Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 10, 1997, Winnipeg, Manitoba A10 Winnipeg free july Brian editorials of Trade Nellt fld Equality of civil rights setting priorities City Garth Steek has it fight when he says the City is wrong to Cut million in Street and sidewalk maintenance this the question now is whether he can recruit enough councillors to reinstate funding for Street As Well As a number of other important programs and services Cut by Council last the City trimmed about million in services and maintenance such As filling cracks in rebuilding sidewalk fixing sewer cleaning City streets and operating swimming the move is part of a larger Effort to avoid an estimated shortfall of million i the 1997 mostly because of unexpected costs associated with the Spring that City councillors would try to minimize the Impact of the flood on next years municipal tax Bill is to be particularly As 1998 is an election no Council Lor wants to stand for re election on a record of increasing your in its desperate search for councillors appeared to forget the main reason they were elected to office in the first place to manage the City As efficiently As this does not mean trying to ensure their own re election by making and hoc cuts to important ser vices or capital programs every time there is an unexpected such As a flood or a heavy it does mean ensuring citizens get value for their tax Dollar by adopting policies that require the City to provide the Best programs and services possible at the lowest in simple this among other that City streets should not be allowed to deteriorate to the Point where they look like testing grounds for land it also Means ensuring the cites sewers Are repaired when its streets cleaned when dirty and its swimming pools filled with water during the the practical reason for restoring funding for things like the Street repair program is Clear spending a Little bit on preventive maintenance now will save the Cost of reconstruction later but there is a psychological Benefit As Winnipeg Gers Are tired of driving Over some of the trails of rubble and pot holes that pass for streets in this property owners Here pay among the highest rates of property tax in North they expect they deserve streets that Are clean and Well main boulevards that Are properly landscaped and swimming pools filled with Steek has shown that he understands this Sim ple that he is capable of sorting out his Priori Winni Eggers can Only Hope that a majority of councillors at City Hall will agree with Clear and sunny Manitoban Are Well accustomed to being mocked in the rest of the country for the but its a dry cold argument they so often use in defence of their legendary Winter they also like to say that while it May be a bit the sky is usually both of those claims Are True since sunny skies help to make sunny they explain in a nation famous for its Manitoban have come to be the nicest of the Nice the hum Blest monks in the so to we Are not so that we Are above Takin some pleasure when its miserable in other parts of the a Snow storm in Toronto does a lot to take the bite out of a january wind in Winnipeg and bad weather in British Columbia is absolute Balm on our own British Columbia is haying bad weather indeed these rain has been followed by rain for months to the Point that if it continues for a few More it will have been the wettest 10month period in the history of the world or of British As it is known it has gotten so bad that people Are tempered and suffering from Lack of concentration and feelings of seasonal affective disorder sad has become the flavour of the month in the illness the experts say these Are not really cases of which is in fact relatively but Grumpy Lotus Landers Are always a cause for concern in the rest of the country in the endless after Many of them did vote a lot of British columbian were kind to us during the and we would Send them sunny skies if we but we All we can do is to wish them better the kind of dry air and Clear skies that we enjoy Here most of the and we do Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free presses 197f Winnipeg Tribune in Rudy publisher email Nicholas editor Brian Cole editorial Page editor directors Harry Brown circulation sales and marketing Laurie Verne human resources Glenn Williams finance and administration City losing Green Leader Nick Carter has been Active in the preservation of the environment Ever since he retired As provincial Deputy minister of natural resources in so he knows the a reasonable and perceptive he regards Harvey a Kindred Spir As the Dean of environmentalists in an american pro decided in 1971 to accept a Post to teach science education at the University of Manitoba because he thought Canada was a better place to raise his teenage he never regretted in he had taught biology and environmental stud he soon pursued these inter ests As a Volunteer he focused particularly on Parks and fortified by his research and integrity and his role As an outspoken advocate for the Public he want exactly a Favourite of government leaders when he denounced the manner in which the Public interest was As in the present plan to develop Hecla Island provincial it is a tribute to his stature that he is respected by the Bureau Cracy Eyen though he has often been critical of their Delibera Williams is a pleasant individual who smiles and is not Val Werier he comes armed with facts and a Public con Larry provincial director of environmental says he asked questions and forced us to give answers to these his heart and head were in the right he kept the Forest Indus try on their toes and forced the Industry to look at matters in an environmentally Friendly Art provincial director of says he has been a major contributor to heritage conservation and environment Hes respected by those of us with responsibilities in natural bureaucrats will freely admit that he made a difference in the governments plans for develop ment in Duck at Kaki and other he terms As scandalous Manitoba policy encouraging development in one contrary to most he played a major role in having the principle of the ecosystem Tak ing in