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Te Re > - Lye n A NS ~ ~ », ~~ >. Ws aaa EAE NS Se r= 2m hs L$ -- 2 ER SAE Regional Chairman On December 6, 30 men and women from every corner of Durham Region will gather at the Regional council chambers in Whitby to elect a chairman of the council, a position that has been held by only one man, Walter Beath, since Durham came into being five years ago. Beath got the job initially as an appointment by the provincial government, which set up the Region of Durham under Bill 162. In 1976, he retained the chairman's seat, fighting off two challengers. The job carries with it a salary of $34,500 annum, plus the usual benefits that accompany any job in high public office these days. Although the actual vote is still a week away, both Beath and challenger Allan Pilkey have been work- ing hard to swing enough votes their way. Pilkey, a ten-year veteran of Oshawa municipal politics who has led the aldermanic polls for the past several elections, has a solid core of support from his fellow Regional councillors from Oshawa, possibly as high as nine sure votes out of the 30 that will be cast by the regional councillors. While there are still many councillors who have not yet made up their mind who they will vote for (or at least are not willing to say so openly) the battle between Beath and Pilkey is already starting to form along the same lines that have nagged Durham region since its formation. : The city of Oshawa has complained, loudly at times, that it is not getting its fair share out of Regional government. The other seven municipali- ties that make up Durham, fearful of a possible domination of the Regional scene by the city of Oshawa, have more or less stuck together, and with their 19 collective votes, have frozen the Oshawa group out on more than occasion. There is a great danger that the split on regional council between Oshawa and the seven other muni- cipalities will be exacerbated if the vote for Regional chairman splits along the same lines. And it looks like it will. Some members of Regional council from outside of Oshawa would probably like to support Pilkey for any one of a number of reasons but there is still that fear in their minds that if Pilkey is elected, the balance of power, so to speak would start to swing in favour of Oshawa at the expense of the other seven municipalities. : editorial poge There are of course other factors influencing how regional councillors will vote for their new chair- a lot of ""horse-trading" goes on among members who covet a spot on a certain committee, especially those who have their eye on the chairmanship of a council committee. But the vote for who will be chairman of Durham Region for the next two years is the most crucial one facing the council, and the outcome may very well decide just how successful Durham is as a regional municipality over the next couple of years. The question now is whether Durham has matured enough to function properly and successfully with a member from Oshawa as chairman. Does the old fear of concentration of power still persist? Like- wise, have the members from Oshawa matured enough to accept gracefully the fact that the rest of council refuses to elect one of their own to the man. There are committee positions to be filled, and chairman's job? It is an unfortunate situation, and an unfortunate fact of life for Durham Region, representing what is the greatest weakness of the Regional system of municipal government: namely, how to accomodate and serve on a fair and equitable basis the interests of all eight member municipalities. It is a sheer and simple numbers game. There are 11 votes from the city of Oshawa, and 19 from the other seven municipalities. [If the vote for the chairman follows closely those numbers, one can almost be sure that a lot of votes on important issues during the next two years, are also going to follow the same pattern. And we may see more of the factionalism, parochialism, suspicion and mistrust that so often has bubbled over in the past couple of years. . NOTICE - POSTAGE CoMING | "Whars mar 7 THREE CENTS FOR SERVICE ---- AN' FOURTEEN FOR STORAGE [7° ' bill THEY COME IN THREES If anyone can tell me why disasters run in threes, I'll be happy to listen. And don't think I'm superstitious, because I'm not. I know from experience. During the war, it used to happen on my squadron. We'd lose three pilots in two days, and then none for ten. And then three more. During the peace, it was the same. One night my wife would give me a black eye for some inexplicable reason. The next day, one of the kids would come down with appendicitis or something. And the third day I'd get a parking ticket for parking in the same place I'd parked for weeks, free. Last Saturday was no exception. We were delivering our