PAGE 4. WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 13, 1982, WHITBY FREE PRESS whitby w MIp Voice of the County Town Pub Michael lan Burgess, Publisher - Managing Editor The only Whitby newspaper independently owned and operated by Whitby residents for Whitby residents. blished every Wednesday by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography Inc. Phone 668-6111 The Free Press Building, 131 Brock Street North, P.O. Box 206, Whitby, Ont. LESLIE BUTLER Community Editor ELIZABETH NOZDRYN Advertising Manager Second Clase Mal Reglatation No. 5351 GO will bring Good news travelsfast - at least as fast as the green and white trains that will be sizzling along steel Unes from Whitby to Toronto within four years. The good news - that the Ontario government plans to link ail points from Hamilton to Oshawa with GO train Unes - has been so rapidly trans- mitted it is practically old news by now. What isn't old news, is the question of how the proposed GO link will affect the character of places such as Whitby. The economic outlook is good. The $162 million GO project from Oshawa to Pickering will create thousands of jobs in construction alone. The economic impact once the Unes are com- pleted is hard to predict, but ail signs point to growth in Whitby. With rapid transit to Toronto a reality, more people will see Whitby as being within reasonable Open letter to Sc Dear Sir: A few months ago some Whitby residents asked that the questions of nuclear proliferation be placed on the ballot in the forthcoming elec- tions in this municipality. Our mayor, Mr. Atter- sley pointed out that this question Is a federal responsibility and the matter shauld be.taken up through ourfederal MP, Mr. Scatt Fenneil. The mayor was quite correct.. In-late August of this year I phoned your consti- túency office in Pickering Village asking your staff to have you phone me In regard to a problem I have in which I wanted answers from the federal minister. I waited five days for a phone call from you but you didn't call so I wrote you a letter out- lining the problem and asking you to bring the matter to the attention of the- proper authority at the federal level. it has been well over a month since this letter growth and change to Whitby commuting distance. We could see rapid growth questions'about trafflo, pollution, poiing, in the housing industry, retail and services, and schoois, daycare and many other social factors eventually even commercial and Industrial growth that accompany expansion will have to be ad- of a permanent nature. dressed. If the proposed GO Une spells growth for Whit-.The Interest and Invalvement of the communIty by, it should also spell caution, and an assess- ln Whitby's future wIll help avoid our becoming a ment of'what the quality of life will be like in a mere"bedroomcommunity"toToronto. larger community. Service groupsand resident organizations that More than ever, our municipal government will foster community involvement and interest ln need foresight and clear purpose in future plan-local issues must respond to rapid growth and a ning.for Whitby. With the possibility of accelerat- changing population. ed growth on a large scale, planning for local tran- Te growth of Whitby, given a shot ln the arm by sit systems, land use and development and town the prapased GO link to Toronto, s an exciting planning will become permanent. prospect that brings with it a new set of Big is not necessarily always good, especially if challenges. But large scale growth will bring t is uncontrolled, sprawling bigness that is not change, and the kind of change we want must be met with careful consideration for the needs of given careful consideration- and a great deal of :ur resident and business community. thought if it Is going to be for the better. WhetherWur future hwowthtls rapid or graduai, ott Fennell: Having phone trouble? was sent to vou and I am still waiting for a reply. Yesterday I received a very nice little booklet from your Ottawa office. It even has your picture on the front cover, then there is a cartoon of a man holding his fingers in his ears and it really looks like me but I haven't heard bells ringing lately. On September 21 i wrote to your provincial counterpart, Mr. Ashe. To date I have received no reply. I w.as always led to believe we could have no taxation without representation. Would you be so condescending as to advise me (through The Whitby Free Press) If i must apply to you and Mr. Ashe or the leader of the NDP for a total refund of the Income taxes i pay? I realize our post office sometimes faces delays in delivering letters but it takes six days for aletter to come from England, eight days to get an an- swer from Mr. Bob Rae, the leader of the provincial, NDP. It is four miles from your office to Whitby and the local telephone service is excellent. Thanking you for your representation? Tom Doucette. I couldn't help thinking as I watched President Reagan's Middle East statement recently on a closed circuit feed that it's a very strange world we live in. l'il admit that President Reagan scares me from time to time, and that I feel the boyish grin is often out of place in a universe scripted with more subtlety than a B grade film. But I feel certain that he is a decent man, by most standards, and that his values are those of most middle class Americans, one.of the most decent groups of people who ever lived. But decency ill-equipps anyone for dealing with the Mid- dîe East in 1982, because we are dealing with people for whom decency has become a luxury that-interferes with the business at hand, which is vengeance, death and retribution. President Reagan, rightly, was outraged about the massacre. But his outrage would have been more con- vincing, at least to me, if he'd mentioned Mai Lai, and demonstrated some understanding of the passions which can trigger such an incident. He lectured Israel about the folly of imposing, and I quote "its own solutions on hatreds as deep and bitter as those that produced this tragedy" end of quotation. And then he went on to try to sell his own solutions. The American plan for a measure of Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories with unspecified Jordanian consultation, is acceptable neither to the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, nor the rest of the Arab camp, moderate and extreme. If Israel's solution to the problems of the Middle East, namely force, is folly, it at least has the virtue of being practical, in some measure. One would scarcely dare apply the yardstick of practicality to the Reagan decision to send the Marines back in. The President said they would not be doing a police job, but by their mere presence, would enable the Lebanese to do one. Unarrned and with an obscure man- date, one can only pray that the Marines do not learn about the Middle East the hard way. And if the Marines are going to be effective now, as walls of living American flesh, why weren't they left in place until the original man- date ran out? Their presence might have prevented the* murder of a President and the slaughter of innocents, but I doubt it. As a matter of fact, I doubt that anything much will work in the Middle East, but if anything does, it isn't likely to come from the Americans. That's not news but that too is reality. - --------- -