Page 6, Whitby Free Press, Wednesday, July 27, 1994 The only Newspaper owned and operated by Whitby residents for Whitby residents! MEMBER OF: ONTARIO. COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION CANADIAN CIRCULATIONS CNA DIVISION AUDIT BOARD ISSN#0844-398X 26,500 COPIES DELIVERED WEEKLY Published every Wednesday by 677209 Ontaro Inc. Box 206, 131 Brock St. N., Whitby, Ontario L1N 5S1 Phone: 668-6111 Out of town: 1-800668-0322 Fax: 668-0594 Doug Anderson - Publisher Maurice Pifher - Editor Alexandra Martin - Production Manager Printed on newsprint with minimum 20%W- recycled content using vegetable based inks. c All written material, illustrations and advertising contained herein is protected by copyright. Any reproduction by any means for commercial purposes without the express permission of the newspaper is prohibited and is a violation of Canadian coepyrht law. Reproduction for non-commercial distribution should bear a credit line to theC itibyFree Press. "This Town 's nofun anymore!" 'We like train whistles' To the edItor: The feeling I get these days is that just about everyone is trying to hang on until the recession is over. Well, what if the recession doesn't end? We need to start thinking about what we can do to save ourselves. • Many people blame the government. Alfthough government overspending is partly to blame, I don't think that they have the pwer to turn our economy around. he government's problem is that, like most businesses, they have a shrinking income. They're trying to hang on, too. If we realize what our economy is, we can better understand what is happening to it. Begin with your income, then subtract your fixed costs: taxes, utilities, food and shelter. You are left with your disposable income. This money, that is shrinking daily, is our economy. This is what is happening. Large corporate stores have been coming to Canada and taking over our economy. I believe that they are the major cause of our recession. Because superstores have so much buying power, and because they are able to negotiate special deals with suppliers (which sounds like price fixing to me), they can seil products below the small business person's cost -- sometimes so far below that people f eel that the small business person must be cheating them. hey are aiso less likely to stock Canadian products than Canadian small businesses. In trying to compete with the superstore, smail business people continue to cut margins lower and lower until they reach the point where they must decrease advertising, cut back stock, lay off staff and eventually close. This is where our jobs and livelihoods are going. How many of your friends and relatives have their own businesses? How many people hope their children start their own business some day? Can you honestly think of anyone you know who is likely to own a superstore? If the superstores continue to open at the rate they are, almost all small business will be gone. The superstores will have total control of the Canadian economy. So how can we stop them? Remember, "there is no business without a sale." The superstores could not survive without your disposable income. If we stop supporting them and start supporting small Canadian businessesi we will see our economy start to recover instantly. If we ali start thinking about where our dollars go when they leave our pockets, it will be easier to decide how we spend them. If we spend them in the superstore, pur money will not recirculate. Spend your money where it is mostly likely to benefit you. Be self ish. Buy from someone who might hire your child someday. Buy from someone who might buy from you or from someone you know. Help to get our money recirculating in your area and our country. The extra money that you spend will come back to you. We can think of ourselves as part of a growing resistance to this corporate takeover. Let's save ourselves before it's too late. Aren't we at the point where we have to try something? Colin Wilson Perth, Ont. Big help To the editor: On behalf of Big Brothers of Oshawa-Whitby, I would like to thank you for publicizing the Oshawa Foods/Big Brothers/Big Sisters Barbecue Day held on June 25 at participating IGA, Food City and Price Chopper stores. Your support for this event was very much appreciated. The barbecue sales were great and everyone had a lot of fun. The continued support of the Whitby Free Press and the community, especially Coff ee Express and The Washboard for selling Nevada tickets for us, is very much appreciated by Big Brothers of Oshawa-Whitby. Any little bit of support helps us in a big way. Julie Parker Summer events coordinator To the editor: Re: 'Hopkins Street train whistles may soon stop,' Free Press, July 20 I feel compelled to publicly say something my family and I have been saying privately throughout this debate. We like train whistles. Call us reactionary, call us old-fashionâd, call us small-town, call us retrogressive, call us mied in the memory of times past. Still we will say 'We like train whistles.' The remind us of five-cent popsices, Saturday matinees when collecting and returning a few pop bottles would gain you the price of admission, Abbott and Costello movies, and main streets where you knew nearly everyone. For those of you already labeling us