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A6 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday August 25,1999 T h e Oa k v ille Beaver OPINION Ian Oliver Publisher Neil Oliver Associate Publisher Norman Alexander Editor Kelly Montague, Advertising Director Martin Doherty Circulation Director Ten Casas Office Manager Mark Dills Production Manager Riziero Vertoili Director o f Photography M etroland Printing. P u tish ing & D istributing L td., includes; Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, A lston Herakl/Couner. Barrie Advance. Barry's Bay "This Week. Bolton Enterprise. Brampton Guardan. Burtngton Post. Burfngton Shopping News. C ity Parent. CottngwoodW asaga Connection. East York M irror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes. Etobicoke Guardan, F lantxroucp Post. Georgetown independent/Acton Free Press. H uoaa Business Times. K ingston This W eek. Lindsay This W eek. M arkham Ecnom ist & Sun. M idland/P enetanguishine M irror. M ilton Canadian C ham pion. M ilton Shopping News. Misstssauga Business Tm es. Mcsissauga News. Napanee G lide . Newmarket/Aorora Era-Banner. Northumberland News. North York Mirror. Q akvie Beaver. O akvile Shopping News. O ldtm ers Hockey News. C riia Today. OshawaYVhitby/aarington Port Perry This Week. Owen S a n d Tribune. P eterborough This W eek. P icton C ounty G uide. R ichm ond H ill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal. Scarborough M irra . S touttvilie/U xbridge Tribute. Forever Y ang. C ity of York Guardan 467 Speers Rd., Oakville O n t L6K3S4 (905) 8 4 5 -3 8 2 4 Fax; 3 3 7 -5 5 6 7 Classified Advertising: 8 4 5 -2 8 0 9 Circulation: 8 4 5 -9 7 4 2 RECOGNIZED FOR ^EXCELLENCE BY: ■ Ontario Community Newspapers Association ^ C N A Canadian Community Newspapers Association SK \ Suburban IMowspapars of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: Editorials Requiem for a retailer If anyone wants an inkling as to why the Eaton department store chain is bankrupt and will shut its doors forever, they need only read the biography of the family. It details the lifestyle of the nation's most famous retailing families and illustrates one of the great observations on corporations that are passed from one generation to another. The blood runs thin. And in the case of the Eaton brothers, the blood ran very thin indeed. Bent on spending more time vacationing and spending money than keeping an eye on the operation that funded such a lavish life, the Eaton's were very much archi­ tects of their own demise. Aside from the restaurant business, retailing is the most labour-intensive business pursuit and it requires a hands-on approach if the business is.to suc­ ceed. In the case of the Eatons, there was no one minding the store for a long time and in retailing that is the kiss of death. The tragedy here is that of the employees, many of whom spent their working lives at Eatons and who now face an uncertain future both in terms of future work opportunities and severance packages. Oakville was once home to an Eaton estate on the Lakeshore. There, dur­ ing the summer, the Eatons used to bring store employees there for a picnic, complete with tennis and the finer things in life. Eaton's was, after all, a family. Just as Canadian retailing icons such as Morgans, Simpson's, Robinson's and others collapsed, heralding a warning to the survivors, so too has Eaton's fallen into that dubious chasm of familial failure. If you look closely at the bronze statue of Timothy Eaton at the chain's Toronto 'flagship' store, you can almost see a tear. Thin blood indeed. Letters to the Editor The Oakville Beaver welcomes your comments. All letters must be typed, signed and include the writer's address and phone number. Send to: Letters to the Editor, The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville, Ont. L6K 3S4 The tragedy here is that o f the employees, many o f whom spent their working lives at Eatons and who now face an uncertain future both m terms ot future work opportunities and severance packages. Music teaching isn educational frill As a teacher of music and French, both privately and in the Pembroke and Oakville school systems and a parent of four children educated in Oakville Public and Separate schools, I have seen a very wide variety of music teaching and performance in the schools over the past 30 years, all the way from excellent to dreadful and even damaging to children's ears and voices. R ecently , I have becom e in terested in the re su lts of research into the bra ins of young children by eminent neu­ rologists which has proved in a number of case studies the vital im portance of good m usical experiences in the early years. The gains in brain