Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 13, 2000, Winnipeg, Manitoba A16 Winnipeg Freh May 2000 editorials Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights Retreat to the past after Long the Federal government announced this week a phase Din approach toward an extremely cautious Experiment with a few slight changes in the Western Canadian Grain transportation the Pace and the scope of change Are so slight that improvements in performance May be hard to railways and Grain companies have been begging for wider Freedom to move Grain from Inland Termi nals to ports the Best and quickest Way they know they believe that transport costs Are increased unnecessarily by the demands of the Canadian wheat which claims a role in allocating rail cars among country Eleva tors and in supervising the movement of Grain to Export transport minister David Collenette announced this week that in the coming crop year the Canadian wheat Board will take bids and conclude con tracts with Grain companies for movement of on Quarter of wheat and Barley shipments to the ports of Prince Thunder Bay and the same will apply in the 2001 2002 crop for the 20022003 crop the government will get really daring and have the Board tender half the the part that is not tendered will be organized and moved under the boards the Board will continue to direct the allocation of rail cars among Grain elevators and it will retain the Power to micromanage the allocation of cars to ensure that old elevators on Low traffic Branch lines continue to get cars to Load even if the railways find them inefficient to the Grain companies and the railways probably could move Grain to Export terminals More cheaply and efficiently than they have done in the but they cannot do so while they Are required to absorb the costs of serving scattered elevators and catering to the tastes and preferences of the wheat the system the railways prefer would impose costs on the Gram growers whose land lies farthest from modern High volume elevators and whose operations Are too Small to support Long truck in the interest of helping the Small most Remote Grain the government has decided to pass up the Chance to make the Grain transport system More efficient for the Benefit of the this is a compassionate Choice in defence of the family an institution that Lay at the foundations of Prairie society and that faces increasing difficulty in Competition with highly mechanized Large scale producers and with subsidized Grain exports from Europe and the United those who wish to nurture and protect the family farm and who treasure the symbolism of those Majestic wooden Grain elevators will rejoice in the governments for those who want to squeeze costs out of the Grain transportation system and reshape Western Canada for intensifying the governments Choice represents a Retreat from the an insistence on clinging to a past that no longer works very smart cities Winnipeg ought not to be a dumb just because it lost its bid for a smart communities Grant from Industry the Grant has been awarded to a Western Manitoba application Winkler had also the Federal department awarded the smart Grants for technology upgrades to communities in each As Well As in the North and to an aboriginal winning Manitoba application will aim to increase improve Hospital technology and Commerce training in Neepawa and the million no have helped the Winnipeg efforts to develop the cites information technology but this setback must not halt such plans particularly in the development of new technologies and i Nova is the smart Winnipeg group should continue its plans to forge ahead in the digital by wiring the Exchange District an emerging cube Village to allow every company there to have High Speed internet by enhancing ser vices and getting the word More firms might be attracted to that business the Quebec government has announced it will offer billion in tax credits in an Effort to woo High tech companies to Montreal the electronic Commerce Complex to be called Commerce place will be the first significant commercial development in the cites downtown in several and it is hoped it will House As Many As working for various by a Federal Grant would hardly have Cov ered the Bill in Winnipeg for the kind of tax credits Quebec has but the Montreal project could serve As a role Model of sorts for new Economy for partnerships with private interests and provincial and City even without the Blessing of a Federal Winnipeg can still show electronic innovators that it Means to offer them a favourable environment and a tribute its share to Canadas Progress in info nation r the new look in newspapers Montreal if you change your people hate if you change your web they expect that sentence rang in my ears As i sat yesterday in one of the sessions of the Canadian newspaper association annual conference which i am attending we have just changed the design of the free press and As i the Telephone has been ringing off the some of you dont like As for the web i suspect that the comment from Florida based consultant Peter is True in both things that it says in the new people expect dont theres going to be lots of we changed the look of our paper because the design that we had since we moved into the new building on Mountain Avenue a decade ago no longer had the clarity and punch that it once if you go Back Over the past nine years or so and look at the newspaper you will see evolutionary the introduction of a digest of news in a panel on the front what we Call teasers to sections and pages which were above the changed and we have modified the order of moving the first local Page from Page four to Page altered the look of introduced regular life pages on mondays and tuesdays and so we also redesigned the sunday there comes a after a number of Grad Ual changes when the original template begins to have Little relevance to the newspaper you Are now endless Small modifications have led to a situation where the design of the paper has More to do with the lore of those who work there than to the concepts of the original it is no longer possible to go to a graphic style Book for advice on How a Page should because the design