I’ve spent the past week reading about the cartoon controversy and the ensuing demonstrations and burning of embassies in the Middle East. Once again, I am challenged in this blog to add to the media frenzy with something more articulate than “Oh, wow” or “Yikes!” Frankly, it’s not easy because I could get into trouble. Luckily,the trouble that I will get into is not life threatening.
Critiques of some of my blogthat were meant to be funny have come in the form of mildly cajoling emails and one or two Letters to the Editor. I have been castigated for making fun of people who shop early for Christmas presents and for my continuous jibes about the College Street bridge in Lennoxville while it was being repaired. What I thought were gently humorous digs at every day life issues were taken quite seriously by readers and though I apologised for offending these readers, I did not apologise for writing my opinions and for describing my own observations of the world. Any columnist worth his salt welcomes this kind of criticism because it means that the blogs are being read and discussed
What I find completely frightening is what happens if a cartoonist, columnist or newspaper editor does not gauge his reading audience well and goes out of the bounds of what is thought to be good taste or appropriate standards. It’s a new world out there. Salman Rushdie wrote a book and received a death sentence for what he put in it. Do authors and cartoonists deserve to die because they express beliefs that are considered blasphemous by others?
I also wonder about the innocent victims of this controversy. I cannot understand why the embassies of these countries were burned down and why their industries are being boycotted. The guy who works on the floor of a Danish cheese packaging plant has absolutely nothing to do with the cartoonist who drew the controversial cartoons yet he is losing his job because that cartoonist and his editor didn’t use some common sense.
Anyone in our society has to recognize that there are lines that we all draw concerning free speech no matter how liberal we think we are. No sane person would allow a six year old to watch a pornographic film or a hard-core violent film. Most of us would think that the photos that the American soldiers took in the Abu Ghraib prison as a joke were horrible. Our society does not look kindly on jokes that humiliate minority groups or women or for that matter, jokes about the Holocaust. It’s something that you don’t put in a newspaper.
In Canada, we have used the expression, the Two Solitudes, to describe English and French Canada. This is nothing compared to the Two Solitudes that our world seems to have been divided into. Many people within the Middle East feel that it is their people who are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and now the West is kicking their most sacred icons and principles that go beyond discussion: their religion, their deity.
In the West, we are used to making fun of everything, literally everything. Our stand-up comics crack jokes about God, racial groups, sex, you name it. We pride ourselves on the much cherished freedom to discuss and make fun of any topic that we want to. Yes, it’s a relief to live in such a world but in reality, the world we live in is a much smaller place as some Danish cartoonists found out in the past few weeks.
Whether we like it or not, there is another solitude out there and they don’t think that we’re one bit funny. This is a truly frightening reality and one that we will be dealing with for years to come. Both sides have got to start talking to one another instead of screaming; we have to find out about one another instead of aiming guns or cartoons.

Some things aren’t funny anymore; they are serious, deadly serious.

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I guess I won’t be cross-country skiing any time soon and neither will you. Yes, January thaw came and stayed for all of January and it slipped right into February. It kind of took the wind right out of January Thaw’s romantic sails.
In the course of a long and argumentative life, I’ve debated with people over the existence of January Thaw. I’ve always known there to be an island of sanity in our climate - that window of opportunity to walk outside and feel the breeze on one’s face without pain. It’s like a weather-holiday after Christmas yet there are many unbelievers. I consider these people who don’t believe in January Thaw to be like those Bush supporters who believe that global warming is a bunch of nonsense.
Yet this year, it’s hard to deny global warming and when you have rain almost every day, you can’t call it much of a thaw. It’s a New York City winter that has moved up north and is here to stay. It may not be painful but it certainly isn’t very much fun. An Eastern Townships winter implies a certain amount of frolicking in the snow with the aid of snow-frolicking tools such as skis, sleds, fancy sleds (GTs), snowmobiles and snowshoes.
This winter, I have aged 30 years as I do the shuffle down my driveway to my car and I’m not the only one. Several gentlemen of my acquaintance have admitted to doing some shuffling of their own for fear of breaking an arm, leg or hip and these guys are under fifty. If we have winter after winter like this, we will need to get ice climbing shoes just to walk outside.
The summers are getting hotter, the winters are getting warmer – call me crazy but I believe in global warming. President Bush claimed in a 2001 speech that the climate runs in patterns – he says it gets warmer for awhile and then colder. It’s just a natural pattern. I think that this is all wishful thinking on his part. Nobody wants to tell millions of Americans or for that matter, people in up and coming developing countries such as India and China, that they can’t drive an SUV, that gas will never be affordable again and that the future doesn’t have limitless possibilities. The big surprise is that we may have to limit ourselves so that we have a future at all.
Like many Canadians, I will be curious to see how long Canada remains signed on to the Kyoto Accord now that the Conservative Party is in office. In addition, Prime Minister Harper may decide that he no longer needs the services of Rick Mercer to cajole Canadians into figuring out ways to help Canada meet its goals in reducing greenhouse emissions. Of course, it is industry that should be the real target and no Prime Minister wants to tug on the coattails of big companies about how much they’re chugging into the air. It doesn’t matter whether he or she is a Liberal or a Conservative. It’s much easier to go after little people.
Meanwhile, it may be time to throw all our snow frolicking stuff into this summer’s garage sale, stock up on some very good umbrellas and shoes with excellent traction. Winter just isn’t what it used to be.

