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Se ae PAL 3 2) or UE Tin The Noose A gas station attendant is shot over a tank of gas worth $14. A few hours later a police officer is gunned down and left dead in a freezing snowbank near Huntsville. He was buried this week and fellow officers from all over Canada attended his funeral. These two latest murders - brutal and senseless - have renewed the debate over capital punishment in Canada. Police forces have long maintained that the noose should never have been abolished by Parlia- ment, and in the wake of the shootings last week, some members of Parliament are calling out for a return of the death penalty. They are probably right. The arguments against the noose are that it does not act as a deterrent against murder. There is truth to that under certain circumstances where a person takes the life of another while temporarily enraged or insane. However, it seems that cold, calculated murders, where a person is in complete control of his faculties, are on the increase. Acts of violence, including murder, seem to be a fact of life in the 1980's, and one cannot help but wonder if the entire host of so-called reforms for law-breakers is not back-firing in our faces. There is no way of knowing whether capital punishment as a deterrent would have saved the lives of the two most recent victims last week. But it seems that society is fast reaching the point where -. the average citizen needs more protection than our laws now provide. As for police officers; the very - nature of their jobs is going to put them In the line of fire from time to time. If the people of Canada want the noose returned to the books (as some surveys indicate) then the House of Commons should put the issue to a free vote among the members, not a vote where they are tied by the wishes of their parties. But putting capital punishment back on the books by itself may not be enough of a deterrent. If it is voted back, then society must be prepared to let the law take its full course and use the noose. The last time capital punishment was used in Canada was almost 20 years ago. It has been off the books for several years. Statistics alone don't paint a complete picture of any issue, but there are many average citizens in this country who would like to have a look at the statistics over a period of years if our law-makers decide to bring back the noose. Society in 1981 may have reached the point where the supreme penalty is needed for the protection of all of us. "MEBBE you sHolLD HANG ON 70 THIS -.. YoUlL FIND PRICES POPPING UP LIKE WEEDS!" Necessary Although the timing may have been a little hard to take for some people so early in a New Year, the January 2 hike of 1.8 cents per litre for gasoline was necessary. The increase at the pumps was dug to a rise in the price for well-head a 'but /even now at slightly over $20 per barrel\this is/far below what most other countries in the world-are paying for oil. Despite massive energy conservations programs launched by the federal and provincial governments, Canadians still seem to be having trouble voluntarily cutting back on consumption of oil. In faat, while per capital consumption declines in all other industrial- ized nations, our use actually increased last year. Canada seems to be existing in a fools paradise when it comes to energy and its wise use. Old habits are hard fo break. Recent studies show that such things as car pools and public transportation are still meeting with resistance from Canadians who con- tinue their love affair with the private car. Higher prices for the gasoline to fuel those private cars (not to mention the numerous other "toys" which operate by combustion engines) may be the only way to wake Canadians up to the fact that the energy bubble has burst, and if we don't sfart to use what we have more wisely, the consequences will be severe. The counter-argument to this is that Canada by its vastness and cold climates needs cheaper fuel to function competitively in the world-wide market place. However, some rather strong economies like West Germany and Japan import just about every drop of oil and pay the going world rate for it. They seem to be doing quite nicely in the international market place. The truth of the matter is that Canadians waste fuel while just about everybody else in the world is forced to conserve. The easiest way for the consumer to beat the higher costs is to use less. The sooner Canadians accept the fundamental logic of this, the sooner we may be able to get a proper handle on the entire energy crisis issue and understand that times have changed and Canada must change with them or get left behind. CHEER UP Been one of those weeks. The first snow. ill smiley fifty bucks worth of glass there, and a good Saturday night's worth of firewood, once the What