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Page THE WEEKEND OUTLOOK Friday February 1I Women must be protected There Is a sickness in our socie ty that gives the impression of be ing incurable It Is a malaise that could threaten the very core of our moral fabric unless a cure is found It is the everincreasing and now thankfully increasingly well- documented incidents of male violence towards females Recentlyreleased statistics in dicate Just how serious the pro blem has become but most ex perts agree that even these revealing statistics may only be the tip of the proverbial iceberg as many incidents of male violence towards females goes unreported for various reasons Marc brutal and tragic assault on young female students at Montreals Ecole Polytechnique on Dec 19B9 was a manifestation of his hatred towards women in general The shooting spree made national and international headlines but in reality nothing concrete in terms of laws or stiffer penalties aimed at curbing violence towards women was ever for thcoming Last week a news item from Nova Scotia provided a chilling reminder of the wanton violence against women As reported a man shot and killed a young Dartmouth woman His reason he loved her from afar and if he could not have her no one else could An allparty committee of five women MPs is studying the pro blem of violence against women and considering whether a royal commission on the issue should be established The committee has heard thai one in four Canadian women can expect to be sexually assaulted to some degree The committee also heard that every minutes a women is being raped almost always by someone she knows Patricia Marshal of the Metro Toronto Action Committee on Public Violence Against Women and Children told the committee Were talking of a national scar ring of our soul right now that has to be responded to There is ter- Editors Notebook by Cofin Gibson rorism There is targeting of women going on daily We have to improve the national understanding of what violence against women is We cant con tinue to do so little for so many The Toronto Star reports that in 1989 the 78 transition homes in Ontario accommodated 9638 women accompanied by 11000 children It was reported that 87 per cent of these women were ad mitted after having been either physically or sexually attacked The committee of women MPs was also told that between and 1988 more than 100800 sex ual assaults were reported in Canada an increase of over per cent over the previous five- year period According to police however only one in sexual assault is ever reported In 1989 119 women were murdered in socalled domestic disputes The committee was also told of a new phenomenon of men retur ning after years of separation from their spouses simply to at tack them again The issue must be addressed and not just by the lawmakers or courts of the land alone It must be addressed by society in general and treated as an ac cepted fact and not just as laments from malelabelled hysterical women Similarly the issue of violence against women must be address ed immediately and not put con veniently aside to be looked at at some undetermined time in the future Editorial LONELINESS would cheat One loonly and night They scored on their own net You had one great big fright and now theyre In debt In the dark Oh those stupid Leafs You heard a bark By Ryan Jensen and You hear a bell Daniel You run like hell age Milton Now youre at home WINTER FUN Alone and alone and alone Wintertime at last Is here By Robert White We know that it wont last all year And when it finally has begun DOG AND CAT We know that we are In for fun Dog and cat Melting leaves an empty space Small and fat But winter goes at Its own pace Chubby and skinny So dress up warm just In case Mickey and Mlnny It blows all over the place Slides are built to glide Fish and toad with speed Young and old We never mind who takes Lumpy and brown the lead Hard to be found Happy with the falling snow Jack Frost painting our Rat and bat windows Black and fat Making snowballs so Tall and small very white Weve seen them all They glimmer and sparkle By Katie Anderson In moonlight age Milton Making them either large or small RAT AND BAT Stacking them any way at all Rat and bat Sculpture almost anything Black and fat While still cold a nice Tall and small plaything Weve seen them all A snowman makes good company Wealth and health Out In the yard for all to see Is what they do not have Friendly eyes and smiling face But It Is what we want Melting leaves an By Ahvon empty space age 11 Milton But winter Is a long long season STUPID LEAFS We can start again for just There once was a team named that reason the Leafs by Lois A Richardson They couldnt play so they The Halton Hills HERALD Home Newspaper of Halton Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspaper Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario 3Z6 K ROBERT Publisher and General Manager 8772201 EOrTOMAl COUN Managing Editor CLASSIFIED Joan Hamuli Snifter CIRCULATION Maria ACCOUNTING AceovnUnl and Inga Canada copyright on a original and malarial craatad It publhhad In National S Quma St Ontario no or MO Cilhcart Menlraal lor oh imib ma amount pal by that portion at filch arror occurred whatnot auch to III adVartliamant adrartliainanL lor Life is not all that bad As we stumble through life Its comforting to look around and be able to say There but for the grace of God go I Whenever I start feeling depressed about my lot in life Im able to remind myself At least youre not the man whose job is to read Prime Minister Mulroney the results of the latest opinion polls I feel the same way about the public relations director who gets phoned in the middle of the night by the CEO of a major petroleum company and told Bill weve had a little Youve got til 8 am to think of a bright side But most of all these days Im feeling very glad Im not Helen of Burlington Township New Jersey You may not have read about Helen Humph Helen is or at least was the designated lottery- ticket buyer for a group of col leagues and friends A couple of Thursdays ago she had the winning numbers in a New Jersey State Lottery with a jackpot of million which would have won each member of the group US a year for years Unfortunately she was late ar riving at the ticket outlet and was unable to play the numbers Well at a time like this we can only hope that Helen is a positive sort of woman who is able to take the optimistic view of things Possibly Helen is able to re mind herself that she is all things considered much happer than say the average foodtaster In the household of Borgia We cant be sure about this however since Helen doesnt seem to have made any state ment to the media Presumably this is either because she isnt returning reporters calls or because there is no phone service to her ice- cave on Baffin Island Quite frankly this is the sort of situation that should encourage us to reexamine the existence of lotteries in the first place Per sonally Ive always had mixed feelings about them For starters lotteries pander to greed that most vile of human emotions Lotteries encourage us to believe we can get rich without having to do any work And to top it off Ive never won so much as a nickel in any of them I actually knew a fellow who won million in a lottery back in the 1970s and I always wondered whether the burden of this sudden wealth would ruin his happiness in the end Unfortunately I didnt get the chance to find out We were never more than acquain tances and I wasnt able to con vince him to adopt me My parents might have been slightly wounded by this adoption scheme but theyd have understood My mother has fre quently repeated my grand fathers theory that a person has just two realistic chances in life to become rich he can be born into money or he can marry into it And a man who falls on both accounts deserves no sympathy But I digress We were discuss ing Helen And at a time like this we should try our best to be philosophical In such a situation we should reflect you can at least be cer tain whom your friends are Theyre the ones forming a lynch- mob in the driveway But wait Perhaps this is too cynical Perhaps Helens friends are standing by her just as your friends would surely do for you if you had just cost them million Granted this could be one heck of a position in which to place a friend requiring him to prove that friendship means more than million to him Still decent folks care much more about human beings than they do about money Heck I know people who wouldnt trade their kids for well for at least a couple of thousand And lots of husbands and wives like each other even more than that As such lets hope that Helen is discovering that this little spot of adversity is serving only to bring out the very finest in ber friends Besides Baffin Island cant be that bad