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Santa’s Parade has everything but witnesses Seems hard to believe it was almost three months ago to the day that seven interested citizens got together and agreed to form the Santa Claus Parade Committee in Richmond Hill. It was Monday, August 22, at the town office, where the small party agreed that Dave Barrow and Chuck Doyle should co-chair the infant organization. This Sunday, November 20, all the toil and sweat, plans and promises,» achievements and frustrations of that small group will be laid out for all to see. At that time, you, the resident, will decide if their efforts were worth it. You will make up your mind whether a Santa Claus Parade should become an annual event in this Community. But you have to see it to talk about it. This is a sports column by someone who is not a sports fan. And you have to bring your family of children if you're really going to appreciate it. The committee made some pretty startling changes from former parades. The (Santa Claus) Parade never was an annual event, but it did appear every once in a while . This is the voice from the seat beside the person who is shouting rude things at the referee, the players, and the fans of the other persuasion. We drank beer in huge plastic cups and I listened to the Fan who had brought me along on a five- hour train ride for this very moment expound once again on Toronto’s recent exploits (which were great) and their present chances (which were greater.) This voice never shouts. It merely asks quietly, hopefully, if the event is nearly over, if the shouter wants a hot dog, or where the washroom is. Some last minute money was wagered. Some last minute taunts were exchanged. We filed to our seats. There, hanging high above the ice, was a long row of banners marked Coupe Stanley Cup, and the date. The return trip was a pilgrimage back to the city of Losers. He was one of them. I was most cheerful. I had had a lovely weekend. This is a column about why I’m not a sports fan. Who needs it? This voice belongs to a person who can manufacture a headache at the mention of tickets to Maple Leaf Gardens, and a broken ankle at the suggestion of seats in Exhibition Park. This person made a three piece suit while ostensibly watching the World Series. None of this explains why last Saturday night found me sitting in the Forum in Montreal watching the referee drop the puck between the clenched sticks of a Maple Leaf and un Canadien. But it does explain that it wasn’t my idea. It was the idea of the Fan from Toronto. We got to the Forum well before the scalpers. I suggested I wait for some to arrive. My plan was to sell my ticket at a price that would pay for all our dinners. Then I would wait for the Fan and his friends across the road in the coffee shop. 10395 Yonge Street, Richmond Hill L4G 4Y6 Ontario PUBLISHER noasm MAXWELL ennon nun WALLACE The Libeval IS published evevv Wednes Division, which also publishes The Bannew (he Bo|lon Enterprise PAGE A-A By SHARON BRAIN Em Iihtral Eh: tifihtml, Subscviption rates By mail, $10.00 per year In Canada $20.00 per year outside of Canada. By carrier, 80 cents every Iour weeks. Single copy sales 20 cams. No mai delivery where cauiev service exists. Second Class Mail Ragisrranon Numbev 0190. METROSPAN-NORTH DIVISION Robert Maxwell-General Manage! John C, Fergus-Advauismg Diracmv Ray Padlev Jv.-Fiald Sales Manager Graham Henrickson-Circulmiun Director Norman Slunden~onducnon Manage: THE LIBERAL Ha' Blame - St. Ste" Writer Fred Simpson Spons Educ! Ross Hodsell - Clvculmlon The Liberal ie a member oi rha Canadian Community Newspaper Association. The Ontario Weakly Newspaper Auccialion, and the Audi! Bureau 09 Circulation. The comanla. both edllovial and advenising o! The Liberal ave promoted by copyright and any un- aumovixad use in pvohlbflifi. |0395 Yonge Slreall P.O. Box 350. LIC 1Y6. Omario TELEPHONE â€" “#8177. 881-3373 Wednesday by Metrospan Community Newspapers aniled North 9 Banner In Auvova, Newmarket, The Woodbvidge Vaughan News, and Edllox VOLUME 100, NUMBER 20 Markham ‘ Vaughan sharon's sunshine The afternoon timing (1.30 pm.) allows for no traffic jams. Even church-goers have gone by then. There will be no throngs of people jamming the downtown areas to go Christmas shopping. All the stores will be closed. It's almost as though the entire town of Richmond Hill has been reserved for the Santa Claus Parade. The committee has cleverly achieved the ultimate in con- ditions. A sprinkle of snow would make it a winter paradise. First, it changed the day from a Saturday to a Sunday. Then, it changed the route, from a Yonge Street straight line, to a three-street southbound, westbound, northbound affair. The length of the parade route, about two miles, affords hundreds of vantage points for spectators. The committee has provided everything but the spectators. Good grief, what happens if a train decides to cross Markham Road during the parade? I could tell by the slump of the shoulders of the Fan from Toronto that things were not going well after the first five minutes. He got more and more in- terested in his shoes as the game wore on. He got quieter between periods as his Montreal‘vhost got noisier. That function, dear readers, has been left up to you. As the end drew near, h'e mumbled more and shouted less. He took to castigating his own team and coach in mutters, though he never gave up shouting at the referee. Les Canadiens appeared. The Forum went mad. Every fan was on his feet cheering, whistling, shouting. The Fan from Toronto sat down, to indicate his disapproval. The Forum was not unduly