The Child Challenge FTLComm - Tisdale May 23, 1999 This scene of a young mother and child in the midst of the jumble of needed products captured my concern yesterday. Raising a child is the biggest undertaking a person can engage and yet so often it occurs when we are least prepared financially and experientially to deal with all of the skills that are needed. You will notice this young woman is not in the area of a department store that is filled with the things that she doesn't need, instead she is where it is at in her life. For the safe and orderly conduct of raising her child she needs

above all, a clean safe environment. She needs the tools and products that will make it possible for her to accomplish these tasks and sadly the responsiblity falls solely upon her. Few of us ever realise that the romance and loving relationship that leads to having a baby also is accompanied with the drudgery of endless cleaning. Chores that someone has to do and almost always its a mother that knows what has to be done and in direct response is the person to sets to the task.

The miracle of all this is that each of us is the product of this situation, we are alive today because our mothers made sure that things were clean, that our health was maintained best by providing us with a healthy environment. Perhaps there should be another beattitude: Blessed are the cleaners for they shall keep us well.

Northern Saskatchewan has a very high infant mortality rate and if you ever went to some of Saskatchewan's Northern communities you would discover that the life of the people there is most hampered not by the remote location but by the lack of the necessities of life. Running water, safe sewer dispossal and housing conditions that are not crowded, these components of life are missing in Northern Saskatchewan and the result is most dangerous to the young.