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2 The Canadian Satesmpn, Bowmanville, May 24. 1978 Section Two First Big Well, dear old late lamented Queen Victoria certainly came through in grand style for her holiday on Monday, after an extremely shaky start on Saturday, when the rains took their toll. And a great many people took advantage of the long weekend to hit the roads to see what was going on somewhere other than home. Ail in all, it probably was a productive weekend for most, with a combination of work and play. The fast-growing grass was cut, storm windows removed, gardening start- ed and the house inspected for repairs that will be required before another winter rolls around. From the appearance of the crowded highways, cottage owners, and there must be many of them, spent the weekend looking at wrecked docks, uncovered their boats and otherwise began the process of preparing for summer weekends ahead. The weather warmed up considerably, bringing out the pesky black flies in throngs to make life miserable. Several of the staff showed up Tuesday morning gingerly making their entrance with red faces and burned shoulders. No doubt the blisters will follow in due course as the first burn of the season subsides to be replaced by tan. The baseball season began here in We Know S Ln this age of electronic brains and manned flight to the moon there is a general iea, abroad that human knowledge has just about reached the ultimate. True, there are still a few diseases to be unravelled, but most of us are confident that we will have all the answers in the foreseeable future. Perhaps it is a good thing to be reminded once in a while that we're not as smart as we think we are. The people of the ancient world, long before the dawn of recorded history, were achieving tremendous works that scientists have been trying to understand for centuries and we still don't know why and iow those great engineers of the past expended such energy on monuments which are still standing. On Salisbury Plain in southern England stands a vast circle of stones, some of them in upright positions to act as pillars, atop which lie the lintels or cap stones, many feet above the earth. The smallest of these great stones weighs ruany tons and the nearest point at which it could have been quarried is many miles to the west. How did people who had not even learned the usefulness of the wheel manage to bring them to the site and what feats were required to lift the cap stones to the tops of the pillars? The experts are still widely divided in opinion about the purpose of the entire monument. They are not sure whether Stonehenge was a temple or an astronomic device by which the movements of the sun and stars could be measured and predicted. At Carnac in Brittany there is a great area, stretching for more than two miles across the countryside It is unfortunate if the Royal Commission on Corporate Concen- tration is tainted by accusations of bias. Because its members were considered, from the day the commission was appointed by' Prime Minister Trudeau in 1975, to have a vested interest in their subject, a number of urgent reforms now stand to be.ignored. The commission has concluded, principally, that mergers of large companmes can be just as effectively policed after the event as before it, that capital gains tax should be taxed only as and when they pass into the hands of the shareholders. Reactionary as all this may seem to the champions of bureaucratic supervision, there can be no doubt in anybody's mind that if the principal recommendations were followed the Weekend ( earnest on Monday with Bowman- ville Merchants coming through with a win over Port Hope Flyers. The Merchants, sporting flashy new uniforms, welcomed His Worship Mayor Rickard who threw the opening ball a bit wide of the plate to get the game underway. At the same time, Newcastle Village's new senior team, the Lakers, were taking on the Kendal Eagles with a good crowd on hand at Jackson Memorial Park. At the moment, we don't have the final score but anticipate keen rivalry in future encounters. Probably the biggest sports event of the weekend was the Sunday hockey game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins that began with a brawling first period and then went on to be a superb battle with Les Canadiens tying it with about 30 seconds left in the third. Happily for Bruins' fans, they scored in the overtime to even the series at two games apiece. So, we say farewell to the first big holiday weekend of the summer season and look forward to the ones ahead. Now, it's back to the grind to fill up the pages, write the stories about the weekend happenings and print the pictures, so everything will e completed in time to meet the ever present publication deadlines. o Very Litte which contains more than three thousand vertical stones as large as those at Stonehenge. Best guess is that they were used as a sort of enormous graph paper to observe the positions of heavenly bodies at various times of the year. But no one knows for sure. It is said that the Great Pyramid in Egypt presents engineering problems of construction which even today's comDuters could not solve. Moôs o1 the ancient laiguages have been deciphered. Some, such as Greek and Latin are known to have provided the foundations for the languages that are spoken today in the western world. But the Etruscans, who lived a short distance north of Rome spoke a tongue so complex that it has never yielded its secrets to modern man. The pyramids and temples of the ancient civilizations in Central American tells us that a people of tremendous mental capabihties liv- ed in that part of the world, but there is no clear picture of how they could achieve such marvels of