Avoiding infection With the Ontario Plague. r D OZENS OF MALEVOLENT clowns lurking behind turnstiles. Millions of marching bands squeeling insignificantly into the bowels of Lake Ontario. Hundreds of cherry-cheeked university youth, the apple of our eye, the cream of the crop; unemployed just days before and unemployable in years to come-but resplendent in blue tennis shoes and becrested blazers: “Ontario Place. ” Parking. The bearded lot attendant flashes a ‘peace sign as we drive by. Groovy. Entrance. Clowns accost someone’s puling brat and we pass through with tickets intact. We can use them- again, we chortle, thinking we have put one over on the government. Little did we know. Overture. Quickly, go this way to escape the New Lasalle Prancing Harlots Drum and Bugle Treat. Pass the cafes How acrylic .-How quaint. Pass the marina. If you’ve got the money, why not? Pass a horrid little pump feverishly * sucking rivulets of sludge from the landscaping. How delightful, we murmur as we hustle around its disturbed, throbbing activity, that someone has finally discovered a way of disposing of lost children at affairs like this. Cinesphere ? Actually, you can’t get there from here. Cinesphere. Fifteen minutes through a black passageway to get there, and we wonder how many arrests there will be this summer for assault, indecent exposure and child molesting. Thrilling. “Sit in the front row; wow, its really
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far out,” slobbers the guide, a wildeyed thing in yellow hpttish pants, pony tail and white knee socks. We S,‘t through thirty minutes of startling technique and wonder if -anyone will allow this Cinerama x 3 to develop beyond presenting forest fires, waterfalls and river valleys. The movie, “North of Superior” is like a collection of Molson Entertains and Labatts Blue commercials. Pure Teknique, and predictably impressive becaiise of it. This way to the exhibits, please. Pass some twit in a checkered suit and papire-mache head. “How delightful to meet you Mr. Davis,” we say extending our hands. He ignores us and procedes to accost a drooling urchin wit! suckers and ballons. We stand in a group of about seventy and watch starry-eyed with anticipation as four or five uniformed girls frantically answer telephones in front of us and a guide snorts incomprehensible truisms through a hoarse megaphone. A digital clocks sedately reads 10:40. The time is 11: 10. Genesis. The World’s GovernmentProduced Pornographic Movie ; Hurry, Hurry... “Thrusting, pulsing,“, intones the narrative as a film portraying the birth of the planet flutters arid twinkles across huge, plastic bosoms. The connotations are so obviously purile that we laugh ,hysterically. No one else is Amused. Exptosions. A filmed history of Ontario’s economic growth clanks through the expected steel plants groans through Pioneer Village mills and wheezes under modern skyscrapers while screen panels oc-
by Alex Smith chevron staff
i ~. casionally slide back to reveal stationary sets and slide images change in sequence around the film. A panel slides back to reveal a Christ figure on a cross. Someone who has left her glasses on the night table beside a bottle of Courvoissier turns ko her husband and charms “Look hon, a totem pole.” We erupt into wild gales of maniacal laughter but everyone else is Not Amused. Some film footage is-good, but the message is nothing new; ‘only the tech-‘ ‘i nique is imaginative. Ontario Style. A meandering course through ten-foot high cylanders, some hard, sQme smooth, others rough, some dull, others shiny, all unbearable. Slide and motion pictures are projected on to the cylander surfaces and depict provincial history from god-knows-when until the end of the last war. Significantly, Onta-rio’s “style” seems decidedly war-oriented. Everything sort-of Peter Challenges. Max; you know, the original copies of Maclean’s and Chatelaine, the old Mercury suspended from the ceiling, groovy larger-than-life figurines, neat Electrohome TV sets from Kitchener that don’t resporid to any of the-buttons pushed, subtle murals tucked away discretely in obvious places screaming Ontario’s gross provincial product figures... and a final, glorious film. Eight million brats skipping through the usual forests, the expected steel mill, the anticipated Restored Village, the quaint river stream, the innovative highway boulevard, the obvious CNE grounds and finally, the expensive Qntario
’ I-Figh,ting in earnest-soyou
won’t have to fight anymo-re.’. .T HE NOTION THAT “Canada’s future depended on the leadership and. inspiration of highly educated young true. However, the people” is i‘rrevocably education system is tied directly to the market system as Barbara Frumm has’ graphically illustrated in this week’s centerspread feature. The reason for this is that the -operative definition of education society and government to educator, means the training of individuals in skills useful for industry. It does not refer to the realization of the capacity to think.
Industry
Preparation
Even in high-school, just a few years ago, the university handbooks illustrated this relationship to industry by listing the supposed starting salary after each kind of degree. The implication was obvious and students entering university held it as an operative assumptign; a&er graduation their cup would runneth over in green. A@ it was Written and Guaranteed.> This list is noticeably absent in current issues. In order to guarantee that investment in the future and in order to prevent ending up “with a /group of people who won’t be able to fit. in ever, even into a certain reassessments perfect economy” have to be made. As Frutim suggests “the degree as a commodity” value must be changed and the definition of education, formal or otherwise should be questioned. It must become a continually on-going - process throughout an individual’s life. Only masses of dedicated people with disciplined, keen minds and tremendous enthusiasm will fulfil1 -man’s desire for peqce, both internal and political. Only these people can solve problems like pollu-
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tion and over-population. But if you rob them of the dignity that gives them enthusiasm, their initiative to accomplish will be destroyed. Therefore the guarantee fails. So the problem will have to be attacked from the macro-level of government and society and the micro-level of the individual student .
