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. fe 80 70% RA gts As fa > i PA PY ots LNs URLS 1) ENB Et Fad 0 PALEY ED FETAL, Coley AR RSET SE POA as st PICA N PORT PERRY STAR -- Wednesday, August 29, 1979 -- 5 Falk TRL PPE wl oes i © | ir A hag ' Veh 60 YEARS AGO Thursday, September 4, 1919 Some discussion has arisen as to whether liquor would be available for medical purposes under the Canada Temperance Act. After the Act comes into effect, all sales of liquor that can be lawfully made under the Canada Tem- perance Act will be made direct by the Government. Faults we on This is the Fred Jackson home on Scugog Island with David Jackson holding the horses. Photo courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Kane. 35 YEARS AGO Thursday, September 14, 1944 The engagement is announced of Florence Ellen White to Harvey Wesley Mahaffy and the marriage will take place on Saturday, September 30th. Mrs. Orr Graham, Misses Mercedes Waridel and Annie Nott of Port Perry spent an enjoyable week-end trip by boat to Port Dalhousie and St. Catharines. The building committee for the new church on the island met at the home of Mr. George Sweetman's on Monday evening. There was a great turn out at the Public School Opening - one hundred and ninety-two. Zz 25 YEARS AGO Thursday, September 16, 1954 The installation of the new officers for the Port Perry Lions Club took place at the initial meeting of the new 1944-45 term. Past President - Sam Griffen; President - Cecil Ptolemy; 1st Vice President - Charles Howsam; 2nd Vice President - Clifford Smith; Secretary - Reg. Boundy; Treasurer - Ernie Hayes; Directors - G.M. Rennie, Roy Cornish, Bill Chapman, Don Crozier. Port Perry will be one of the many places in Canada to have the honour of reviewing an art exhibit of many of Europe's great masters. Canadian records were established in ten classes as the Port Perry Yacht Club staged the first official speed trials in the Dominion's history. 20 YEARS AGO Thursday, September 16, 1959 Ross Bailey, Uxbridge, R.R.4, and Bob Brown, Brechin, were two of ten boys to win a $100. award for catching a calf at the Calf Scramble sponsored by the Ontario Aberdeen Angus Association at the C.N.E. The Fire Brigade at Port Perry answered a call to extinguish a fire in a car owned by Mr. T. Anderson of Epsom. The number of students registered at the Port Perry High School this term is 339, the greatest num- ber ever to enrol. Of these 181 are boys. 15 YEARS AGO Thursday, September 17, 1964 A well know and popular face at auction sales for the last 45 years in this area is Mr. Ted Jackson. Since 1919, Mr. Jackson has conducted almost 4,000 sales in this area, which is almost an average of 100 per year. Annoucement was made by the Department of Education on September 9th, that Margaret Terrett has been granted the Canadian Trucking Association's (Turn to page 6) [MY chotterboX we ADEADLY TIME It is the last week of August in the summer of 1979. The air is heavy with rain and humidity. Nothing seems to be moving. The dog days are having their final kick before the air turns crisp and sharp and the winds bring the first bite of a winter that is not too far away. The pace of life at this time of year seems to have slowed to a crawl. It's as if people are trying with a calm desperation to stretch out these last few days of summer, to delay the inevitable, to put off what each and every one of us knows is just around the corner. Autumn. Winter. A farewell to the back yard, the blazing beach, softball games, the nights filled with a million bugs and moths around every lamp-post, line- ups at the beer store. Just as surely as all these things began with the first stroke of June, they end abruptly with the first September dawn. The month of August and especially the last two weeks is a deadly time to be in the newspaper game, not only for the small papers, but the large dailies as well. The political scene is almost lifeless, aside from digo odd outburst from a politician with nothing better to do. The death and funeral of John Diefenbaker meant large headlines, pictures, and columns and columns of copy every day for more than a week in the daily papers. Editors gave their reporters free rein to write every last detail of the Chief's funeral, his historic last train ride west and his final resting place in Saskatoon. Now I'm not saying that Dief would have not received ample coverage if he had passed away during a more busy time of the year for newspapers, but editors at this time had little trouble finding the space in their papers. And to use an expression common in this game, Dief's funeral was "'milked" by the press for every last drop of printer's ink. The large daily papers can make for some very in- teresting reading at