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

■ 2 - Orono Weekly Times, Wednesday, January 28,2004 Subscriptions $29.91 + $2.09 GST = $32.00 per year. Publications Mail Registration No. 09301 • Agreement No. 40012366 Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs." Orono Weekly Times' 5310 Main Street, P.O. Box 209, Orono, Ontario LOB 1M0 Email: oronotimes@speedline.ca • Phone/Fax.905-983-5301 Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles aré those of the writers and do not necessarily 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. Help along the way Not enough is said about those people who stop to help motorists in distress along the road. On two occasions last weekend I was a motorist stranded on the side of the road. But, as has been my past experience, I wasn't stranded for long. Let it be said that those of us who don't own cell phones and drive older model cars (which do have a tendency to break down more frequently than their newer counterparts), wholeheartedly wholeheartedly appreciate the good Samaritans who go out of their way to offer assistance to a broken down motorist. On Friday evening on my way home from work, the clutch on my vehicle quit functioning when I turned onto the 5th Concession. I wasn't long limping down the 5th with my four way flashers on, when a car passed me, went up to Pollard Road, turned around and caught up to me again. The driver rolled down his window and asked if I needed help. Once I parked the vehicle, the young man and his partner drove me back to the shop. On the trip back to the village I learned my rescuers were the couple who lived in the former Barlow funeral funeral home on Park Street here in town. They dropped me off and went on their way. Thank you! The next day, Saturday, Billy McLean asked me if I wanted to take my camera along for a parts run to Peterborough. Just past Millbrook, the van which hadn't generated any heat by that time, blew the head gasket and we were stuck on the side of the highway. We weren't there for five minutes in the bitter cold before two vehicles had pulled off ahead of us, and backed up to see if We needed assistance. The first, a woman and her daughter who were on their way to Peterborough, immediately offered to take us right to our destination. Along the way we found out she is Gord Hardy's sister Bonnie from Pontypool. Bonnie says she always stops to help stranded motorists, bless her heart. We tend to hear so often about the negative side of society, it is good to know that there are still many people out there who will go out of their way to see if help is needed. Thank you. Stronach a potential spark plug Alliance Harper, Minister Clement, The leadership of the newly minted Conservative Party is about to get a lot more exciting. As it stands we have three candidates for the position position of leader: Canadian leader Stephen former Ontario of Health Tony and Magna President Belinda Stronach. It's surprising that so few have decided to give becoming becoming the leader a shot. To be honest, a lot of us expected at least a few more candidates. Take Chuck Strahl, for instance, who lead the coalition coalition Democratic Caucus when Stockwell Day lost face as leader of the Alliance. Strahl complained about the expense of entering the Conservative Party leadership contest: a $50,000 deposit, plus another $50,000 just to run. That's a total bill of $100,000 something that, for most of us, is not exactly within within reach. So Strahl is having second thoughts about running. running. So, too, did Jim Prentice rethink his leadership bid. Saying that corporate Canada had been financially exhausted exhausted by the relatively recent federal federal Progressive Conservative leadership race, the Ontario election, as well as the federal Liberal leadership race, the Calgary lawyer decided to withdraw his nomination. Even so, the entrance of Belinda Stronach is bound to make this race a little more exciting. Part of the excitement has to do with a simple mystery: where does Stronach stand? Stronach has been running Magna International, a seller of auto parts, and earning $9 million per year for some time now. Although she has begun to make some of her policy preferences known (public health care, lower taxes, support support for civil unions, etc.), we just don't have enough information information to see just how deep those commitments run. Similarly, we're not very clear on just what kind of a leader she might be. Although she seems to be running Magna effectively, we just don't know what sort of internal internal structure Magna has--is she constantly being relied upon to run the show, or is she a second thought? Finally, Stronach is a woman, hails from Ontario, and doesn't come with either Progressive Conservative or Canadian Alliance baggage. All three of those things could add up to quite a bit of electability here in Ontario, the province that has handed the Liberals victory after victory. victory. If someone were to make a dent in Ontario, they would be well positioned to make inroads everywhere else. JAWORSKI continued p»ge 4 Letter to the Editor Open letter to MPP John O'Toole Dear Mr. O'Toole, Recently, the papers have been filled with news of the inappropriate behaviours of many of our police officers. I'm thinking especially of the alleged atmosphere of racial malice preceding the killing of Mr. Dudley George. The officers presently being brought up on charges surrounding drug-related mat ters are another case in point. It would be foolish for me to pretend to understand the complexities of law-enforcement. law-enforcement. Much of the outcome of painstaking work which delivers delivers very poor results must give rise to a certain rage of futility on many occasions. For this very reason, we desperately need our police officers to have in the very marrow of their bones a clear understanding of what it means to live in our magnificent magnificent Canadian society. We are a concensus-building people. We consider our citizens to be innocent until proven guilty. We value very highly our civil liberties, and, particularly on the national level, our civil liberties arc at risk. At the provincial level we rely heavily heavily on the work of our police O'TOOLE continued page 4