Larger Society and er problems; situation arid and direction the future.
problems?
government inherit the larghow to handle the -present also how to change the value of an education system for
See also feature,
page
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par now, the g;aduates could be employed en masse (financed by a capital gains to use one example for pure research. There is no sense training an astronaut, investing a veritable fortune in the process, than wasting all that by letting him be a truck driver. Such resgarch could solve present problems of pollution and urban sprawl and at the same time provide data and means to plan more efficiently and effectively. Though this implies engineering and science graduates, the arts students could also be, employed effectively in developing the Canadian arts. Instead of giving research grants to people doing a thesis on Hemmingway, limit grants to emphasize Canadian content. Stati$tics show that 95 percent of the north american population is psychologically -maladjusted. With moral and financial support the thousands of psychology majors and minors could become clin-
ical psychologists problem.
rj I
to help
Graduate
-
alleviate
this
skills
There is much useful work to do. that needs the special skills of a graduate. Instead of cutting down elm trees put a thbusand students on the problem and cure the disease. The government must do something positive, not makeshift. While this employment en masse is taking place, the roTe of formal education must be reconsidered. That the degree can no longer be considered a market commodity -is obvious. How else, then, can we consider it? Towards what end must a .system be directed? Do we even need a formal education system? What ‘are the alternatives? These questions were raised by educator A.S. Neil more than forty years ago. But for a government to act on them now requires the resolute leadership of a McKenzie-King or an F.D.R. which we sadly lack in this desparate age. Rather, we have Herbert Hoovers with their “Prosperity is just around the corner” approach to these problems. This bring us to the second area of concern, the individual graduate. He (no offence to women’s lib!) must stop feeling sorry for himself. It is easy to blame society and say there is no solution. It takes guts to do something about it. The cup that was guaranteed to runneth over his suddenly dry, but it won’t help to sit and do nothing or merely voice accusations.
Suffer,
Place rooftops. Flags flutter. Voices soar (as only the pristine innocence of the pre-bra set can) to an almost violent conelusion. “This is the place to be, this is the place to be, this is the place thisisthe placethisistheplacethisisthe.. . Jesus God. We leave, .skippirig -hand in hand,L all agog with pride. It’s starting to rain and the temperature is 40 degrees. But of course, this is the place to be. Dead fish litter the’shore of Lake Ontario. This is the place to be. Last year, the Hearn generating station (Ontario Hydro) dumped more sulfur pollutant in’to Toronto air than did any other single outlet for this kind of pollution in I any other north american city. Indeed, this is the place-to die, pl’obably. There is no point condemning, in all the trite detail, the PR nature of Ontario Place. It remains for us to wonder only why, when given plenty of warning, the people of this province did nothing to .at least fill the pretty shell with meaning. Seldom, in fact, has so much been ignored by so many for so long. Only the “forum”, to ‘be the scene of concerts, drama and possibly debates and forums hold any hope of relating tieaningfully to the ordinary/citizen who will not be taken in by the plasticity. At the exits to Ontario Place grounds plastic hippies sell roses to the fleeing, clutching crowds. And we all knew what somebody said about a rose. There was only one solution‘to laugh. Hysterically. But we were decidedly not amused. -
baby,
Suffer
The ‘71 graduates and all those from here on in, will have to accept the situation as it stands. This does not mean draw-
by Rod Hickman chevron staff
ing into a shell, rather, if anything, it means liberation. Instead of being an automation from nine to five for the ‘company store’, the graduate now must face the fact that he will have to use his own initiative, be innovative and creative on his own or perish. Part of this responsibility may mean getting actively involved in political par- , ties. In order to get that effective, resolute leader we need so much, the so-called educated graduates who- are supposed to have the intellectual ability to lead and make decisions, must flood the parties such that their numbers will influence and their abilities become effective. Unless and until grass roots political participation occurs, any hope of a realistic, positive change is non-ex‘istent . This same argument applies to the socalled “uneducated” employed. Both the government and the individual worker must take positive steps to solve any problems. As Buckminster Fuller suggests, pay them all to go back to school. Maybe one in a thousand will be a Newton or an Einstein. At any rate, the return will exceed the investment because the other 999 will be able to participate more actively in the society as a whole because of their resultant attitude change and new awareness. There is a loser in this struggle. Hopefully, the loser will be the capitalistic system. It is about time this anachronism and dehumanization value give way -to somereasonable and ethically thing more sound. If what has been suggested does not come to pass then we must consider the alternative postulated so eloquently in. the last sentence of The Strawberry Statement: “One day I may fight in earnest so I won’t have to fight anymore.”