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Section Two ) Editorial Comment Long Summer Ahead For F ederal Politicians Somehow, you've got to feel just a little sorry for John Turner. In theory, he's the man in charge of the government. In practice, his hands are tied by so many external factors that are beyond his control. The calling of an election was just one example of what we mean. There was evidence that all parties parties would like to see the nation go to the polls this summer or early fall. But that would have put an end to the royal visit. And it seemed doubtful the new PM would ask Her Majesty to postpone the trip if such a move risked the wrath of many voters looking forward to the tour. Similarly, a visit by Pope John Paul this September could have also forced a delay in the election plans. These were just a few of the factors factors that the new prime minister had to weigh when he made the difficult difficult decision about the timing of the vote. And while it's unfortunate that Canadian politics has collided with the events surrounding a papal and royal visit, we can hardly imagine how Mr. Turner could have followed followed any other course of action. Of course, there are politically partisan reasons for his choice. The new prime minister is enjoying a crest of popularity which accompanies accompanies every new party leader, and the Liberals are at the top of the public opinion polls. The Liberal leader must be aware that a thousand and one economic or political setbacks could alter this strength. Unemployment could rise, the dollar could continue its plunge down the economic elevator shaft. The future is always uncertain, uncertain, the present looks promising. So why wait to call an election when you cannot guess what the future holds? Of course, there are less partisan reasons for going ahead with a vote. For one thing, neither party has a leader which has taken his political platform before the public for scrutiny by the citizenry of Canada. Until this democratic process occurs occurs we cannot say we have a truly elected government. Delaying an election would only turn Mr. Turner into a caretaker for the old regime. And whether an election date was formally established established or not, the entire summer would turn into a campaign by all parties. An early vote tidies up loose ends and guarantees a quick verdict from the public on the merits of each party, their leaders, and candidates. There's yet another reason why a decision might have been made to hold an election this September rather than in the late fall. We are referring, of course, to the proximity of the U.S. and its own election for the presidency. Canadians, Canadians, by force of habit, tend to pick up American likes,"dislikes, and general opinions. If we were to see a Canadian election in'progress alongside an American election, we'd find it difficult to obtain a truly Canadian consensus. Instead, we'd get a Canadian reflection of trends occurring across the border. So, in the interest., .of an independent independent outcome uncluttered by events in the U.S., Mr. Turner had to act now and send the voters to the polling booths. Like high interest rates and the falling dollar, the dilemma over calling an election is really the result result of actions taken by a government government which he had no part in leading. leading. Of course, that knowledge doesn't help in the making of a decision. Nor will it make Turner's choice popular with those who feel his first obligation was not to politics but to the Canadian Sovereign. There's little in the decision which will interfere with the papal visit. But the cancellation of a tour by Queen Elizabeth will be more than some voters can stand. They will suggest that the Queen should supercede mere party politics. They will claim that the whole matter matter reveals Canada to be a country heedless of its roots and ignorant of the need for tradition. They will complain over the time and money wasted in planning the trip. They will suggest that it is only an ill- mannered republic which would keep a queen waiting, while the mobs run about wildly with posters, banners, bands, speeches, and all the tinsel of a political campaign. From what one hears about Turner's trip to England, it seems as though the British press felt the prime minister had his priorities wrong. A number of Canadians will agree and they will punish him at the polls. It must be one of the most difficult decisions ever made by a new political political leader in Canada. The outcome will influence not only the political fortunes of John Turner but also the future of the Liberal dynasty built by his predecessor predecessor over the past 16 years. Canada's politicians are in for a long, hot summer. Newer Isn't Always Better If we were living in Europe or England, England, we wouldn't think twice about being surrounded by buildings buildings over a hundred years old. But, as citizens of a relatively new country, we tend to believe that it's the rtew buildings which, are best. Or, at least until recently. Lately, there's a little less rush towards tearing down architectural history and replacing it with the latest architectural fad in glass or concrete. We're beginning to think seriously about renovating and rebuilding rebuilding the old rather than immediately immediately building somethingnew. It's a trend that has been popular in Toronto for many years as yesterday's yesterday's warehouses and factories have become today's apartments, shops, and offices. And recent developments in Oshawa prove that this is more than just a big-city trend. For instance, the Knob Hill Farms project has transformed an aging factory into the world's largèst food store. The Central Lake Ontario Conservation Conservation Authority proved last week that renovation of old buildings can also suit the public sector. x CLOCA's new home