con- cerned. The teams skated out on the ice. Toronto came first. They were ignored by the Forum, the way one politer ignores fruit flies in someone else’s kitchen. The Fan from Toronto would not ignore them. He stood up and clapped and cheered. Behind him, high in the rafters, other fool-hardy individuals were doing the same thing. Their voices barely rose about the men hawking popcorn down the aisles. By the end of the third period, he was truly a broken Fan. The rambunctious, confident man who had entered the Forum had vanished. We helped a broken shell totter back to the car. I pointed them out to the Fan from Toronto. He' refused to acknowledge their presence. He had not fully recovered the next day. Then the Argonauts disgraced themselves before his eyes. The return trip was a pilgrimage back to the city of Losers. He was one of them. I was most cheerful. I had had WEDNESDAY. NOVEMBER 16, 1977 She was beautiful! Parked in a corner of the lot amid the chrome and gleam of much newer machines, she had been passed over by many who opted for more luxurious means of transportation and now she was to be mine. ‘ I doubt there is one among us who will ever forget their car! in was 1957 and I had left Richmond Hill High to further my illustrious career with a job as audio operator at CKFH in thg city. A My fifst pay check had aIreaciy been consumed and now the second one was burning a hole in my pocket. I had passed my drivers’ test two days after my sixteenth birthday and though borrowing Mom or Dad’s cars in the evening posed no great difficulty, I was now faced with the problem of obtaining a full-time means of transport. This was certainly n6 way for an up and coming member of the business community to be treated. My mind was made up . . . and the ’51 Austin A40 became mine . . . and the bank’s. It took only a month on the job to recognize that the 'I'I‘C and I were not going to form a permanent bond of friendship. The subway was okay as far as Eglinton, but there were times when I had to cool my heels for almost an hour waiting for the next bus _to Richmond Hill. My father felt that if I was to accept responsibility in this world then I would have to do a certain amount of it on my own. It would have been much easier for him to have loaned me the three hundred bucks for the car but it was agreed that a proper loan was in order with, of course, his signature affixed as co- signer. The meeting with the bank manager was brief and business like and within 20 minutes I emerged from the hallowed financial in- stitution with the necessary cash. USED RADIO “On November 10, 1977, at 8 p.m., the accused ass'aulted the complainant by pushing and kicking him in the head, while at the Aurora Community Centre. “The complainant attended York County Hospital in Newmarket for treatment of lacerations to his right eye.” Charges against the accused were assault occasioning bodily harm and consuming liquor while under the age of 18. â€" From the major occurrence sheet, York Regional Police, Nov. 11. The report was one of several in which teen-age brawlers â€" 18 being the standard age â€"- vent their hangeups via somebody else’s head, or groin, with a murderous kick. The issues were hardly mat- ters of life and death, although they sometimes stood the chance of becoming that after the final blows were delivered. It’s a long, long time since I was 18 and, although we all had our problems, just as today's teen- ager, I can’t remember ever seeing anyone kick his opponent when he was down â€" or up, for that matter â€" in any of those solemn fist fights in the back alley that one was a bystander at every now and then. Such kind of conduct was strictly taboo; one broke in one’s shoes in much less violent fashion. The very act of bloodying the other person‘s nose was usually suf- ficient to win the battle, as well as By Bob Rice Dad was with me when I closed the deal By JIM IRVING M ~ 'imiM-‘fiuih‘ the admiration of the small band of spectators on hand. Now, however, and the matter isn’t restricted to teen-agers, but they are the ones being dealt with at present, the goal seems to be to see how badly one can maim one’s opponent. If he can stagger off into the blood-filled sunset on his own af- terwards, obviously either another plan of attack, or a new pair of boots, is in order. I’m being bigoted, you say. Yes, of course, I am. Not all young people handle themselves that way if they find themselves in a fight. But unfortunately, there are enough of them who seem to find such conduct necessary to com- plete their picture of themselves as men. ' And this struggling to be men is what seems to be at issue here. The pressure to grow up long before you’re ready, and the glib assumption by the alleged adults in our midst, that you are ready, has been going on in heavily- accelerated fashion ever since World War II. One day you were delivering your papers, the next day you were off to war. That same war, if it didn’t kill you outright, or tear away all your spirit, to say nothing of your limbs, sometimes brought you into maturity. And the simple souls who rule our universe have been arguing and even threw in an extra few smackers to cover the cost of a used radio for my chariot. I impatiently hung around the garage for the remainder of the day as the mechanic towed my beauty in from the back lot, charged the battery, inflated two slightly flat tires and gave the little gem a good cleanup. The finish 6n the b'attleship gréy paint job had faded over the years and my last purchase before leaving was a can of good quality wax. The garage door lifted and I took my rightful place behind the steering