architec- ture. On Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean stand hundreds of huge stone heads, carved, transported and erected by a forgotten people. They must have had some reason for the vast amount of time and energy required to place these grotesque markers, but what was it? Yes, we are very smart. Science tells us that the sum total of human knowledge has doubled in the last 20 years - and that it will double again in the next five or ten. That is a statement with which we might take issue, for it is very evident that they still do not know very much about the wisdom of the past. - Wingham Advance-Times Bethany Sports Day Tug-of-War 'Ardf» " and . ic stay alive, and the knowledge that once we're over the hump, about February 20, the worst lies behind., Even rotten March has its compensations: Easter, worst of the winter over, March break, and only one or two more snowstorms to survive. Then comes cruddy April. There's nothing to do out of doors. Curling and sking are finished, and it's too early for golf and fishing. Nothing to do outside except catch a cold in that frigid wind blowing off the ice in the bay. It's a dirty month. There's salt and sand and mud-on the streets, to be tracked into the house. It's a pain in the arm for housewives. That lousy yellow sun peers insolently through the windows, illuminating dirty panes, smeared wallpaper, spots on the rug, stains on the chairs, and well-fingered woodwork, none of which showed up in the dear dark days of winter. The home-maker's heart sinks. Male homeowners are just plain embarrassed as the snow in- perceptibly melts, revealing all manner of junk on front and back lawn. This year I watched with growing dismay the surfacing of four daily papers, in their yellow plastic wrappers on the front lawn, where some turkey kid had thrown them when there was four feet of snow on said area. quite plainly supports the notion of continued public scrutiny of Canadian corporations, though it appeals for less strident insistence on the social obligations of corpora- tions, to the detriment of their primary purpose. It has some pithy comments to make on the vagaries of the chartered banks (even though one commissioner, Pierre Nadeau, chairman and chief executive offic- er of Petrofina Canada Ltd., is also a director of the Royal Bank of Canada) especially with regard to their role in the financing of small enterprises. If credibility is threatened, the threat does not come from the recommendations them- selves. The commission was established to investigate the social and economic effects of the concentra- tion of corporate power in a small number of hands. The commission finds, simply, that such concentra- tion is a fact of economic life today and threatens no adverse effects that cannot be dealt with through the existing political processes. We have nothing to fear and much to gain by freeing the country's business and industry to work for the economy and the people rather then for big overnent -Examiner Then up crept one disgusting item after another. Lawnmower peeping first its head, then rusty body out of the snow, a reminder of how I was caught short again last November by the first fall. Picnic chairs, lurching out of the shrinking drifts like a couple of old winos, decrepit, falling apart, disgusting. Fragments of Christmas tree, swept up, minced and thrown all over the lawn by the snowplow in early January. A stack of newspapers, put out with the garbage in February, picked up by that same monster during a blizzard, chewed up and hurled into three-pound lumps all over the place, each solidly frozen into the ice, salt and sand.' Last fall's oak leaves, caught on the ground by the first snowstorm, about three inches thick, looking, about as appetizing as the meat in a particularly repellent shepherd's pie. April is also a rough month on teachers. If the sun is shining, however feebly,' students gasp wildly, pretend they're dying of heat, throw all the classroom windows wide to the 40 degree breeze that spells bronchial pneumonia to the less hotblooded pedant. For university students about to graduate, April is hellish. Final exams loom like the Furies of old, and all the procrastination begins to catch up. And these days, 90 per cent of them are quite convinced they won't get a job on graduation. Speaking of nothing to do outside, as I was away back there, there is nothing to do inside either. Unless you like to watch large, young, sweaty, overpaid athletes smash each other into the boards, as the pro hockey playoffs wend their way wearily toward the finals. This year, April was worse than usual, with a thousand windbags expelling their contents into the air about an upcoming election. Suddenly ail sorts of people who couldn't care less whether you got ingrown toenails or fell into a cess-pool, began showing great friendliness and sincerity, a genuine concern about your point of view and how you would vote. And I think the month of April is pretty well brought to its climax by the income tax return, due on the last day of that miserable month. I always feel that I've been beaten, raped, and left naked by the side of the road, when that ordeal is over. It doesn't cheer me up much to look around and see ail the people diddling the unemployment insurance, all the former students now fairly affluent, who never paid back their student loans. Looking back, ail I can say is that April is Awful. Thank goodness for May. Not to mention Pearly, Ruby and Mabel. economic climate in Canada would change dramatically for the better. ly for the better. Indeed, falling as it does upon a national ambivalence of ideals that has discouraged capital formation at home and sent massive blocks of capital scurrying to more