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Relaxation in a bottle…and dishes that sparkle too
Modern technology never fails to excite me with the new tools it comes up with to make my life easier and better. Just last weekend, I was shopping at the supermarket and I realized that we were running out of liquid dishwashing soap. I noticed that one brand, a name brand, was on sale and that it came in a wide variety of scents: cucumber, lemon, etc. Then I noticed the very last one, aromatherapy…and the label said anti-stress!
Now, just imagine the multi-tasking possibilities here! I can actually wash a pot and relax at the same time. Yes, there’s a sucker born every minute but the bottle is on sale and promising me that those scented bubbles will fight my stress. How can I resist? Can this be false advertising? Not in Canada.
Ever since childhood, there’s a side of me that…now, this is hard to confess to such a wide audience, but here goes: there’s a side of me that likes commercials. I’ve always known why. Commercials have happy endings and I want to believe that happy endings are possible.
Sixties commercials never failed to have happy endings. If the lady switches to the right brand, everything is right. If the neighbour’s sheets on the clothesline are cleaner than your sheets, you listen to her advice, buy the detergent and then your family really, really loves you. Buy that whitening toothpaste and you get the boyfriend, the big job, the trip to Florida and the luggage. Commercials make life seem so simple. If you have the money, there’s always an easy solution.
Life is very busy these days so if a dishwashing soap can lull me into a state of bliss two steps up from comatose, why should I resist? Of course, it’s all fun and games till we find out that the secret ingredient in the soap is illegal.
All kidding aside, stress is a very real problem. Just the other day, a friend passed on a news headline to me that says that most teenagers are so stressed out and depressed that if they were in this condition twenty years ago, that state of mind would require professional help. Nowadays, we just accept it.
One journal states that the rate of teenaged depression may be as high as 20%. It does go on to say that many of these cases will be short-lived but if you think of the pressures that teenagers are under between school, sports, extracurricular activities along with the strain in relationships among family and peers, this figure is not so surprising.
After all, we expect sixteen and seventeen year olds to pick an area of concentration in CEGEP. I barely know what I’m doing with my life now. How can we possibly expect kids to figure out what they want to do at such a young age when they can barely decide which jeans to wear to school? That’s stress.
Now I know better than to suggest that if we get teenagers to wash our pots and pans with anti-stress aromatherapy dishwashing detergent, their stress will go down the drain with the grease, dirt and grime. I don’t think this one has a happy ending.
Advertisers will keep stressing our kids and us out because we can never have enough and all the bottles of aromatherapy soap won’t make us stop and realize that maybe, just maybe, there are a lot of whistles and doo-hickies that we really don’t need.
If we’re not stressed, we’re not spending.