hopeless romantics who have never actually experienced train whistles up close, I say, "Ahal That's what you think." I grew up two blocks from a railway track that crossed a main street at ail times of the day and night, whistling away -- not only whistling, but constantly shunting back and forth. When first married we lived in a Whitby apartment behind which trains (the same ones that cross Hopkins and Garden streets) whooshed by, whistles a-blowin'. The whole building shook; it was wonderful. Later we moved to a rural farmhouse close to a main railway track and again heard trains and their wonderful whistles. When we moved back to Whitby with our young family almost 19 years ago, we were delighted to have train whistles still a part of our lives. Not only did we have the Hopkins Street train whistles. Directly across the street from us, running beside Peel Park, across Burns Street and through the field opposite our house, was the track and train that serviced a local industry. Every day, just as I put one or another ôf our sons down for a nap, I could depend on that lovely old slow-moving train to chug and whistle its way along across from us, as close as it could get. The boys grew up with train whistles as part of their childhood memories, symbols of that deep longing we all feel for times past, seemingly simpler and more innocent, and for the magic of places far away. We all felt the loss when those tracks were torn down out in the name of progress -- a new subdivision now sits there -- no trains, just bulldozers, backhoes and more cars. Trains are part of Canadian history, their whistles declare aloud that supposedly elusive identity for which we seem to be searching. From the freight trains that carried unempled men across the country uring the Depression to the trains that carried passengers across Canada through the Rocky Mountains (a family trip we made in 1986 that remains a highlight) to the few trains that we are Iucky enough to have still in operation, we say hallelujah. Whistle down through the generations, be one of the ties (pardon the pun) that bind. What can be more eerily evocative than a train whistle in the night calling us to come along to places far across this spacious country? Gordon Lightfoot's excellent To the editor: M family and I have been living in Whitby for three and a haf years now. We moved here for some of the same reasons that I suppose a lot of people do -- good town, central, GO train, lots to do for kids and parents, etc. I try to stay abreast of local issues and generally I just watch them develop, an issue such as the Kinsmen Park pool on Chestnut Street. It was a shame to see it go, but with new facilities nearby, it made sense, and as it worked out, the water park is a great success. What I found interesting was the lack of protest to save the pool. I spoke with a mother at the water park last year and she told me of petitions and generally a fair bit of noise the previous time that there had been talk of tearing up the pool. It worked and preserved the pool for a few more years. Another issue that I have been watching closely is the Lynde Shores development. There have been a lot of impassioned pleas in the papers about this. As the issue has unfolded, there appears to have been little done to address the concerns of the experts, environmentalists and concerned citizens. They say that the development is too big, too close and as a developer I spoke to recently said, song, 'Railroad Trilogy,' captures the romance, the sweat, the tragedy, the pure symbolism of the train in Canada's history. Listen to it. And then lie in bed at night and give that old Hopkins Street train whistle a listen. How could anyone call its sound annoying? It is whistling out your history, your heritage. If, like our family, you are part of the silent majority who has until now watched this debate from the sidelines, let someone who has the authority to keep- those trains whistling know tiat we must save the train whistIbs and ail they symobolize. We say it again, loud and cleà r, we like train whistles. Marilyn Moulton with the enthuslastic su pport of Gordon, Jordy, KIley and Keir Moulton its sole purpose is to "maximize the use of the land" thereby maximizing the profit of the land owners. I agree with the environmentalists. There is so much development in Durham Region these days and I suppose that the property adjacent to the Lynde Shores Consveration Area would be no exception, but i believe it should be. The development, in my opinion, is foolish. It will wreck the conservation area and everything in it. It won't be the same atter a short time and yet another piece of our natural world will be messed up and lost. My son and daughter are headmng to school soon and they're going to learn more about the natural world and environment than my wife and I know combined. They're going to have to in order to clean up the mess that we've collectively created. If things get really bad, they're going to hold their parents' and their grandparents' generations in a lot of contempt. I want to say to my kids that I did a little more than just read the newspapers and put out the blue box, so here I am writing this letter in protest. M. Snetsinger Whitby Recirculate money Foolish plan 11111 Viewpoint a C+CNA