has become the old Robson Lang Tannery building located in a scenic Oshawa valley. It appears to be an excellent use for one of the Durham Region's most historic buildings. One can imagine imagine that just a few shortyears ago, the same building would have been demolished for one of those newer structures possibly resembling a child's collection of building blocks. There are many advantages to renovating renovating the old. For one thing, there may be some money saved in this process. And, for another, there's the preservation of Canada's Canada's heritage. All of these thoughts should be seriously considered here in Bow- manville. @lje (ïïanaîdan Statesman 623-3303 (Jcna Durham County's Great Family Journal Established 130 years ago In 1854. Also Incorporating The Bowmanville News The Newcastle Independent The Orono News Second class mall registration number 1561 Produced every Wednesday by THE JAMES PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED 62-66 King SI, W., Bowmanville, Ontario L1C 3K9 1 I D 0 lb JOHN M. JAMES Editor -- Publisher GEO. P. MORRIS Business Mgr. BRIAN PURDY Advertising Mgr. RICHARD A. JAMES Assistant Publisher DONALD BISHOP Plant Mgr. All layouts and composition of advertisements produced by the employees ol The Canadian Statesman, The Newcastle Independent and The Jamos Publishing Company Limited are protected by copyright and must not bo reproduced without written permission of Iho publishers. $15.00 n year -- 6 months $6.00 strictly In advance foreign ~ $45.00 a year Although uvoiy prnr.nution will ho t.ikon to nvoul i-rror, Iho Canadian Statesman accepta advertising m its columns on Urn understanding that it will not he liable 1er any emir in the advertisement published hereunder unless a proof ol such advertisement is reguested in wilting hy the advertiser and returned to Hie Canadian Statesman business office duly signed hy Hie advertiser and with such eimr m corrections plainly noted m writing thereon, and in that case If any error so noted is not corroded hy the Canadian Slate 1 ,man its l-abiiity shall not ext eod such ,i portion ol the entire cost ol such 'idverli'.lmenl as Pin space occupied t>v the noted error tie.as lu the whole space occupied hy such 1 advertisement Floral Antennae SUGAR and SPICE What Wealth ! | Garage sales are quite the'fad these days. Many people make them part of their lives. They troop around town watching for handmade handmade signs and check the ads in the classified section. Drive around any small town and you'll see a cluster of cars, in front of a house. "Must be a wedding or a funeral," you muse. Then you see a pile of junk with a hoard of human magpies darting around it, snatching snatching up bits, beating each other to another heap of rubble, like sea gulls, diving and screeching for a Slice of french-fried spud. It's no wedding. There are no vows exchanged, except that you takes what you gets, "for better or for worse." It's no funeral, except for those who pay six bucks for something that cost three ten years ago. It's a garage sale. This phenomenon resembles a mini-auction sale minus the auctioneer. auctioneer. The garage sale allows the proprietor (often abetted by some of his neighbors) to get rid of all the Byline... By Peter Parrott Ancient England had its wars of the roses and nowadays, here in the Durham Region, we're witnessing a floral battle battle of a different kind between municipalities. municipalities. So far, it's the marigold versus the rose but judging by the speed with which municipalities municipalities are proclaiming proclaiming their official flowers flowers we could soon see a whole garden-full of flora joining the fray. The whole purpose of the battle is publicity. The first shot in this war was fired by Whitby which has a marigold as its official flower. It was about a month ago that our neighbours in the town to the west brought forth tiny marigold flowers which were printed to cloth patches that could be easily stuck to lapels. Around places such as Durham's regional council sod-turnings, ribbon-cuttings, banquets, banquets, and other customary customary habitats of elected officials I began to see marigolds blooming. Wherever you saw a marigold on a lapel, you knew that some official from the Town of Whitby was not far away, Just when I thought the marigold mania would die down, Oshawa counter-attacked. counter-attacked. This being the sixtieth anniversary of the city, it seems as though officials decided decided they needed to flaunt their floral emblem. Voila! along came the little patches that stick to the lapel and bear the likeness of a red rose. Not surprisingly, the marigolds of Whitby are making a com. eback. Some lapels can be seen with both flowers. flowers. With two municipalities municipalities placing their official official flowers in conspicuous conspicuous places, it won't be long before the floral warfare spreads to other towns and townships. I can , foresee the Town of Newcastle ordering ordering a few cartons of apple-blossom decals. If Ajax, Pickering, Scugog, and all the other regional municipalities municipalities haven't yet adopted their civic plant, they will have to act quickly. People with suit lapels resembling botanical botanical gardens will soon be visible at council council chambers, ribbon- cuttings, banquets and other haunts of local politicians, Wide lapels will be making a comeback, comeback, Not to be outdone by its member municipalities, municipalities, the Durham Region Region will be looking for an official flower it can call its own. No doubt there will be many suggestions, suggestions, but one which catches my fancy is the climbing taxus. Letter to Editor Mrs. Donna Fletcher, 28 Rhonda Boulevard, Bowmanville, Ontario. June 27,1984. The Durham Regional Police, Administrative Office, 77 Centre Street, Oshawa, Ontario. Dear Sir or Madame: Early Monday morning, around 