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Anglophones: The Invisible Voters of Quebec

About two weeks ago, I received a phone call from a nice lady who was working for one of our local candidates. She asked me who I was voting for.
“I’m sorry but I never discuss my vote.”
“All right, then, but I hope you make the right decision.”
“I’m sure I will.”
As I hung up the phone, I thought, “I just lied.” Even now, I’m not sure that I made the right decision last Monday because, apart from the debates that I watched before the election, very few of the candidates vied for my vote or working to tell me, an English-speaking Quebec voter, why I should vote for him…except for Mr. Harper.
For the past few weeks, Mr. Harper’s television commercials exhorted me to “stand up for Canada.” These commercials reminded me many times of the Liberal Party’s wrongdoings and repeatedly urged me to trust Mr. Harper as a leader. Sure thing, that is what I’d expect - but what about the Liberals? What about the New Democratic Party? For that matter, what about the Bloc? Where were they?
During the debate, Mr. Layton urged us not to vote strategically but it is more than evident and not surprising that our federal candidates campaigned very strategically. Anglophone Quebeckers were unimportant and were to be sacrificed for more significant constituencies in Ontario and British Columbia.
As a television watcher, I suppose that I should be grateful. I was spared all the cheesy advertisements, the sincere appeals to patriotism and the promises of a better tomorrow but as a voter, I still feel hurt. I feel inferior. Harper loves us but nobody else does. You’d think that even Mr. Duceppe would have tried to convince us that his vision of a sovereign Quebec was a really, really good one but he probably knew better. He assumed that there was no chance Anglophones would buy that one.
The Liberals probably thought that we would vote Liberal because Mr. Martin is one of us, a Quebecker so why bother convincing us of what we already know. As for Mr. Layton, the NDP have long given up on us. You didn’t see so much as a poster in Lennoxville, a university town that could be ripe for a few votes from the stereotypical university leftie. They seem to have some sort of misguided thinking that Quebeckers are allergic to the NDP. On the other hand, you have to hand it to the Green Party. At least, they weren’t so cheap as to count the cost of a few posters.
Those of us English speaking Quebeckers who care about the future of our country made it our business to figure out what was really behind all the promises and party platforms. We then made our decision as best as we could. I think, however, that it is sad that three out of the four national parties did not even think that English Quebec was worth a few television commercials and in some cases, a few posters. This last election may bring a new meaning to the slogan, Je me souviens.

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Next Christmas, No Electronics
This is my New Year’s Resolution: I will never, never, never (may I repeat never) give anyone an electronic present for Christmas again. No one will get anything that requires the installation of software (not compatible), the connections of cables to a computer (not compatible) and the transfer of music from one electronic device to another (it sounds like mush!) This is my gift to me next Christmas and to you. If you had a similar experience to mine this past Christmas, you may not have come to the realization so I am here to help you come to your senses.
There is something about electronic devices and computerized contraptions that bring out the frustrated and ready-to-smash-dishes side in a tired human being no matter what age that human being may be when said doo-hickey does not function the way it should at 7:00 AM Christmas morning.
By the way, how many of us feel like highly functioning computer technicians at 7:00 AM Christmas morning? I know that I don’t. I also know that I don’t want to even try to feel like one. I want to open gifts and enjoy them without the gift putting me to work. In fact, electronic gifts are not the only culprit in making Christmas mornings less than relaxed. Remember electric trains? What about Lego sets? All these gifts do is force you to work and work and work some more.
I have to make breakfast so why do I want to be a computer technician, architect and/or engineer at an ungodly hour of a morning that is a holiday? Parents, next Christmas, let’s put the holiday back into holiday and give our kids gifts that require little thought on our part.
Actually, that’s the beauty of what ever comes in a Christmas stocking. Chances are, it goes on your feet, hands or head or you can eat it. The stuff is usually small, simple and pleasant. The work comes with the bigger gifts. This is certainly not an easy problem to solve. Clothes are no good because chances are, they won’t fit. You will have to go back to the store and fight crowds of like-minded cranky people who are returning gifts.
Video games that don’t hook up to a computer may also seem like an easy if expensive solution but think of the noise and blood-guts-and-gore factors. What’s so pleasant about getting the latest video game to work so that your beloved young ‘un can kill hundreds of cyber-people? Remember peace on earth, good will toward men? Can’t we spare a little good will for all those animated types who are destined to get the bullet over and over again?
Honestly, I think it’s back to wind-up toys for me…or dolls. I don’t care that my children are young adults. Next year, they’re getting dolls and I will blissfully send them back to their rooms to play with their new acquisitions and let me get another hour’s sleep. Better yet, if they’re so mature, maybe it’s time that they make breakfast.
Next New Year’s Day, I will wake up and not have to figure out a thing except where I put the Tylenol and Alka-Seltzer. That sounds like an easy one to handle. If every day could be that simple, it would surely be a Happy New Year.

