MR SEMPLE’S MERE

Kaikoura Star, Volume LVI, Issue 94, 30 November 1936, Page 3

MR SEMPLE’S MERE

GIFT FROM UREWERA MAORIS Mr Semple’s talent for silencing critics has been demonstrated in a striking manner already, and what it will be like now that Urcwera Maoris have presented him with a mere one dreads to think. Some, reassurance may be derived, however, from the further statement that what the Maori and pakeha workers in the Urcwera have given to the Minister is the "model” of a. mere, also of a canoe and paddle. Symbolically, the mere means authority, the canoe means team work, the paddle means progress. Some significance ’could be attached to the presenting of a canoe and paddle to a Minister of Transport and Public Works. When the pakeha came to New Zealand the, rivers were the roads; and the canoe and paddle—effective in waters shallow and deep, the canoe being amphibious—conveyed men and things over hundreds of miles of a network of inland waterways, now forgotten. Pakeha roads, and later pakeha railways, displaced vanoe traffic, and finally made even the pakeha steamer on Lake Taupo unnecessary. So when Mt Seddon started the road through the. remote Urewera, and when Mr Semple speeds it up for an age of motor, the shades of departed canoemen watch from the forest shadows. In this way arises the "progress” of which the paddle is the symbol, but no longer the agent. All things past. Mr Semple motors where Mr Seddon rode. Some day a flying Minister may be presented with a model of a motor-car and a steam shovel.