All the values of a habitat included in Forest management Williams has been head of a coalition of Environ mental and a Lead ing Light of the Manitoba naturalists society and other the Manitoba govern ment can play footloose with the English language in an outrageous it defines enhancement of provincial Parks in terms of eco nomic this sort of in this Case involving Hecla Provin Cial prompted Williams to go into High he fired off letters to officialdom to remind them of the history of the Park and to oppose plans to build cot he did his pointing to a 1988 management plan approved by the government for Hecla and adjoining Grindstone provincial after extensive Public the govern ment agreed to limit cottages to and to this As Williams Points Many of the lots Haven been taken yet the government plans to open two Kilometres of Hecla in the process Bull dozing a mature Forest rated As an excellent habitat for a recent Survey shows 147 differ ent species of Birds in this for Williams maintains there should be full environment pub Lic hearings to Deal with such a drastic instead of just an open House held at he says the Public process was far More open when he came Here in Williams concedes there have been improvements in the new environment act and the clean environment he that care of natural resources on the whole has taken a backward it is he that a Large portion of our boreal for est was handed Over to Louisiana Pacific and two International this was done without prior Environ mental assessments to determine if this was the Best Way to go and to make certain All values of the forests were this week Williams and his wife a Fine naturalist in her own leave to reside in he is sorry to leave this Beautiful he has Given much of his time and Energy trying to keep it Val Werier is a Winnipeg his column appears on a metaphor for modern Art 1997 Winnipeg free division of division 9 Thomson Canada Limite published seven Days 9 week at 1355 Maun Ian amt pts m pm 4 member of tos Manitoba flu null vol 125 n0184 v Back in the Early a Manitoba pig Farmer got his shirt in a knot Over the National gallery of Canadas spending several million dollars on works of Art that he thought were of doubtful accomplish the paintings in question were a Reddish Range smear on Canvas by the celebrated american abstract impression is Mark which carried a Price tag of million and voice of by the als Ocele rated american Barnett new a relative bargain at under Normal a pig Farmers opinion of modern Art would not Merit much Atten but in this Case the critic was Felix who also happened to be the conservative member of parliament for the old Riding of shocked and appalled that an Ordinary person would venture to express an opinion on the Illuminat of the arts world turned on him with All the fury of a cornered the last thing i want to do is reopen an but the affair cries out for the consensus among the Cul tured at the time was that pig Farmers should confine their opinions the slopping of pigs and shovelling out after that a pig firmer could know nothing about modern Art and a conservative politician could be expected to know even this was a slander against pig farm there is no evidence that they As 3 Are any less Cul tured an gallery Cura but there is considerable evidence that they have a lot More common it is a cure Ous in that in a society thai prides itself so greatly on its Devotion to we still Pigeon note people according to what they do for a it is Tom Oleson even More come to think of that we would publicly fund galleries if the Art that they exhibit can Only be appreciated by other artists and their hang in any there is now Rea son to believe that they May not know any less about Art than the so called a recent news Story reports that As Many As 100 paintings and drawings believed to have been made by Vincent Van a celebrated dutch May in fact be these include two hanging in new Yorks metropolitan Muse one in the Musee Dorsay in and others in the private collections of cultured one of them was sold at auction in 1987 for in another news we Learned of a problem at the National gallery with a 1976 work of Art called time and this consists basically of a Cabinet full of bottled preserves from the the preserves Are going if this were tigers actual preserve it would of be but because it was put together by a recognized it looking for some meaning in one might think that it was a Case of Art actually evolving to express the condition of with tiber progressing from Jelly jarring Home maker to despairing murderess prepared to serve poisoned pre serves to the oppressive husband and demanding children who have enslaved Herbut it is was right to voice criticism of voice of apparently just an accidental Case of botulism developing in the when Felix Holtmann criticized voice of which consists of two Blue stripes separated by a red he said it could have been painted by any one with a roller and a couple of buckets of a a you How common what a Philistine but Holtmann by the has left the honourable profession of pig farming but remains a conservative was he just missed the As the Van Gogh Story the actual Art Doest have anything to do with the painting that sold for million in 1987 is exactly the same painting but if it is not by Van Gogh it is nothing but a worthless its value lies in what the experts think it is and has nothing to do with what it actually Art is not always in the work it is often just in the a painting by Holtmann would not be Worth much because he had not in his work captured the attention of a fashionable critic what he should have done was to take some of his pigs Down to an aft gallery which would have found a stage for him to put on a performance Art the Farmer no his pigs and shovelling out after them in front of an that is How one establishes credentials in the arts these Days and acquires a Valu Able name he could have called the show metaphor of modern Arteen us Ordinary people could have understood that the artists Stop the experts and they All leave the rest of us to shovel out flow can they say we know nothing about Art Tom Oleson is a free press editorial his Quli on ;