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Bridge Blues Revisited In the Darkest Month of the Year
Ah, January, the month that weighs in on those of us who suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). For the light-starved among us, January makes us really, really…well, sad. Christmas is over, the coloured lights are coming down and springs is more weeks away than I want to think about.
No matter. This Monday, I trudged into the car and turned the key in a cavalier fashion. I hummed along to the music on my speakers until I hit the traffic. It was déjà vu of the most horrible, horrible kind. What did I see before me? The College Street Bridge had one lane closed again.
You see, as the school term came to a close and as I knew that the January blues would hit me in two short weeks along with the long-term indigestion of too much holiday feasting, there was a small hope on the horizon, the hope of a two lane bridge and the five minute drive to work that I had known and loved for the past ten years.
Yes, I have cast my eyes heavenward and asked God to give the world peace, to release those who were kidnapped and to keep an eye out for my aged parents. It just seemed to be a teeny-tiny bit presumptuous to ask the Supreme Ruler of the universe and the Creator of all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, to expedite the repair of one small bridge. That would seem a trifle selfish and piddley considering the weightier questions that exist in this complicated world.
Yet, surely at this point in time, I have reached traffic hell in the middle of January and nothing short of a bona fide miracle will bring about the completion of that bridge and the triumphant moment (cue the orchestra!) when the nice men in hard hats pack up their equipment and go away, very far away.
Unfortunately, my public kvetching is earning me a link with that bridge that might stay with me for years. People greet me and say, “How do you like the bridge? It’s almost finished.” Age, willpower and my mother’s stern upbringing helps me to refrain from saying, “Are you crazy? Almost doesn’t count!”
Last week, when both lanes were open, my husband warned me not to get too excited. He pointed out the equipment on the side of the road and the covered signs. In my heart of hearts, I knew that he was right. I knew that the construction workers were on holiday and that in a matter of days, the signs would be uncovered, and the equipment would be back sitting idle in a closed lane while I sat swearing in my car waiting for the one open lane to move.
Yet I had an unrealistic hope that the work was finished and that they just didn’t have time to take their equipment away. In my little fantasy, on January 9th, they would just bring all kinds of trucks that they would schlep the equipment up and into, and go off singing something like, “Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, it’s off to Tadoussac, we go.” Then they would drive away and all this construction work would be a dark memory.
Ah, January, it leaves you no illusions. Once the temperate January thaw is over, we will descend into the deep freeze and those poor guys will just have to work a bit faster. Ha-Ha, did you hear me, boys, faster!
Meanwhile, I hope that my car doesn’t stall in the middle of that one open lane. Then those construction workers might be using the same sort of strong language about me that I’ve been using to describe them.

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Happy January 6th. In case you didn’t know it, it’s a big day around the world. For many, it’s Epiphany. It’s the Ukrainian and Armenian Christmas. It is also the birthday of Haile Selassie who is the Messiah of the Rastafarian religion.
In Ireland, January 6th is both known as Little Christmas and Women’s Christmas. It is the last day of Christmas holidays for children and as Women’s Christmas, it’s a day when men take over all household chores and give women the day off. Friends of mine from Cork tell me that the bars are full of women out for a good time. Then on January 7th, the tree is taken down and Christmas is officially over.
I’m looking at my tree and heaving a ponderous sigh. While our tree is not a big tree, there are a lot of decorations on it and all must be put away the right way, my way. You see, I’m not obsessive about many things except keeping CDs and DVDs in alphabetical order (I am a librarian after all) and putting away Christmas decorations so that they don’t get scratched and are easy to put up the following year. This is why I very uncharacteristically ask for no help when undoing the Christmas tree. I don’t want to have to explain and defend my methods. I just want to get the job done right with as little havoc and destruction as possible.
Putting up the tree is usually festive with the soundtrack for the Charlie Brown Christmas show wailing away in the background and family members finding prominent places on the tree for their favourite ornaments. Taking down the tree is definitely a time for blues. You don’t want something too depressing, for example, an old Leonard Cohen album might make you feel positively suicidal considering the fact that you may not have seen sunlight for weeks and that your body is dehydrated from all the beer, wine and/or champagne that you’ve been swilling as opposed to good, healthy water. No, you want something a little bluesy but upbeat – maybe some B. B. King or Bonnie Raitt.
Then once the right music is selected, all the boxes for the Christmas glass balls come out with their appropriate lids placed underneath. Then the glass balls are removed first so that they don’t break while every thing else comes down. These boxes go at the bottom of a big carton because next year, the glass balls will be the last thing to go up. Then all the ornaments go in plastic bags and are twist tied shut. The strings of beads that I use for garlands go in sealed sandwich bags and are placed on top of the ornaments. Then the stockings and room ornaments go on top of those in the big box because those will be the first to go up next Christmas a good two weeks before the tree.
Finally, the lights are wrapped around these nifty plastic thingies that we bought that are specifically for keeping Christmas lights from getting tangled and knotted. These are a good invention, folks, go out and buy extras as the amount of grief that they have saved us over the years is enormous.
Now, Christmas is over and the long, dark night of the soul, January and February, have begun. With that in mind, I break three different New Year’s resolutions and crack open a Guinness. Happy New Year.