development seen in these studies were not restricted to their purely musical sen sitiv itie s . There was a marked improvement in spacial reasoning -- important in later mathematical understanding. Those, on the o ther hand, who had not developed a good sense of beat and rhythm, fre­ quently had trouble concentrat­ ing on their work. I quote from neurologist and educator D.J. C oulter's fine booklet Music and the M aking of M ind: "When music activities combine rhythm and m ovem ent with speech and song, the child bene­ fits from this special kind of practice, which rarely occurs in any other part of the school day. Such practice is very valuable to the developing mind, as it works to cu ltiv a te strong " inner speech" and impulse control." She goes on to say that by second or third grade, children who had weak inner speech sk ills started to have m ore social problem s. They were more impulsive and quick tem­ pered than their peers and had trouble keeping still, listening, and paying attention. The improvement in the con­ centration, language and social skills which was observed in those groups which were given good music instruction by well- trained teachers was particularly marked in children from less- privileged backgrounds, but all the children improved in spacial reasoning and language and the schools became happier places as the children much enjoyed their musical experiences. In an article on the develop­ ment of language by a speech language pathologist, she stress­ es the im portance of singing, which, with frequent repetition directly exposes participants to patterns of language, rhyming words, rhythm and syntax and imprints them on the body in an unique way. Many children need individual help in finding their singing voices, however. They need a well-trained teacher in junior or senior kindergarten or Grade 1. In an article by Edwin Gordon, he states "after years of research... I have concluded that a child's music aptitude changes in accordance with the quality of the child's musical environ­ ment until about age nine. A child's potential to achieve in music remains throughout life where it stabilized at that age." Just as small children pick up second and third languages and speak them without a foreign accent as long as they are exposed to them frequently enough so they also quickly rec­ ognize very small differences of pitch and rhythm which many adults who were not given good music teaching in childhood cannot do. Their ears, however, are very delica te and their singing voices are very light. Too often, I have heard well- meaning teachers urging chil­ dren to sing louder, hurting their voices rather than learning the good enunciation and ways of projecting they need to know. C lassroom teachers, who often do not sing well them ­ selves and have had little or no training in teaching young chil­ dren to sing, often reso rt to sing-along cassettes or even "lip sync" and call it music teaching! I have heard that both mem­ bers of our local boards of edu­ cation and even some private school boards have been urging the cu tting o f trained music teachers out of the early elemen­ tary grades with the rationale that classroom teachers can easily handle m usic at this level. As the above research quotes indicate, the opposite has been proven to be true. Our best tra ined m usic teach ers should be working at the grade levels where they will have the most effect on the ch ild ren's overall developm ent, and we will have happier, better con­ trolled, more socially sensitive children with better communi­ cation skills. Parents, do insist that not only should music not be reduced in the early grades but it should be considerably increased in both quality and the time devoted to it! If your child is enrolling in a nursery or daycare, make sure to ask about the quality of the music teaching. There is a course at the Royal C onserva to ry of Music held every July for two weeks, highly recom m ended for all teachers o f m usic or "Circle time" for two to seven- year-olds. Jean G rieve Save environment for our children Well Ifm glad to see that the GOOSE problem is fixed and I haven't stepped in any goose presents ..WRONG!!!!! I have another beef, it's a mysterious group of individuals I call bucket fishermen. They come down to the rivers with five gallon pails and they keep everything they catch and I do mean everything. I was fishing in one such river recently and noticed some people catching fish so I went over for a look they had a stringer of about 18 bass, some very large. An impressive gene pool on a string .Between the two of them. You do the math. OK I don't have a problem if you want to keep a couple to eat that's up to you but to