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

- s, 5% or aT SL. ~~ Au re . ol SA a a" PPS NE . a Ck Red 2 Wadia a ni BA 2 Na | TREN ae: wt £9 CREE Me Kore OE Aran = $a SNS RS er rat om Tail AY Tt I -- ed It LAR FLV i: i GHG F202 FRNE SAH A 2 LS 9 oh > y 4 OriO\ The Old and The New % As 1978 winds down and the New Year draws closer most people are filled with a small measure at least of hope and optimism. It has been a disappointing year around the globe with the world's trouble spots like the Middle East, Africa and Northern Ireland showing few signs of cooling off. We saw human rights trampled in the Sovret Union, the horror of mass suicide and murder in the jungles of Guyana, civil unrest in Iran, the hardening of relations between the United States and Russia, and the heart-wrenching saga of the "boat people"; refugees that nobody seems to want. We can say goodbye to 1978 knowing that for untold millions of people on this globe, life remains a daily grind filled with poverty, hunger, illness, illiteracy and ignor- ance. Closer to home, Canadians watched their dollar dip on the money markets to a level unknown since the Great Depression. The RCMP, our pride and joy, got a little tarnish on their buttons over unlawful break-ins, and the revelation that the boys in red have been opening mail illegally for years. Inflation remained with us, as did the million or so unemployed. Our Prime Minister threatened to call a summer election, then changed his mind, and got wiped out completely in October 15 by-elections. The Parti Quebecois refused to go away, and the federal government's bilingualism program was officially declared what many had long suspected: an unmitigated disaster. The federal governments and the provinces are bickering as usual over who can tax the consumer how much, and food and gasoline, like just about everything else went up in price. i Yet, despite our problems in Canada, life for the average Canadian in 1978 has never been better. There is work in this country for those who are not afraid of it. Those who are working are being paid well for their labours. Canadians are spending more and saving more, and they are also borrowing more. The standard of living, the quality of life and opportunity is second to no other country on this planet. Canada is not without its problems, serious one to be sure. Looking back on 1978 from a Canadian and global point of view, there appear to be little cause for joy or hope. | The greatest single challenge facing Canadians in 1979 is not whether we can find the solutions, but whether we have the will and courage to stop griping and start looking. The personal esteem that Canadians have for the Prime Minister might not be very high at this moment, but Trudeau is dead right when he implies and says that Canadians are getting soft, that we have become a nation of chronic complainers who don't appreciate the bounty this country has given us. Our collective resolution for 1979 should be to stop complaining and get on with the task of making Canada work. We owe it to oursélves and to a good part of the rest of the world. If people in lands less poge fortunate by far than ours watch a country like Canada fall apart from within, it will provide scant inspiration for those in more troubled areas to work to solve their problems. Canada has a magnificent ~ opportunity to lead by example, and Canadians must not lose this through their own short-sighted follies and lack of internal will. « : bill smiley SOME WEEK Well, its been quite a week. I've been on TV, twice; I've slipped on the ice, fallen and sprained my wrist; and I've had an operation on my nose. I was terrific on TV, or so they tell me. 1 missed it. The chap who did the interview told me when it would appear, and I promptly forgot. 1 called him to ask whether it would be shown again, and he told me when. I made a special trip home at 1 p.m. to see it. It had been shown at twelve noon. My wife was furious. I was just as glad. It I'd seen it, I might have quit my job and run off to Hollywood, there to become just another ambitious starlet, subject to the whims of casting directors and other such vermin. As for spraining my wrist, I wonder if it weren't a psychological ploy. I was halfway through marking the pre-Christmas exams, and my mind was beginning to crack. I'd begun wondering whether the students and I had been reading the same plays and stories. One student, dealing with a story set in South Africa, had a moose involved. A moose. In South Africa. Another informed me that Lady Macbeth, the great, dark murderess of Shakespeare's play, was sweet and kind at first, and we sort of liked her, but she got mean later. Frankly, when I slipped on the ice and fell, I wouldn't be surprised if I deliberately let my wrist fold under me, hoping it would break. At any rate, I whimpered around for several days, claiming I could mark no more papers with a broken wrist, until an unsympathetic doctor informed me it was a mild sprain. I didn't whimper on the operating table. I just groaned and grunted with agony. First, the doctor covered my eyes with various towels and things, so I couldn't see the needle and the scalpel approaching. I gritted my teeth so hard a filling fell out. Ever had a needle in the nose? Don't, if you can help it. Tell them to knock you out with a total. I've had them in every portion of my anatomy, and the nose is Number One, except perhaps for the shot from my dentist in the front upper gum. There is, though, something mildly in- triguing when the doctors says, 'You have very tough skin on your nose, for some reason." This, while he's sewing you up, and snip, snipping the loose ends of plastic thread. The whole thing didn't hurt any more than a smash in the face with a knuckle-duster. At any rate, I'll never again be able to say, scornfully, "It's no skin off my nose." However, I had lots of fun with the nose. I went straight from the operating table back to school, and the students, understandably, were fascinated. "Hoo hitcha, sir?"' Told them they should see the other guy. "Jer wife get violent at THIS hour in the morning?" No, I told them quietly, it happened the night before. "What happened, sir?" "I'had my nose bobbed, Debbie. My wife has been complaining for years that she can't kiss me properly, because of that big nose, so I had a chunk removed." Told another group that my nose had been smashed into ground earthworm texture by the Gestapo in World War II and the steel braces inserted by an eminent British surgeon to give it a semblance of shape had finally rusted, and been removed. To another class I stated solemnly that my big, hooked nose had always bothered me, as being short or fat or riddled with acne bothers other people, that I'd finally decided to do something about it, and that if they could wait until next Monday, when the stitches came out, they'd find I had a charming, turned-up noe with round nostrils through which they could peer and see my brain lurching around. To still another class I suggested that a hyena had escaped from the nearest zoo, pushed in our unlocked cellar window, crept up the stairs in the middle of the night, and bitten off my nose at the roots. A very large bandage on a very large nose made any of these stories acceptable, and the more far-fetched the story, the better it went over. I do believe I received the most compassionate looks from the kids to whoin I suggested that I'd had to have the nose amputated because I'd bent so close to a pound of hamburger, looking for some meat in it, that a rat had leaped out of it, nailed me on the nose, and I'd had to have it cut off because of possible cyrrhosis of the liver from a rat bite. I told them no nose is a good nose, and they agreed. Golly blue, this isn't much of a Christmas column, is it? Oh, well, Christmas is a big pain in the arm, anyway, Beginning as a pagan celebration, it has passed through a spiritual celebration, based on a doubtful birthday of Our Lord Jesus, right back to a pagan rite based on advertising, material- ism, and turkeys, of al} things. Anyway, try to hdve a happy one, everybody, and we'll try to do the same. It's the best we can do in these perilous times. The Argyle Syndicate Ltd. 4 Ge KAA " " remain SH i BES Ah SA se = i SAAR x ie ---- tha cman Eat rt i i ta