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On the Internet, there’s a sucker born every minute
Recently, I received an email from what seemed like Paypal and I do emphasize what seemed like Paypal. Just in case you’re not an avid buyer of stuff on eBay and the Internet, Paypal is a company that allows you to transfer money either from your credit card or bank account safely via the Internet. The email told me that I had to validate my Paypal account information or my account would be closed. This made me very, very suspicious.
I didn’t respond to it. Instead, I went to the Paypal web site and was not surprised to find that they have a web page on scams. The address is very long but it’s easily found at http://www.paypal.com. I forwarded the email that I received to another link where Paypal lets you know whether or not the email came from then. Of course, I received a response that the email was fraudulent.
That email is an example of something called a “phishing scam.” The message contained a link that I could have clicked on to that would have brought me to a web site that had all the Paypal logos. It really would have looked like the real thing. I would have been instructed to enter my credit card information and Bob’s your uncle! Somebody could have had a field day with my credit card.
That’s not the only scam that’s out there. The other day, someone came to me and showed me the printout of an email that she received. She was rather excited because the email told her that she won a small fortune in a Spanish lottery. I went on the Internet and showed her a variety of government sources that proved that this was a scam. First of all, common sense would dictate that if you haven’t bought a ticket, you can’t win a lottery! All these sources say that. This particular scam has several variations. Either they ask you to send a large amount of money to cover costs such as security, insurance and blah-blah-blah or again, they ask you for bank account information. Guess what happens then.
Another scam email that I received had to do with a Nigerian trying to move millions of dollars out of his country offering me a percentage of the money if I help. Apparently, this one has a lot of variations too. The request may come from a Nigerian bank manager, a Nigerian government official, the wife of a deceased Nigerian general, an official with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, a church minister, an Iraqi officer on the run from Saddam's men, or a widow dying of cancer. I mean, how would any of these people get my email? Since, I’m gullible enough to believe that I’m their last hope, I will pay a wide variety of fees until technically, I run out of money. Luckily, I barely glanced at that one!
In fact, I was stupid for even opening it. My usual policy is to delete emails from sources that I don’t know, especially when I see that there is a paper clip next to it symbolizing an attachment. Thank you, I’ll pass on having some stupid virus dumped into my computer. So far, that policy has worked very well along with having up to date virus protection, a pop up blocker and firewall on my computer…knock wood!
More importantly, the next time somebody wants any kind of information from you that could jeopardize your finances, just say no! Be wary. There’s a sucker born every minute – don’t let it be you.

