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

editorial poge Here We Go, Again It is an issue that seems to pop up at least once every year; the need for some kind of review of Durham Region, the municipality which takes in eight area municipalities including Scugog Town- ship. Last week, the Durham council got on the familiar band-wagon once again by agreeing to set up a nine-member committee to study all aspects of Bill 162, and hold public meetings in all eight of the area municipalities. While there probably is a need for some kind of review of Durham at this time, one can't help but suspect that this committee will turn info something of a travelling road-show, and *he final outcome will be nothing more than an exercise in futility. Although the terms of reference are broad and the time frame for a final report from the committee by February next year too short, taking the commit- tee on the road 'into the area municipalities may nonetheless have some advantage; public exposure. It is safe to say that both the concept#and operation of a regional municipality is the least understood of all our political systems. Durham is no exception. It's annual budget is now in the neigh- bourhood of $60 million, of which $17 million is paid directly by property owners throughout the Region. Durham has always had its ckitics, but there is a growing sentiment in Scugog that any taxpayers in this Township are not getting a fair return from the Region for the tax dollars they spend. Certainly, a resident living on a concession road in old Reach or Cartwright Township would be hard pressed to find a tangible shred of evidence to show that being part of a Region is worth the expense. It comes as no surprise that the motion to set up this committee was introduced by the Mayor of Oshawa, who seldom passes up an opportunity to express his distaste for Durham Region. And his criticism does have some justification. But realistically, what can a committee hope to accomplish? Will the recommendations, first of all be viable, and can we expect to see any concrete action taken on these recommendations. That of course is up to the provincial govern: ment, which created the Region ihrough an act of the legislature. Our reaction to the formation of this committee is mixed. On the one hand, we welcome the fact that the public will be invited to take part in the discussions, which may at least result in a little further understanding of how the monster works. But at the same time, we suspect that with 1980 being an election year, the committee's work will end up providing some rather nifty grist for the campaign mills of some politicians, and little else. oy 7 & 4 Pact es' al | 7 . 2 4, 5 : AL ys 2 7% 5... versie, _-- ceded ww 44 > & 2% ZZ "44 Z 7% Tr Zz Z wi ¢ e743 3 H 7 9 ur 5 gt 3 % 7% ND 7% UNLOCKING THE Locks bill smile OUR JUNGLE . For weeks I'd been telling her. I said, "the jungle is coming in on us. I'm not kidding. It's a bloody jungle out there, and it's going to get us." She tought 1 was hallucinating again. Jungle. Creeping in. Rubbish. And then I took her out and showed her. She hadn't taken a good tour of the estate for a couple of years. And what she saw shook her. "You're right. It is a jungle." A few years ago we had a kaleidoscope of colour out there. Now it's almost solid green, relentlessly creeping in from all sides. We had two rose beds. We had actually planted some roses in them, and some of the roses in them, and some of the roses actually grew. Peace roses. Dypsomaniac roses. Red roses. As soon as they bloomed, I'd cut them, put them in a vase, and we'd sit around looking at them as though we'd borne children. I cut them back dutifully, piled dirt around them in the fall, and a couple even bloomed the second year. The roses were planted cheek-by-jowl with a fine healthy row of peonies that produced almost obscenely. The second year of the roses, the peonies were a little sick. The third year they were definitely ailing. : This year that particular flower-bed has produced two peonies, three rosebuds, two elm trees about eight feet high, a healthy young maple and enough hay to feed a herd of cows. The jungle. Our other rosebed was somewhat of a failure from the beginnirg, despite all the fertilizing and fussing. Therefore, when o couple of acorns the squirrels had missed sprouted, I thought "Why not? It'll add a nice touch of green'. Almost overnight, it seems, those acorns have grown to sawlog dimensions. First few years here we had tiger lilies, and all kinds of other exotics. This year we had tigers. You could see them sitting there in the jungle at night, peering with yellow eyes. Some people might say they were cats. I know they were tigers. A few year ago we had brown-eyed daisies galore. This year we had brown-eyed children galore, slashing and galloping through the jungle that once was brown- eyed daisies. Even the woodpiles are creeping closer. At first they were orderly woodpiles, in their .place, ready to be thrown into the cellar, adding rather a quaint touch of rusticity to the backyard, as it once was. Then we started piling fallen branches on top of them. Now they are horrible woodpiles, crooked and beckoning, festoon- ed by vines and other creeping green things. Used to be a fine young spruce growing near the garage. Top of it would have made a nice Christmas tree. It's grown so fast in fifteen years that it's a hazard to low-flying airplanes. We had squirrels so big and so bold they'll jump up on the picnic table and snatch the second half of your peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich without so much as a "Do you mind?"'. We have robins who pull out worms as big as rattlesnakes, and then have to surrender them to grackles as big as seagulls, strutting about the clearing in the jungle in that ugly, pigeon-toed gait of theirs. Bees as big as beavers buzz around our beer bottles. Huge black ants hoist them- selves up the hair on my legs, spit in my eye, and waltz off to attack a starling. Every day we move our lawn chairs a little closer to the back door. Out front, our mighty oak grows even greater, peers in windows, rubs his nose against the panes, chuckles with amuse- ment, gives the brick a smack with one of his huge hands, and goes back tn waiting for the next north wind, so that he can drop a dead branch across our TV cable wire. Up the back of the house crawls a great green vine, with tantacles like those of a giant squid, slowly, carefully, and with super-human skill pulling bricks loose, one by one. Every so often it starts to die, and I watch with glee and hope. But no, fresh green tendrils sprout, every one of them a potential brick puller. We hack, we chop, we slash. To no avail. Everywhere the trees, the weeds, the vines, crawl toward and over the house, insidious, malicious, whispering to each other their eventual triumph. In this steady, frightening encroachment of jungle, *here is only one bright spot, one thing that won't grow. That's the privet hedge between the yard and the street, that LJ + « L L 5 gives us about as much privacy as a stripper gy at a medical convention. Planted at great expense, trimmed with decreasing regularity because there's nothing to trim, it looks like a kid who's been in a fight and had a couple of front teeth knocked out. That's the good part. Down at the other end, where the snowplow man dumps forty-eight tons a year, it resembles a pygmy with a bad case of malnutrition. That's the way we plan to go, when the jungle forces us to flee. Straight out through one of the gaps in the hedge, pushing the grand piano in front us.