come down and fill buckets and stringers that's not a good thing. You ever hear of a supermarket? It has taken a long time for our creeks to rebound and come back to the way they are now. Just another little shocking tale. In the fall take your kids to Petro Canada Park and witness the salmon run, than go on the river on the other side of the island and witness the carnage left by greedy little egg nappers. My children were very impressed. Do we only use the police in the fall for salmon and forget the rest of the year? Where are the Game Wardens? We have to work together and save these rivers for our KIDS . The rivers are part of the jewell that is Oakville. Peter D Fairw eather Pud HMNW THIS i s l l OH-ITS Ar A SMALL BO/, 1 1 WONDER W H A T I T " j by S teve N ease TH0U6KT IT WAS CARKEfe HUH?^ J ust Fo r a SECOND there. Letter of the Week Friends needed to mourn youth's death Re: Letter to editor, Oakville Beaver, Wed. Aug. 18th, concerning the suicide o f a young man in Bmnte. Bronte is a small community and not surprisingly, this young man was known among a group of teenagers. Allegedly, one of his friends was one of the first to discover him but was not allowed to escort the body to the ambu­ lance. When he persisted by showing up at the hospital,he was told the situation was being taken care of. As my son observed, teenagers do not warrant much in the way of respect or sensitivity. No one reported back to the dead youth's friends about his whereabouts or how his funeral would be handled. I undertook some investigating on my own. I telephoned the police who advised me to telephone the individual funeral homes to ascertain what arrangements would be made. This I did until I reached, by trial and error, the last possible funeral home from whom I received the briefest, most cryptic communication regarding the arrangements: they were over and it was private. One is tempted to sat this was done quickly out of defer­ ence to 'the delicate situation' or 'the family'. Who are we really protecting? This discompassionate secretiveness denied the youth's friends the opportunity to publicly grieve their friend in dig­ nity. Instead, it is reported that an emotional epitaph has been scrawled to him on the bathroom wall of a local restaurant they all frequented. It is pitiful that the only place someone felt free to express sorrow and regret was in the hidden back comers of a latrine. Shame on us all. As a species, we mourn our dead. And this ought not depend on how glamorous or tragic the circumstances of death. Without wealth or fame to distinguish him in life, it is nonetheless inexcusable that this youth should have become nonexistent and quickly denied in death. The pro- fessionals-the police, the fire department, the funeral home- did their jobs well. What is not done well in this society is the acknowl­ edgement of death and what it means to be a human being living within the context of a well-meaning but sometimes dysfunctional society. The human connection got lost His friends needed to mourn and mark his passing in a mean­ ingful, public way. It should not be considered extraordi­ nary to be allowed to say goodbye. Sylvianne Rivard Craig Immigration editorial missed mark The Beaver's editorial ('Help needed', Aug. 18, 1999) concerning the recent influx of illegal Chinese immigrants was misguided and reactionary. The suggestion that we throw money at the coast guard to fix this problem of "the past two weeks" is an example of how public-sector spending mush­ rooms out of control . Before suggesting a solution to the illegal immigrant prob­ lem, the Beaver should examine its cause. The boatloads of unfortunates who arrived on our shore were the victims of international smugglers with organized-crime links to this country. The immigrants are forced to pay their smuggling debts through virtual slavery in illegal jobs. Most illegal immigrants arrive by plane; if we give "some of (the budget surplus) to our coast guard" our problem is not solved. The solution must address the infrastructure that makes this smuggling possible: the businesses in Canada that profit from this illegal labour. I find it disgusting that the Beaver exalts, and urges us to emulate, "the absence of freedom" of the American immigra­ tion system. Canada's immigration system is undeniably flawed; it is also something of which we can be proud. Patrick Bourke OPINION RECOGNIZED FOR ^EXCELLENCE BY: ^CNA SK\ THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: Letters to the Editor Jean Grieve Peter D Fairweather A SMALL BO/, 1 1 WONDER WHAT IT" j by Steve Nease TH0U6KT IT WAS CARKEfe HUH?^ Letter of the Week Sylvianne Rivard Craig Immigration editorial missed mark Patrick Bourke