predict- able places, the report should strike Ottawa almost as the answer to a politician's prayer. What the Royal Commission advocates after all, is nothing more complicated than that the govern- ment of Canada put its money where its mouth is, and invest in private enterprise. Instead of raking money off the top to fund programs of proven futility, that is, leave the money where it can - as it has always done in the past when given the chance - generate the kind of Poet T.S. Eliot once wrote: "April is the cruellest month." I don't know about that - November is no slouch in this country, when it comes to cruelty - but April is certainly no bargain around here. It's a sort of zilch month. Ail the other m9oths have some character, except aforesaid November. They're either something to make you look forward with anticipation, backward with relief, or to just plain enjoy. May is golf and fishing and grass greening and flowers blooming. June is the first heat wave, lilac scent, mosquitoes, and summer just ahead. July and August are summer in all its glory, hot dogs, swimming, camping, baseball, trips, summer theatre, family reunions, cottaging. September is a glorious month, usually. Warn enough, everybody getting back into the groove, new schoolmates, new interests, new friends, new follies to commit oneself to. October is great: sharp air, fresh produce, golden sun, football, magificent foliage, Thanksgiving weekend. Let's skip ruddy November. But December is exciting with fresh snow, Christmas with all its ramifi- cations, holidays coming up, families getting together. January and February are brutal but challenging. We're right into the curling and sking, the daily battle tn industrial and commercial activitv, not to mention investor confidence, the country so badly needs. Instead of talking about economic growth, invest in it. That is not to say that giving effect to recommendations of the commis- sion would be that simple. There is no difficulty so far as capital gains tax is concerned: it is administra- tively awkward andbrings only $250 million a year to the federal treasury. Its removal could gener- ate far more than that: Corporation taxes are less simple: they account for about 20 per cent of the national revenue, and the Royal Commission is not helpful on the matter of replacing that lost revenue. Never- theless, changing that particular tax law would be a huge incentive to re-investment of corporate earnings in activities providing employment for Canadians. These ideas warrant careful examination by a country in need of bold economie initiatives. In the prevailing climate of uncertainty, the -Royal Commis- sion's report ought to be taken at face value. Any doubts as to its impartiality can be settled on the merits of the recommendations themselves. The commission does not advocate licence. Its report Dear Editor, Press disclosure of the high-handed proceedings of elected representatives of the Northumberland and New- castle Board of Education is to be commended. We give this Board responsibility for upholding standards of education in our schools, and they make salarie (including their own) their priority. Their "shame" is not so much in holding the meeting unpublicized as in the fact of the salary increases they sanctioned at that meeting. And, they have formed another committee "to continue the study begun by the committee regarding compensation and benefits of senior officials!" why should there be any increases? What more are these officials likely to contribute for the given increase? With all the profes- sionals they have employed at taxpayers' expense, these officials should have less and less to do and now with enrolment down, the number of teachers reduced, and some classrooms closed, their duties are surely lessened. We are burdening our youth with impossible taxation and not ensuring they are adequately trained to meet their problems. It is high time our repre- sentatives - Board of Education, municipal, provincial, and federal - take seriously their responsibility to control their shameful spending and consequent inflation. Signed Alarmed Dear Editor, Thoughts Before An Election We now know that there will be a little time to think of some certain issues seriously before the country goes to the polls and the political parties and candidates go on the husting trail. What is the situation on Capital Hill now? We have a Prime Minister that seems to be playing games with the public as well as the "honorable members." When he is stuck for an answer directed to him in the question period, he is just as likely to pick up his brief case and walk out rather than struggle. What about the cabinet and the Senate? Many are from the Province of Quebec. There should be more represent- atives of the rest of the country. The government is now more like a bureaucracy than a democratic system. When an election comes, it should be kept ini mind the background of the candidate rather than the party. Some- thing to be looked into is religious beliefs. The country is such a mess today that the guidance of the Divine will have to be sought. Human brains cannot straighten out all the problems. Economics is also involved. There should be fewer conces- sions to government officials such as that of obtaining a liquor at a discount. There should be less borrowing from other countries. If the same principles were applied to the independent business concern, that company would be forced to declare bankruptcy. Finally, it is said that a drowning man grabs at a straw. With more time to think, perhaps the proverbial straw can be substantial and the country can still be saved for our grandchildren. Nettie Aiken Pontypool, Ontario Lousy April Corporate Power Letters to the Editor