1 a.m. I was eastbound on Taunton Road, about one quarter mile past Townline Road, when the rigid front tire blew out on my car. My two children were asleep in the car and my husband was out of town at the time. Not knowing where to turn, I walked down to a telephone bootli at the four corners and called the Police to enquire about some all night gas station that might be able to assist me. The officer that answered told me that he would send someone to speak with me. By the time 1 had walked back to the car, there were two police cars and four policemen ready to assist me. They worked quickly filling up my inflatable spare and installing installing it on the car, having me salcly on my way within ten or fifteen minutes. I would just like to lake this opportunity to thank "The Men in Blue" for a job well done. It's nice to know there is a friendly helping hand out there when you really need it! .Sincerely yours, Donna Flelclior useless items overflowing the gar-. age, the tool-shed, the basement and the attic. It sometimes brings in two or three hundred dollars to the vendors, vendors, and the garage-sale groupies go home all excited, because they have bought a three-legged chair, a horse-drawn sleigh, an umbrella with only one spoke missing, or six paperback novels for a dollar. One of my contemporaries, an habituée of these bizarre events, was more than a bit thunderstruck when he found at one sale that he could buy text-books from our school, duly stamped as such, dirt cheap. He remonstrated with the owners, pointing out that the books belonged to the school and had been stolen by their children, but they'd have none of it. They wanted cash. So much for human nature. These were taxpayers who had helped buy the books their kids had stolen, and now wanted to sell them back to the system so that other kids could stel the books they were still paying taxes for. May I digress for a moment? Kids do steal books. Regularly. They don't considerate it 'stealing.' It's just taking something from a big institution. institution. That's not stealing, according according to about fifty per cent of them. It's just like Dad not declaring declaring something on his income tax or Mom ordering a dress from Eaton's, wearing it to a party, then taking it back to the mail order office and returning it, claiming it was "too small" or had smudge marks in the armpits (after she'd discoed in it for four hours.) They wouldn't steal from a friend. They might steal from their parents but they have no compunction about ripping off' a department store or the government. This is fact, not fancy, as I've learned in discussions about morals. Back to the garage sales. There is no suggestion of stealing here. Both parties, buyer and seller, are perfectly perfectly aware of what's going on. The seller is trying to get rid of something something he doesn't need. The buyer is buying something he doesn't need. It's a classic example of our materialistic age. We want to get rid of some of the garbage we've bought, and the buyer wants to buy some more garbage. The epitome of a garage-sale- groupie would be a person who goes to four garage sales, buys a lot of junk, then has a garage sale to dispose dispose of it, preferably with a small mark-up. But they're.fun. A friend of mine, who'll make a bid on anything, even though he doesn't know what it's for, has bought two old-fashioned horse- drawn sleighs. He has worked on them until they are serviceable. All he needs now is a couple of beasts to haul the things. He'll probably wind up with a camel and a Shet- . land pony (and will make a fortune hauling people around when we run out of gas.) ; Well, I wish I'd had a garage sale this spring. First, I'd have sold the garage, a venerable institution. None of this electronic eye, or press a button and the door opens. It has a vast door, weighing about eight hundred pounds. You hoist the door and it slides on pulleys and cables, and at the right moment, on a good day, it stops rising just at the height to tear off your radio antennae. antennae. The balances, filled with sand, aren't quite enough from crashing down on your hood, but I've fixed that. To one, I've added an axe- , head, to the other, a quart of paint. -> Perfect balance. A real buy. Behind the garage is a sort of tool shed. I say "sort of', because when I've sailed into the garage on a slippery slippery mid-winter day, I've sometime gone an extra foot and crashed into the tool shed, which now leans about thirty-eight degrees to the north. I'll throw in the tool shed with the garage, but not its contents. Migawd, the stuff in there would bug the eyes of either an antique dealer or a garage-groupie. I have garden tools in there that haven't been used since Sir John A. MacDonald's wife told him to get his nose out of that glass and go out and stir up the garden. I have at least four perfectly good tires for a 1947 Dodge. I have enough holy tarpaulin (or is it holey? I've never known) to build at theatre under the stars. There's a perfectly good set of golf clubs, a wee bit rusty. There's a three-legged three-legged garden tool that must have come over with Samuel de Champlain. Champlain. There's a three-wheeled lawnmower (mechanic's special). Six hundred feet of garden hose that a little adhesive would fix. And many more, too miscellaneous miscellaneous to mention. And that's only the tool shed, Inside the house, there are eight tons of books, left by my children. The attic is going to come right through to the kitchen, one of these days, How about a copy of Bhagavadgita, 1,000 pages, at $1.00? Man, I wish I'd got this idea off the ground about two months ago? Anyone interested in an iron crib, sides go up and down, filled with three hundred dollars worth of broken broken toys, exotic paintings, some records records and a bag of marbles? Who needs to retire, with all this wealth lying around?