Silly season
“This,” declared Cal McGregor, “is the silly season.”
In the dog days of July and August, the politicians all go to roost, meetings of earth-shaking importance are shelved in favor of lounging on the beach and reporters not on holidays are scrambling to fill what is called the news hole in newspapers.
This is when stories surface about men biting dogs, potatoes shaped like Winston Churchill and how strawberries that gave about 20 Torontonians the trots can be blown up into a national crisis.
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Cal McGregor was the news editor of this newspaper from the 1930s to the 1950s. She used to comment rather profanely on the quality of summer news available but one had to fill the news hole, didn’t one?
On the question of the strawberries, we acquired a large flat of California strawberries just before this news story broke and had eaten several baskets of them. Perhaps we are now polluted with parasites but, if so, they’re not giving us much trouble.
Even in Toronto, when I think of the tons of strawberries eaten in a single day, I wonder why a million Ontarians haven’t come down with dysentery.
I suppose there’s nothing wrong in getting the story out that it’s a good idea to wash store fruit before eating it. However, a nation-wide scare could conceivably turn a large segment of the population away from nutritious fruit in its prime season. Aside from dietary considerations, this is no help to farmers who invest a lot of capital to produce the berries.
Don’t chuck out those strawberries still in your freezer. If you’re still concerned about parasites, boil up the berries for jam.