June 30th Canada Day Parade – A Hot Eastern Townships Tradition

You’d have to have a very good imagination to remember how frozen your hands might have been as you shovelled snow in January. I sometimes think that the reason that Canada has a reputation as an even-tempered country is because we have very big weather to contend with. In fact, we are more than a little smug about it because we deal the weather pretty well.
I’ve always been a summer person, partially because I’ve never really graduated from school as I work in education. It’s hard to feel like a complete adult when you long for summer holidays as much as the kids and the old ditty, “No more pencils, no more books” may be rewritten to say: “…no more students’ dirty looks.”
Fortunately, our country’s national holiday comes in on July 1st and it celebrates the beginning of summer as well as Canada’s heritage. What better way to celebrate it than to head over to Hatley or Bury for a Canada Day Parade! I’ve lived here for 16 years and my photo album is full of proud veterans, floats, children with painted faces and lots of people that I don’t know looking very happy as they wave the maple leaf flag.
My friends and I have a particular spot where we meet to watch the Hatley parade in the town square. Although we may shop for bargains and unique items as we walk up and down the stalls, we gather at the same spot that we always have when it’s parade time with our straw hats and our skin slathered with sun block. High heat just seems to be as much a Canada Day tradition as fireworks and parades.
This is the time of year that I feel the happiest that I’m no longer a New Yorker. First of all, nobody is crazy enough to have a parade in early July in New York City. You’d either be baked alive or suffocated by the methane gases coming up from the sewers. Second of all, the climate in the United States is very much divided nowadays. If you’re against the war in Iraq, you’re a traitor and a lousy Commie…although I hear that Commies are not as big a threat these days. Chances are, somebody would be protesting something as the parade goes by.
North of the border, one of our greatest worries is what’s to become of Medicare, a fine Canadian tradition that everybody is proud of. Luckily, if you hold a dissenting opinion, it’s not considered un-Canadian. We’re used to free debate. The second great worry, one that may overtake Medicare, is national unity. Both the Federal and the Provincial Liberal Parties are not overly reassuring to Quebeckers these days and it is looking very likely that another referendum may be ahead of us in a year or two.
We have a lot of concerns to find solutions for yet we should not lose sight of the fact that we are very lucky to be living in a country where we can speak freely, where our children have a very good chance of growing up both healthy and educated and where there is equal opportunity for all to both freeze and fry in our great Canadian climate! When the float of veterans goes by in the Canada Day Parade, give them a big hand. They deserve it.

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Here's my last two columns. Kind of diametrically opposed but hey, it's June.

June 16, 2005 What would our “Greatest Canadian” say?
Last week was my birthday and I got a gift from the Canadian Supreme Court that I never asked for: a two-tiered medical system. With all its weaknesses and long waits, (believe me, when you have a chronic illness, you learn a lot about long waits), I was mostly contented with the medical system that I had paid years of taxes into. That’s why I was surprised to hear that, by the close vote of four justices to three justices, the right for all to receive equal health care was thrown out the window within 12 months of Tommy Douglas being chosen as “the Greatest Canadian.” Mr. Douglas might have appreciated the irony but he would have been screaming and yelling all the same about the decision.
George Zeliotis and Dr. Jacques Chaoulli (a doctor who apparently was most eager to open a private clinic) took a single hip replacement operation, and with the cooperation of the Supreme Court, undid one of Canada’s finest achievements.
In his Toronto Star column of June 13th, Thomas Walkom writes: “To someone who must wait six painful months for surgery, the debate over two-tier health might appear a no-brainer. Why shouldn't he be allowed to spend his own money to get faster service? Indeed, if there were an infinite number of physicians and nurses, there would be no reason to prevent the practice. But there are not in any country. The problem with two-tier health comes in the aggregate, as the limited number of health professionals available gravitate to those who pay the most. That's why a solution for one person can become a problem for someone else.”
Make no mistake about it – this is going to turn out to be your problem and my problem unless you and I get very lucky and win the lottery. If you don’t have private health insurance and your family doctor refers you to a specialist, you won’t have your pick of specialists. You’ll have to pick one that hasn’t opted out of the public system. On the other hand, if you do have health insurance through your job, you can be darned sure that your premiums are about to climb sky high to give you that option of jumping the health care queue when you need anything from a blood test to a CAT scan. You can afford it, right?
I would like to hope that the premier of our province might be sympathetic toward the little guy and consider going to bats for equal access to medical care by at least considering the use of the notwithstanding clause. After all, he is a Liberal. Oh, yes, I just forgot, he’s actually an ex-Progressive Conservative. M. Charest just might be pleased at the prospect of private enterprise stimulating our economy because there’s money to be made from the sick and desperate, probably an awful lot of money. It is a sick world after all. Romanow’s 2002 royal commission into health care recommended maintaining a single tier public health system as did other provincially funded commissions around the country. But where’s the profit in that?
I have relatives in the United States who pay well over $1000 U.S. a month for their health insurance and yet there are still doctors who refuse their private insurance so they have to pay anyway. We have just opened the door to that kind of dilemma for people to resolve: whether it’s worth going into debt to stay alive. This is just what Tommy Douglas fought so hard to get rid of and seven people in the Supreme Court were given the power to throw us right back into the pits of a decision of life vs. debt. It just doesn’t seem right to me.Those of us who are worried about what will happen when we retire have something new to worry about and we are right to be concerned. Tommy Douglas is not here to remind us that in spite of its faults, we have been blessed with a medical safety net that we cannot afford to lose. All we have is Peter MacKay…digging potatoes.