has been gradually altered to the Point where Only Cus Tom and practice that is roughly the position that our old design had we had narrowed the Width of our pages without redesigning the Type we used in those pages or altering the style and weight of we had made Content changes and changes to where articles were to be found without Ever completely rethinking How we should present what we do and we had Learned better How to use the changes we have made were a result of starting again from the design itself is the work of the free press Art director with direction from me and advice from Many Edi in the end Gord Preece is responsible for it and i am to we have kept much of the old we wanted to give the newspaper a fresher look and to group some things together which had previously been spread indifferent that is the reasoning behind the digest of information consumer watch and Howton reaches on Page some people have complained about moving the deaths from the lefthand others about moving the Index from Page but we have also had Calls from people who find it easier to in As in most creative endear renewal and rethinking add purpose to what you we now have a new design to tin Ker with and improve or not Over the com ing the real changes to will be in How we now deliver the Rich information we at the conference in the session after the editor of the Orlando John Haille told of the revolution that has happened at his in reporters and editors at the sen Tinel provide stories both for publishing on the internet and on the newspapers 24hour regional television news Cable in other the Sentinel is no longer Sim ply a it is a provider of news and information through three different those channels Are Likely to merge on the web As More and More people have broadband capabilities and technology develops to allow the delivery of full motion video from live on the text and video will it is my belief that Orlando is simply the trailblazer in a revolution that will sweep news gathering organizations in North within a Short time you will receive different pieces of the same information in a variety of different in some form or the Winnipeg free press will be both print and broadcast and if there Are regulations that stand in the Way of that they wont stand for the redesign is but the revolution is on its Nicholas Hirst is editor of the free his column appears on honour the victims of communism news stories this week about mayor Glen Murray intention to rename notre Dame Park in the cites North end after Jacob a Long ago recalled an experience from my Grade 10 his tory class a few years i dont remember much from High school had Learned writing and arithmetic in elementary school and everything after that was pretty much a waste but that particular Les son has stayed in my the cold War was nearing its height the cuban missile crisis was Only a Grade we knew that communists threatened our Way of but we As teenagers did not have much experience with in an attempt to de demonize communists for our teacher told us about Jacob a communist who had served As an Alderman for 25 retiring in the whose name has vanished along with most of his lessons in the mists of had great respect for who had served the City and his constituents Well for Many years he had raised a family enviable in its Success he was a Man of honour and decency and civic Devotion whom we All might As i think about it i think it have taken some courage for that teacher to Tell our class that Story communists were not in Good but As impressive As it was in its i realize today that he did not Tell us the whole Story he left out an important a part As mayor Murray proposal makes is still largely left out of our under standing of communism even that Jacob Penner was an honourable and decent Man is not that As a Mem Ber of City made a contribution is rarely that he was a communist is beyond and it is that fact of his life that we cannot get around and still maintain any sort of moral Penner was a founding member of the communist party of one of the most untre pent Antly stalinist of All Western communist the party that Penner helped to Festal Lish in and of which he remained a Mem Ber the rest of his refused to condemn the communist engineered ukrainian famine in which hundreds of thousands of people were even though Penner was born in the party and Penner found nothing to criticize in the soviet Union when the purges and show trials took nor when millions of innocent people were sent to the labour Camps of the gulag to the party and Penner supported Hitler and campaigned against Canadas entry into the second world War Penner himself spent two years in prison for opposing the in one of Histo Rys neat that is regarded today As persecution by Canada until Hitler betrayed his Friend invaded Russia and the orders from Moscow Penners party found nothing to object to in the enslavement of Poland after the second world War nor in the defenestration of Jan Masaryk in Prague in 1948 and the communists crushing of czech democracy nor in the snuff ing out of a Brief East German rebellion against communism nor perhaps most shame in the brutal repression of the hungarian rising in Penners party found no fault in any of Jacob Penner May have been an honourable but he devoted his life to an ideology that has been the Scourge of the 20th his communism is responsible for scores of Lions of deaths and is matched in the Mon stromsness of its evil Only by the nazis and the we know now that the communists of the 1920s and the 1930s and the 40s 50s and 60s and no excuse for their the evidence was Public and available for any honest person to Evalu those who chose not to acknowledge it made a deliberate we should not honour them in any Way for that Choice because by doing so we become their let us rather remember by putting up a More meaningful Marker in this City in a place where children can play and Ivers can stroll and All can remember what was denied to the millions of victims Tern me son is q free writer his appears on i Winnipeg free press ree presses 187 1890 2000 Winnipeg free a division of newspapers published Days a at 1355 Mountain r2x pm 6s77qoo Huq Hus Patrick editor ;