CANADA, EH? had occasion to visit Morden, Manitoba, last week. As lead sen- weetences go, that one Bouldn’t be counted on to gulge eyeballs, cause con- tions of the gullet or e, say, the prime mini- is!” orden is Morden. It is not ecca or Memphis or Moscow or Minneapolis. Just a small rie town stuck in the middle ranges, no trophy muskies d no NHL franchise. It’s an hosannahed, hard-working girg hard-hit by the R-word mats battering the bejeepers ait of most Canadians and that finance minister has such a ugh time pronouncing. The ople of Morden go about their ily business wondering when sal estate will pick up and the mice of grain will get real. They ouse about the hated GST and nder if there's any future at for their kids when they grow ust like the rest of us. ou don't go to Morden to ex- ience gut-wrenching adven- e or to sniff the bracing ze of high-stakes finance beling. But you can learn a lot but your country in Morden. stopover in Morden is espe- lly instructive for a columnist 0 spends more time than is od for the soul in Toronto. rking in Hogtown, it’s easy to set about the other 3,851,700 uare miles of this country, uch of it made up of towns like orden. Canada? That's what you see m the top of the CN Tower on clear day,” a slightly bitter orden lawyer told me. Two mer townsfolk repeated the fame bromide. What's interest- hg about the perception is that i shows what people who don’t ve in Toronto think of people tho do. Torontonians never ac- ally come out and say that iverse. They just take it for yanted. Which is to say they Idom give a passing thought to wns like Morden. T admit it — Id have been em- arrassed if someone had asked e what I knew about Morden efore I went there. My answer would have been: “Not much.” I could have placed it in (Mhitoba, but I wouldn’t have own if it was bigger than danaimo or more industrial ¢ Island Eatery with CLASSIC ROCK 380-6623 1316 Broad St. heir city is the centre of the . than Saskatoon or prettier than Fredericton. The truth is, it’s been a town almost as long as Canada’s been a country. Sieur de La Verendrye passed through a By ARTHUR BLACK there. So did the explorer Alexander Henry: It once was called Fort Pinancewaywinning and came within a hair of being known to the world as Dead Horse Creek. Go back far enough and you would have found Morden under water — water teeming with giant tortoises, aquatic dinosaurs and fish the size of city buses. Centuries later, after the sea dried up, the Indians came and lived and died and left huge mounds for us to ponder over. I came to Morden to make a speech in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the town’s library service. In the process I met councillors and farmers and ar- tists and scientists and librarians — the human glue that makes a place like Morden live. Morden has an exciting and spectacular story to teli} but you'll never hear aboutit on The Journal or read about in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s “national” newspaper. It's a pity that our national newsmakers find the Mordens of Canada so unnewsworthy, preferring to fill our eyes and ears with junk food snippets nday LOA ABC Detergent Pe i 5 about feuding film stars, the flatulent maunderings of politicians and the score of the latest Jersey Devils-Buffalo Sabres games. I never was a fan of Mao's China, but one idea the chair- man had was brilliant. Each fall he ordered the Chinese intel- Learn a lot about your country in Morden ligentsia out in the fields to as- sist with the harvest. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every fall, Toronto’s news editors and TV producers were parachuted into Morden to help bring in the crops? Maybe not. 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