this time of year. Reporters who normally cover local events and issues are on holidays, 80 to fill the columns around the ads, the papers have to rely on the many news agencies and services. Travel features are very big and get extensive play with photos. You may also run across a long, detailed article about economics, politics or life in some PA oat "a faraway capital city. When there is lots of local news, such articles which come in on the wire service would likely get edited down to a few paragraphs to run as filler. But now at this time of year when editors are hungry for news, any news as long as it is fit to print and as long as it fits. It's a tough fact of life at this time of year for the newspapers. When there is no news to report, one still must come up with something to fill the white space around the ads. THE APOCALYPSE Apocalypse Now, a marathon and multi-million dollar film about the moral dilemma of the American military involvement in Viet Nam, has hit the screens in three cities in North America, and is being hailed by critics as one of the major motion pictures of all time. 1 haven't seen it yet, and of course it is dangerous to comment from this restricted vantage point. Nonetheless, I have read the reviews very carefully, and I would tend to agree with some writers who are saying that while the film may be brilliant, it will turn out to be director Francis Coppola's own personal apocalypse. It cost an estimated $30 million to produce, has some heavy-weight stars like Marlon Brando, and is reported to be a grisly statement on the U.S. military presence in Viet Nam and war itself. Unfortunately, North Americans will stay away from this film in droves. Already in Toronto, one of the three cities where the film opened for limited engagements, there are reports of a lot of empty seats in the movie house. People in 1979 are in no mood to sit through an Apocalypse of any kind, let alone one that brings the horrors of war in front of their eyes in blazing colour. No, it is the year of Meatballs and the Disco Duck. People are running away from reality. They want to go to the movies to laugh, not to cry, or to be shocked by some mindless thriller about alien beings or haunted houses. The age of cinema verite has come to a close, I'm afraid. The war in Viet Nam is over. We want no part of its memory. It seems that a decade and a half of turmou and strife have taken their toll. There is a deep yearning in North America for a kind of stability that was present in the 1950's, even if to get that stability we have to shut our eyes and minds. Apocalypse Now is being greeted in 1979 about the same way it would have been greeted in 1959 when the U.S. president spent a lot of time on the golf course, Gidget chased the beach boys, and Rock Hudson and Doris Day chased each other on the wide Hollywood screen. People are saying why spend five bucks on a movie that might very well keep them awake at night, when they can sit home, watch Mork and Mindy on the tube and then sleep like a log knowing that all is well in heaven and earth. Why get a searing of the mind and soul when the strobe lights of the local disco are just around the corner. A few years ago, the books of Solzenitzen on the soviet Gulag created a storm in the western world. I have often thought that his works would make the basis for a film of epic proportions, one that could explore all aspects of the human condition; good, evil, joy, sad- ness, life and death. It hasn't been made and will not be made, because like Coppola's Apocalypse, there would be very little interest on the part of the masses. And maybe it is just as well. Maybe in the midst of energy shortages and so on, we need a few years of nothing more strenuous on the mind that disco and golf. And who knows, maybe Rock and Doris will make a comeback. The cycle will have gone full turn. HOLIDAYS I'm just back from a week of holidays in the Ot- tawa Valley, something I had been looking forward to. Turned out to be one heck of a week. The weather was lousy, the fishing trip was called off, the golf game went sour in the rain, and to top it all off, my three-year old took sick suddenly and had to spend a night and day in an Ottawa Hospital. (He's OK now.) The five hour drive back to Port Perry turned into a searing assault on the nerves as the two kids decided to make a shambles of the car. Never again, I kept swearing under my breath, never again. Holidays are great, but next year I'm not going to venture much fur- ther than the back yard. I need a week off now just to recover. We had enough gear packed in that car on the way home to last three months in the jungles of South America. Anyway, holidays are for the kids and the grand-parents, aren't they? Th Nar CA5 ¥ pv