Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 7, 1994, Winnipeg, Manitoba Al a Winnipeg free press May 7 1994 Canada minced canadians need not get too excited Over the grim warnings being heard these Days of a Bosnia style Bloodbath should Quebec Ever try to it never pays to be smug but canadians Are surely capable of arranging their affairs without resorting to the brutal Ity we have seen in the remains of there Are some lessons canadians should learn from the breakup of other countries in Eastern Europe and the former soviet chief among those lessons is the fact that the process of dismantling a nation state does not always end with the first fragmentation tends to be followed by further the process is fuelled by the desire of each entity in the disintegrating state to carve out boundaries in which it is a when those entities re ethnic or what mixed closely the Job of achieving majority status for each of them can become fraught with difficulty and Rife with in yugoslav it led to the atrocities of ethnic in it is More Likely to Lead to political confusion and economic when All the cosmetics Are scrubbed the Basic aim of the que Bec separatists in the parti quebecois and the bloc quebecois is to create a new nation in which the descendants of the original settlers of new France will Rule the of the English speaking people who arrived recent and current be Welcome in the new they will have All the trap pings of citizenship and the English speakers will have some particular English schools for some of them if not to bilingual everyone knows that what the leaders of the pm and the by really want is a nation run by people like As the pm Bernard put it the other Day the Public common culture of Quebec is quebecois the trouble is within that new majority created by carving Quebec out of will exist minorities which will want to become majorities in their own in Glis speaking Quebe cers will be among they could draw boundaries around areas of Quebec where they Are in the majority and demand their own Little nation at least continued attachment to the Canadian the Cree and inuit of Northern Quebec and the mohawks who live just outside of Montreal will be de manding a nation of their the Cree will have a particularly powerful Case because their land is not territory that Quebec brought with it into while Quebec is slicing up Canada and Anglo and aboriginal groups within Are trying to slice up the work of dismantling Canada May be continuing at the other end of the Rafe the loudest of British columbian troop of radio talk show wrote an article for the Toronto Globe and mail this week proposing that an Independent Quebec would be quickly followed by an Independent a lot of people in British Columbia will be nodding sagely and agreeing with once Quebec was Mair pointed would become a minority province in a country dominated by the Way to break out of that minority status to make British columbian a majority in their own the Prai Rie provinces would not be invited to join the new nation because they Are not Rich Alberta might once have qualified but the Oil is drying and who needs an other impoverished Prairie province British Columbia will live happily on its own until the last Douglas fir is but would an Independent British with the Power to Lay Down the Law to its be accepted by the aboriginal communities which would reside within the boundaries of the new state and which have their own claims to land and nationhood not the aboriginals in Are making wide ranging territorial claims Al if were to become an Independent nation those demands would be for political once the splintering of Canada starts it is hard to see where it would would Alberta join with its neighbors in a new Prairie nation to avoid domination by Ontario or would the people of that province figure they still had enough Oil and Gas Revenue to keep them going As a nation unto themselves the logic behind the process would Lead to the creation of eve smaller the alternative to dividing the country into entities of diminishing size is to unite it into a federation in which regional majorities exert considerable Power but in which minorities everywhere Are protected by the Central government and the that system leads to some government waste and Over it can generate regional bickering and but it has helped Canada Over the last 127 years become one of the most peaceful and most fortunate nations on the we should stick with Winnipeg free press my Tri Tomt my f no Maurice Switzer publisher Duncan Mcmonagle executive editor John Dafoe editorial Page editor directors John Bardawil marketing Craig Barnard circulation de Belhumeur human resources Bill Brian finance Stephan Majorki production Mem log from of won of a won of Thomoff Kwh min hmm Libl Mountaha editorials in whom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights editor John 6977044 assault guns candles Light the darkness years and years in the Early Spring of was walk ing along the Kings Road in on the Way Home from a visit to the dentist when a Young woman stopped me and asked if i would sign her Chelsea in those Days was full of Young people with petitions and causes and i had supported Many of from the movement to liberalize the drinking Laws to the struggle to ban the this petition was against apartheid in South Africa and i was Happy to add my name to the even when i Learned that i was also expected to sign a pledge not to drink South african sherries and brandies until prime minister Verwoerd saw the error of his that gave me i must South african Sherry was one of my favorite it was also an important consideration to the struggling Young person far from nevertheless i for a Young Liberal of the 1960s signing such a petition was As natural As drawing breath or liking the songs of Edith How innocent we and How conceited we imagined that we could change the simply by signing a Dafoe was going to Boycott South african let Verwoerd tremble i i that the South african government would Cave in after a few months and then we could All Start drinking Sherry and Brandy in i have not touched a drop of the stuff in 34 on March South african police fired on a demonstration by Black africans at the township of Sharpe South West of six Dyseven were killed and Over 200 were for a moment it looked As if civil War would break out in South Afri on the following sunday i read in the paper that there would be a protest rally in Trafalgar Square that after my Fiance and i decided to at Trafalgar Square was almost empty Christopher Dafoe when we