The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

2 - Orono Weekly Times 1937 - 2012 · Celebrating 75 Years Subscriptions $42.86 + $2.14 GST = $45.00 per year. No Refunds. Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund for our publishing activities." Wednesday, June 13, 2012 ORONO WEEKLY TIMES - 5310 Main St., P.O. Box 209, Orono, ON L0B 1M0 E-mail: oronotimes@rogers.com or Phone/Fax: 905-983-5301 Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart Production and Display Advertising - Roxanne Johnston Classified/Sports The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Orono Weekly times. Letters must be signed and contain the address and phone number of the writer. Any letter considered unsuitable will not be acknowledged or returned. We reserve the right to edit for length, libel and slander. If your retail or classified ad appears for the first time, please check carefully. Notice of an error must be given before the next issue goes to print. The Orono Weekly Times will not be responsible for the loss or damage of such items. Reassessing Canada's reputation by Tracy Tonkinson Anyone reading news reports about Canada in the last few weeks could be forgiven for reassessing Canada's reputation as the land of the eternally polite and level headed. The bizarre news cycle began with the international manhunt for Luka Magnotta, a self-styled gay porn star also known variously as Vladimir Romanov, Mattia Del Santo or Kirk Trammel, but raised in Lindsay as Eric Clinton Kirk Newman. Magnotta killed his Chinese lover and then mailed the body parts, to schools in British Columbia and political parties in Ottawa, before hoofing it to Europe where he was finally arrested at an internet café by police in Berlin, Germany. Next came the gang related gunning down of more than half a dozen shoppers at the Eaton Centre foodcourt, resulting in two deaths. Bad as that was, the behaviour of the mindless idiots clogging Yonge Street and mugging for the news cameras as the police tried to clear the crime scene and track down the assassin, was a shocking example of how much common sense, and respect for the law, has evaporated in Toronto the Good. The only truly good news was that the 13 year old boy from Port Hope, who was shot in the head in the attack by Christopher Husbands,was well enough to leave hospital at the weekend and go home to his family. On Monday the madness continued when police in Ottawa charged two fifteen year old girls with human trafficking, forceable confinement and running a prostitution ring consisting of fellow teens; a first for Canadian law enforcement and a new low for human decency. And as you might not be surprised to hear our politicians have not exactly covered themselves in glory this month either. Toronto CityCouncil, lead as it is by a pair of siblings that make circus clowns look like intellectual titans, has taken so many missteps since the last municipal election that no one can be even slightly surprised at the mind numbingly stupid decision to not only scrap the nominal charge made by stores for plastic carrier bags, but to completely ban plastic bags altogether, something that is utterly unenforceable in the real world. Of course, there is already a court case pending to challenge this latest act of vacuity by Toronto City Council which will no doubt cost the tax payers a thousand times more than the plastic bags ever could. Closer to home Durham Regional Council joined in this festival of insanity by deciding to go ahead with digging an even bigger financial hole for tax payers by voting to borrow yet more money that will be paid to Covanta, the company responsible for supplying the Region with an incinerator that opponents at the council meeting this week claim will be surplus to requirement before it is even completed. And finally, on Parliament Hill later this week, the 420 page Bill C38, which was intended to push through so many reforms at once that it was obviously hoped the bill would evade close scrutiny and be rubber stamped by the opposition, was subject to 159 amendments allowed by the house leader. To wade through this mammoth bill will take at least 24 hours of voting on the hill before it passes. The Government claims the Opposition is holding the country's prosperity to ransom and the Opposition claims they are holding the Government's feet to the flames in the name of democracy. To the rest of the world Canada must seem a baffling place right now. Here at home, used as we are to some bizarre antics and outlandish behaviours, June has been a wild month already and it is not even half way done yet. From The House At The Centre Of The Universe Making news in the obits column of The Times by Tracy Tonkinson Timing in the news gathering business is everything. Being a weekly newspaper means that try as hard as we might here at the Orono Times, and we do try hard, we sometimes miss some interesting stuff. For instance, if the great tornado of 2012 had touched down in Orono 30 minutes earlier we might have had time to acquire a photograph and even a story. As it was nature was late and our deadline was pressing, so no tornado for us. This week the Toronto Star announced that a "mentalist", or to the rest of us, magician, had correctly predicted Saturday's newspaper front page 10 days before The Star went to print with it. Now that's a gift some of us here at the Orono Times wish we had. How much easier would it be if we could close our eyes and picture the whole paper a week ahead of time; we would never miss a thing. It's the same with life. Here at the House news is sometimes on a slow burn. Our new orchard is planted but it will be a year before we get fruit. The bat house is installed but the blurb on the packaging warns that it could be a year before the bats decide to take up residence and the long awaited garage, well we have plans, but we still have to put them in to the town and then wait until we get the thumbs up to build it. This weird juxtaposition of the hurry up and wait of life applies to many things. Anyone that has ever had a family member in hospital knows what it's like to be in the slow motion waiting around atmosphere of a medical facility while the rest of the world is rushing about its business at breakneck speed. Ask a child how long they had to wait to for their birthday or Christmas and they will say, "forever", ask an adult about how their year went and they will tell you it flew by. The truth is that time is relative. That great pointy head, Albert Einstein made his name on revealing that Time was no longer uniform and absolute but depended on where you were and what was going on around you. The older I get the more time seems to bear down on me. When I was 20 years old it seemed like I had a lifetime to write and nothing to write about. At 40 it was all about parenting and family and now at 52 it seems to me MAKINGNEWS see page 6 Correction In last week's editorial we erroneously stated the Doors Open Clarington even was organized by the Clarington Heritage Committee. Doors Open Clarington is an event managed by our local Doors Open Committee which is comprised of representatives from local organizations and community members. The two organizations who founded Doors Open Clarington are Architectural Conservancy of Ontario Clarington Branch and Clarington Museums and Archives. We regret the error.