wheel. The yellowed glass on the speedometer obstructed my view of the numbers and I made a note to myself to have it replaced. I wrestled with the key for a second or two and then hit the starter. v The engine roared to life and I frantically searched for reverse. The instructions on the gearshift knob were illegible and it took a moment or two to locate the desired setting. The mechanic’winced painfully as I ground a few pounds of metal from the transmission and then I gingerly let out_ theicluteh: _ My face turned beet red as I stalled the car not once, but four times. Finally getting the hang of it, I backed out from the garage and slowly drove past the never ending line of new Detroit monsters. Who needed all of that chrome and junk anyway? What the heck . . . it’s all just window dressing. They can have their big boats but as for me . . . this was my baby! LOVE AFFAIR For the next year and a half my Austin and I were inseparable. We battled the daily flow into the big city, discovered unused back roads together and left our tracks on several beaches to the North. When she became ill I nursed her carefully and was always by her side when more professional skill was required to set her right again. About six months into our affair I noticed her complexion was not right and I undertook to Struggling to be a man First car linked Hill to, T. O. along that line ever since, when they wish to exploit youth to their own purposes. 7 So that, when the politician wishes to get more votes, for example, he inhales from his tank of hot air and demands the vote for the 18-year-old. If a boy’s old enough to go to war, he smueg booms out, he’s old enough to vote. No one argues, for there is a kind of warped logic about it at first hearing, and the full truth is lost in the rush to be fair. In my case, that change of vote came about when I was 18, and I remember thinking they must all be crazy. What the hell did I care who was mayor, and I wound up voting for the father of a school chum of mine. In a later era, another benevolent government, dropping all common sense in its rush to considered the great libertarian, changed a perfectly good law to give 18-year-olds the right to drink, where formerly one had to be 21. Who is ever old enough to go to war? Who is ever emotionally fit to participate willingly in that kind of insanity? The same old bromide was used to carry it off: “If he’s old enough to go to war, etc . . . ” they said, in what is probably the most specious, perverse and adolescent argument ever presented. At 18, a youth is physically rejuvenate her. I performed minor surgery on her skin and filled the wounds with fibreglass. Several cans of Canadian Tire spray paint altered her colour from gray to dark blue. New seat covers adorned her interior and only the faintest hint of overspray attested to the fact that her dashboard had been repainted. Most of my pals didn’t have their own cars at the time and it was not unusual to see the A40 packed to the hilt with bodies. I remember the chagrin on the faces of fellow motorists as they caught sight of several pairs of undershorts flapping from the lip of the trunk following an impromptu dip in Lake Simcoe. There were many other memories such as the numerous times the Austin had to be started by the hand crank because the owner foolishly left the lights on. Those who were present might recall the night that the ‘Blue Bomb’ made its way up Yonge Street at midnight with a large Weston Bakery box sticking out the sliding roof and Kenny inside the container yelling that he was being kidnapped. And then there was the occasion when the car had to be pushed three miles up Bayview Avenue due to the fact the driver hadn’t paid enough attention to the gas gauge. In the ensuing years there were many other cars that found their way into my hands. A brand spanking new Renault that later became the victim of a hit and run Chevy, a Meteor that had a bad habit of leaving its transmission in the middle of some busy roadway, a sleek and sexy black Ford convertible that put me into the ‘big leagues’ and a ‘63 red Falcon that was my companion for one hundred and thirty-five thousand miles. But it was that little A40 that started it all and will never be forgotten. It could very well have been his first car that caused the ol’ Millpond Philosopher to say . . . ‘to try to comprehend all of the mechanics involved. . . only makes you feel dumber than when you started!” mature, and ‘ that’s what the generals are looking for. But being 18 doesn’t make one emotionally mature, whether going to war, or chug-a-lugging at the local tavern. The teens are traumatic enough. They are fearsome, happy, awesome, awkward, loving, joyful, terrifying, confused, tender, silly, sentimental, rebellious, reluctant, bold, brave and belligerent at times, plus a lot of other things. They are far from simple times and the transition to almost adulthood, requires support of the spirit and not of the spirits. Raising the drinking age to 20 or 21 again, doesn’t guarantee any solution, but in a country where drinking is still a Presbyterian matter, one has to lower the barrier somewhere. And, if nothing else, the 20’s stipulation will at least keep the 16-year-olds and the .14-year-olds out of the pubs. It will also keep many emotionally unstable people from further regressing. Even the provincial govern- ment recognizes that as it fran- tically tries to repair its earlier damage. Obviously, no responsible adult would have ever voted to raise the drinking age in the first place. Now, maybe the opposition should insist on raising the voting age, as well. “WP; $53322»