arrived shortly after but there were a few people milling about and microphones were being set up on the plinth at the foot of the Nel son a few friends joined us and we stood about smoking and talk ing it seemed that it would be a Small but then i noticed a sort of humming sound in the distance that gradually grew in volume until it sounded like Waves rolling up a then they thousands of men and rank upon a kind of army marching into the Square under the banners of Trade unions and Politi Cal the Square filled up behind spreading up the Steps of the National moving like a tide around Canada House and flowing out into the streets leading to the an Ocean of the plinth under Nelsons column is a Stone and on that afternoon 34 years ago it was crowded with political and labor journalists and Pho i have never been fond of crowds and it was slightly disconcerting but exhilarating to be at the Centre of a multitude so there was a kind of raw Power in the air a feeling of Dan Ger and the speakers on the including the fiery labor my Barbara were pumping up the Castle denounced prime minister Verwoerd and the crowd she pointed across the crowded Square toward the dark bulk of South Africa apartheid head quarters in and people turned London Trafalgar site of anti apartheid and Shook their fists at the the barred doors and the South african Flag hanging limply on its staff above one portion of the crowd also surged toward the breaking against a Wall of policemen who arms protecting the stones with their there was some violence that after although i didst see any of a picture of the event was published in newspapers around the including the Winnipeg and my future wife and i were clearly visible in the front Row looking pro Viding my parents with a first glimpse of their it took a Long time to get out of tra Falgar Square that but the crowd finally dispersed and we made our Way Back to Chelsea through the sunday afternoon streets and across the did our protest do any Good As we know it took 34 years to bring free elections and a Black president to Power in South Back in March of 1960 it seemed highly unlikely that the pass Laws would be abolished or even the thought of a Multi racial election with Nelson Mandela As Leader was beyond our the new South circa was a Distant unlikely to come True in our it would be stupid to suppose that our Boycott of South african wines and our protests and demonstrations turned the tide in South but at the very least these demonstrations of support reminded those engaged in the actual struggle in Africa that the world was watching and aware of their plight that they had International support and small1 liberals have fallen into Dis repute of late and i suppose there has always been something a trifle absurd about their Well intentioned efforts to improve the but like the Blade of grass that in time cracks the Rock they Are not without Power or when the world is dark they help keep Hope alive by lighting we should listen to the clams i must have been a Crow in a past says Eva i collect things and bring them among the things she has picked up Are shells from around the no less than about which includes about fresh water it is by far the largest collection in Canada and will be Given to the National museum of natural science in one result has been an extraordinary curiosity about and Here hangs a tale about her prodigious re search and the health of our lakes and a University of Winni Peg has a pad in aquatic her research Field is toxicology Claras Are first rate creatures to s Edge the health of they be Long and Are sensitive to once established they stay in the same place All their there is no Ambi where they picked up the As revealed in this column last provincial fisheries staff discovered a Clam that was an astonishing 233 years old in the Assiniboine a few Miles West of the in the same Pip has found clams 70 to 80 years one was a Pink that turned out to he a rare find it was a foot Long i measured it and left it where it she she didst remove it from the water because clams Are sensitive to disturb and she would not determine the age because that would mean destruction of the Clam in measuring the rings on the like they add on a ring the clams Tell Pip there has been a deterioration of water Quality in Lake Winnipeg and the red and Assiniboine Rivers in her proof is this West of the City along the Assiniboine is a diverse Community of 17 types of clams 8 Finger nails and 9 she found Only three of these species within the red River in then they disappeared for two Miles North of the a fact she at tributes to the effluent from the North end sewage the three species re appear two Miles South of since Pip has also periodically examined clams in nine areas in the South Basin of Lake Winnipeg and two in the North they have been reduced by More than so per she Pip has been examining the Prev Alence of heavy metals which accumulate in the tissue of mainly in the Gills and she did the re search on clams discarded in a com Mercial Enterprise Experiment two years ago on the Assiniboine she is indignant that thousands of clams were it was she heavy metals consistently found in these clams include Lead and a re sult of Runoff from the Countryside and effluent from communities and Indus sediment in the Assiniboine River contains a substantial amount of metals because Clay tends to bind clams Are susceptible to disturbance and that May partly explain their disappearance in the water of Winnipeg and Uke clams decrease in areas where there Are motor turbulence will increase turbidity and coat the membranes of their Cut pig of f the Supply of clams like to keep to take a female out of and the stress will cause her to release her eggs Pip has made an interesting Dis covery about they accumulate much less Metal than one possible explanation May be a Hor Monal from comparison with literature from other Rivers on the Pip concludes that the stretch of the Assiniboine West of the City is among the most diverse communities of one reason is that they have been Over harvested in other she says it should be designated As a sensitive ecological area to protect it from exploitation and so it certainly should pips research on clams confirms that we Are not looking after our Waters says Lyle research scientist at the Federal Freshwater Institute Here the clams Are telling us something Well ahead of what we Are doing to the the clams see the bigger Pip is giving us the bigger Pic Ture and we should be thankful of her work and her Shell her own Fine Library of ;