ultimately kept my spirits buoy- ant as an anvil in a swamp was the news and There's always something to cheer one up, of course, in the daily press. Just this School buses going in the ditch. A great screaming of summer tires just outside our door.: A stately elderly gentleman with a cigar walked past me as I was warming up the car. Went flat on his keester at the corner, but retained his cigar. Before I could get out and help him "somebody else got there. Got him to his feet, and off he went, probably to get his morning paper, badly shaken, but completely un- shaken, cigar still going. Went to work around the safe way, no hills, despite the iniquitour lie of the car salesman that with radial belted tires you didn't need snow tires. Poppycock. This ain't Florida. Tried to climb a tiny hill, did a 180 degree turn, and went the long, long way around, arriving at work ten minutes late, sweating, scrambled, and me with the 'flu that's lasted only six week." There's nothing like a 'Flu fever', along with a fear sweat, to make you have to change all your clothes every fifth day, instead of every two weeks. Oh, well. We dang near got the lawn- mower away last weekend. And we'll get it into the tool shed one of these days, as soon as I can find somebody who realizes how valuable those twelve twelve foot windows (storm) are, for the glass in them. Must be glass is removed. Yep. We went for the aluminum jobs this year. My wife thinks we could cut the glass out ourselves. She bought a "Genuine" glass-cutter from one of those television shows. I can just see the two of us in the tool shed, leaking blood from every limb, - framed in fine old Georgian wooden window- frames. And the lawn-mower still out in the Snow. But it wasn't all bad. We had our own South American guru home for afew days, and he fixed me up with a potion called Devil's Claw, supposed to cure arthritis. You drink about two pints a day for three weeks, and it tastes like boiled lumberjack socks. I had one treatment and my pains vanished. He was quite annoyed. He'd got a special on it, only $2.99 for a six dollar bottle of the blank. Despite a week of supervising examina- tions, and realizing that the only people dumber than kids are teachers, I kept my spirits up. Spiritually. With spirits. And along came a few more items to make me refuse to hope that the ski resort operators all go broke this year because there won't be any snow. I couldn't do this. I hope there's just enough snow so they can stay alive, and go broke next year. the pictures of our revered leader and Sacha freaking about in an Arab tent, mounting the Sphinx and climbing a camel. I'm sure it, or they, warmed the cockles of every Canadian heart. In another incarnation, that man would be_a RainMaker. Have you ever-observed -- his technique? It's one that every husband in the land gvould love to emulate. When there's a lot of heat in the kitchen, he tosses a few fragments of fat on the already burning oil and takes off for far places, there to don outlandish garb, and participate in exotic rites, and leave his servants at home to fight the war. It's fool-proof. He gets a lot of head- lines; distracts the country's attention from such trivialities as unemployment and inflation, and comes up with some stuff about Canada being the thirty-third best- loved country in the third world. I wish I could get away with it. If I went to Yemen they'd probably be serving me up instead of Sheep's eyes. And if I even tried to go to Egypt or Saudi Arabia, my wife would complain about the lack of air- conditioning, and I'd be sent home, slit open, filled with oil, and sewed up again. One half-barrel of oil for Canada. On the other hand, he has Margaret. morning, I read that Ronald Reagan had had two children by his first wife, and two children by his second wife. Not with. By. Zero in, you feminist head (or other parts)- hunters. ___In the same edition, I learned from someone called Peregrine that, "We are the only couple in Canada who have done it." Out of context, of course, but it struck me funny. Bone. And in yet the same issue of Canada's "leading newspaper"' (leading what I do not know) I discovered in an advertisement that for $19.95 I could purchase the latest copy of a book by Canada's "leading author" (lead- ing what I again do not know, unless self- glorification and the ability to chew his cabbage twice, or thrice.) So. All these things cheer me up on a bad day. And then I read a few students' essays and I plunge once more into the pits. One guy says Hugh Garner is Canada's greatest writer, because he could under- stand his prose, and there was none of this symbolism and junk to cloud the meaning. Another tells me that Sylvia Fraser has remarkable insight into human character, and repeats it eight times. Oh, well, 1981's on the way. U-g-g-g-gh!