes Elmer Knutson leader of the Confederation of Regions party as saying Unless we stop the turmoil causes there will be blood in the streets A newsletter from English First boasts that the United States has handled Frenchspeaking groups better than Canada has handled Quebecers It notes that statehood was granted in to Louisiana which was then mainly French with the proviso that all laws be passed in English We avoided a Quebeclike pro blem in this nation because we had farsjghted statesmen in office at bureaucratic procedures than a sense of how persona relations should be conducted Aubin in contrast has a dif ferent agenda To him informal services are secondary Rather his quotes are littered with references to respect for your culture and to keep your language or they dont go so far as to actually expect you to speak French INFORMAL the mayor of Lon don Ont is quoted about the citys ability to respond to queries in languages informally as in Allens examples But Aubin sees this as secondary He writes Francophones in Ontario refuse to be lumped together with the other immigrant groups in Canadas cultural mosaic In short the real issue is status rather than service Ontario municipalities probably offer a greater variety of language ser vices than towns in Quebec As in Quebec most of it is done in formally For somereason this is considered okay for that pro vinces towns but not for Ontarios What runs through each of Allens interviews is the belief that Englishonly as in the resolution passed by Sault Ste Marie somehow means refusing to deal with someone in French This is preposterous Englishonly means the same in Ontario as Frenchonly does in Quebec Minoritylanguage service is a courtesy not a right Yet media treatment of the two provinces is so different Why the time of Louisianas statehood the newsletter says Today English is the main language in Louisiana and few government services are bilingual Louisianas francophones make up about eight per cent of the states population We see bilingualism as a highly divisive force in Canada and we dont need to import that kind of dlvisiveness here Yale Newman communications director for English said in an interview We are saying English in the United States has served as a bridge between different ethnic groups However cases of discrimina tion have been reported in some of the states that have adopted laws or constitutional amendments making English the official language In Arizona a college student has filed discrimination charges alleg ing that a campus policeman warn ed him to stop speaking Spanish Another case involved an employer who posted a sign in English and Spanish warning that all job applicants must speak only English While both US English and Continued on Page 7 Owl US lobby groups want English