older car to my daughter in the city. She had finally obtained a position - not a job, mind you - as a secondary school teacher. For one month. But she has to commute for an hour and a half, at each end of the day. That's a pretty hefty commute, especially when you have to cope with two of the wildest boys in Christendom, at each end. So, in her inimitably modest and self- effacing way, she phoned her old man (collect) and suggested he loan her the old Dodge, market value $150, real value about $500, sentimental value about $12,000. This smiley would cut her commuting time to forty minutes. So, in his inimitably stupid way, her old man agreed (why doesn't she move to Vancouver?) And in his ineffably idiotic way, her old man started worrying about her safety. The old Dodge - it's only eleven - requires a combination of jockey and a tractor driver to handle it. So the old man, to cut a long story to ribbons, spent $125 in a check-up and repairs so that his baby wouldn't cream herself on the highway and leave said old man with two grandchildren to raise. Justy hang in there. The saga has barely begun. All you've got so far is background. It gets worser and worser. Saturday morning, Old Lady and self having breakfast before setting off for city to deliver old Dodge. Self breaks tooth while eating toast and jam, leaving him looking like a stand-in for Dracula. However, dentist being the robber barons of the new era, doesn't even phone one. Cheerily sets off for city, tongue flickering like a snake at edges of ruptured tooth. Old Dodge runs down highway like a rocket. Enter city. Enter Disaster Two. On one of busiest thoroughfares, suddenly no brakes. NO brakes. Checked out the day before. Red light comes on. Self, with nerves of steel of old fighter pilot juggles stick judiciously between forward and reverse and comes to rest, unharmed but shaking like a proverbial leaf, against bumper of car on sidestreet. There's only one thing more hair-raising than a car without brakes and that's an aircraft without brakes. I've been through that caper too. But in a car, you can always throw the thing into reverse. You might rip out the transmission, but you'll stop. In an 'aircraft, there ain't no reverse, and you hit the ground at about 100 miles per hour, with several tons of metal. The only brake is the end of the runway, which can be a bit hairy. Anyway, got the old Dodge stopped. A delightful young Englishman, who lives on the quiet sidestreet on which I came to rest, saw my predicament, and gave great aid and comfort. He checked out my master cylinder, which for all I knew, was in the trunk, and there was fluid in it. He suggested I try to make a garage, two blocks away, by driving in low gear, with him driving right ahead to act as a buffer. Tried this and panicked when horns started hooting viciously. ; He took me to the garage, insisted on waiting until I was served, commiserated with me over the $14 towing charge, and took me back to the derelict, where I expected to find my wife literally shaking with rage. At me. Something's happening to her. Ten years ago, in such an incident, she'd have ripped into me with assorted charges of incom- petence, mopery and gawk. But she's mellowed. She merely asked me how things went. When the tow-truck arrived and hoisted our front end high, we both elected to remain in the car. As we sailed majestically off to the garage, I ventured tentatively, "Fun, isn't it?", she grinned, and we were closer than we've been for a while. We suffered a learned exposition from the mechanic, whose favorite word, ironically, was "irony". Not the sort of word mechanics usually toss about. He expoug- ded, "The irony of it is that if I put in a new master cylinder, at about $120, you may still have no brakes, since there may be air in the lines, and I can't bleed the lines because the foofawraw might break if I applied the thingummy. _He went on. "If you still have no brakes, you have a problem." I almost expected him to say, "N'est-ce pas?", the question was so ridiculous. "Of course, you could put in new thanabobs, but they are $12 each, plus labour." Finally, after an hour and a half, we abandoned the thing in the garage and set off on foot with our presents for the kids: a clown suit for Poke, which my wife had labored on with love for two weeks, a bag of apples that weighed twenty pounds, a pair of shoes for Kim, and various miscellaneous articles, all heavy. We made the bus home by the skin of our teeth, after a hectic half hour with the young 'uns. And Distaster Three struck. Overcome by the day's vicissitudes, I fell asleep in front of the TV, cigarette in hand, and burned a hole in the couch, a blanket, and my stomach. Not to mention my wife's new-found mellowness. C'est la vie. They come in three. The Argyle Syndicate Ltd.