How better communications have corrupted good men ALEXIS CREEK — Chifcotin now has marvellous communications and as a result there’s no news any more, or, if there be a scrap or two, it’s poor, thin, tasteless stuff, hardly worth hearing. Paul st. Pierre PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES This country has a serious case of cultural deprivation and maybe will have to back up half a cen- tury or so to restore its spirit. As to the communication systems, they are now almost as good as anywhere else,and we all know what everywhere else has been like lately. Chilcotin has an all-weather highway, mostly paved, all the way from Williams Lake to Anahim Lake. You can drive it in four easy hours, without being stopped by radar traps which are likely to be present. There are touch-tone telephones in just about every house that has more than one room. Big Creek is on the same telephone exchange as Williams Lake, which is 100 kilometres distant. This is like phoning Vancouver from Mission or Abbotsford withaut paying long distance fees. As things were 50 years ago, it would have resembled free calling privileges between Vancouver and Nairobi. There are almost as many TV satellite dishes as there are tele- phones, each one with its all-news channel, its all-sports channel and its numerous all-bod channels. Communications? How about FAX machines and computers with modems, sitting on old roll- top desks in ancient ranch houses? How about scheduled air service daily from Vancouver to Anahim Lake and a regular bus that makes two round trips across the plateau every week? The result of these and other atrocities which pass for progress is that Chilcotin people are now just as much in touch with the world as the rest of us and, like us, don’t much like what they hear. Did you like last week’s news from Kurdistan or Victoria? Did it make your world brighter, hap- pier, more interesting? Exactly. Alas, in accepting the new, the Chilcotin people have just about Ropes Pays Off ("ys \ Bee abandoned and left in ruins one of the finest systems of com- munication known to the human race. It was called the Moccasin Telegraph and it made this world a brighter, a happier,a finer place in which to live. Moccasin Telegraph carried messages by word of mouth. It is known by other names in different parts of the world. In parts of Africa it was known as Jungle Telegraph and many stories are told about it there. One of the favorites is that Bushmen on the Kalahari desert knew of the death of old Queen Victoria two days before white men learned about it by their telegraph system. (This meant they knew about it before the Queen did and shows that the old Africa hands knew how to stretch a story without breaking it.) . If any major part of the Jungle Telegraph stories are true, it was a different system from Chilcatin’s. Moccasin Telegraph’s messzges were almost always wrong, but, bless them, they were powerfully entertaining. The Moccasin Telegraph was at its best during the depths of long winters, when cold and snow pen people up within their own prop- erty lines, also during spring breakup when the thaws made roads impassable to everything except Percheron pack horses. At these times, people in the isolated ranch houses were parch- ed for news about their friends, their enemies, their relatives, and thev even had some interest in the rest of humanity. Since there was always some visiting back and forth, stories did travel, although they travelled slowly and changed as they went. All the Moccasin Telegraph stortes were better than the kind people get now by telephone and television. They were more color- ful. The people in them were larger than life. All the events strained your power of belief, but never made it snap. Ask today in any ranch house you visit about the neighbor and you will hear something like this: “Slats? When did you last see old Stats Mary? It was at Overwaitea in the Lake, wasn’t it? Can't remember he had much to say.”’ Twenty years ago, if your friend didn’t have any news of Slats he would invent some and Slats, when he finally got to hear the invention, would likely as not find it aUsurd enough to be entertain- ing and would retroactively swear it to be true. Pesple did not readily dispute Moccasin Telegraph. It was preferred to all official accountsof events. So it should have been. It was of a higher literary quality. The Moccasin Telegraph stimu- lated the imagination of genera- tions of young and old. It caused their thoughts to expand beyond their own fence lines. It was grand, the stuff of legend, and people who heard it were enrich- ed. It was more ornamental than accurate but, then, you can say the same of the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 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