June 23, 2005 How The Sound of Music Saved My Summer
This has been the best week of the year. It’s better than Christmas and Easter, all rolled into one. This is the last week of school. I always think of June as a month of Fridays. It’s the month where everybody anticipates free time just the way we anticipate a really great weekend on Friday. Although the free time often turns out to be less than we expect it to be, it doesn’t change the fact that the anticipation of living out fun-filled, golden, sunny days is nothing short of delicious.
Within two weeks, parents may hear a litany of “I’m bored, I’m bored” till the lucky kids who get to go to camp climb up the steps of the bus but right now, the world is sweetness and light. I was one of the supposedly lucky kids who got to go to “sleep-away” camp – that’s what we used to call it in my day – but I was definitely not grateful for the opportunity. According to my mother, I set a record in my camp for attempts to run away. My parents thought that they were being exceptionally good to me by getting me out of the extreme heat of the city to a camp where I might learn to swim, make lanyards and play baseball. While I enjoyed the swimming, I soon found out what a loser I was at sports and crafts. My potholder fell apart. I always got stuck in the out field, ‘way out in the out field. This earned me the disdain and contempt of my fellow campers and I was truly miserable…until they announced auditions for that summer’s camp musical, The Sound of Music.
I had listened to the cast album of The Sound of Music over and over again on my little record player from the time that I was a toddler. I knew the album backwards and forwards. My mother even borrowed the script from the library. Mom, my sister and I would split up the parts and perform the play in the car during long rides to the cottage while my poor father fought New York City traffic.
This is why a sense of relief washed over me when I heard about the camp play. I knew that I was and always would be the last person picked for the teams when it came to punch ball, dodge ball and make-an-idiot-of-yourself ball. Singing was my refuge and The Sound of Music was my home ball park. When I got up to sing “My Favorite Things” with the camp pianist, I felt like I had just hit a homerun. Being incredibly short for my age and able to carry a tune, I was a shoe-in for the role of Gretl, the youngest daughter in the von Trapp family.
Everything turned around from there. I got to rehearse with the older kids who thought that I was cute and didn’t care that I was a complete and utter clutz. It just made me even cuter in the dance sequences.
My mother and father came to see the show. Mom wore a bright pink shirt and sat in the front row just so I knew that she was there. That made me even more nervous but it didn’t matter. The play was a big success and I found my niche in camp.
Years later, I was fortunate enough to have the chance to audition for the 1994 Townshippers production of The Sound of Music and lo and behold, I was cast as Mother Superior. This was amusing on many levels. “Climb Every Mountain” was the one song that I’d always skip when listening to the album and I never quite saw myself as a spiritual leader of nuns. Yet, I had a great time and made new friends, all thanks to The Sound of Music.
Every summer, there are opportunities for great surprises and great disappointments. The beauty of June is the knowledge that something, possibly something wonderful, is right around the corner. It really is a month of Fridays.

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Last week, Ms. Belinda Stronach changed political parties and we got a very ugly taste from politicians and media alike that women have not “come along way, baby.” Civility went right out the window and sexism flew right in.
Since when do we call people by their first names in news articles? Jean Charest and Lucien Bouchard crossed the floor. We did not say Jean this and Jean that. Probably we wouldn’t have known which Jean we were talking about so tradition has it that we call people by their last names unless we are friends with them.
Claude Ryan crossed the floor so many times that it was an aerobic exercise. We didn’t get buddy-buddy with Claude. We just don’t do that with men. Ms. Stronach has a snappy first name and is young so our media immediately puts her on a par with a celebrity like Cher and calls her by her first name, Belinda. The next thing you know, she’ll be on Entertainment Tonight as Canada’s answer to Beyoncé.
She also has the effrontery to be a blonde. This gives a paper like the National Post every right to subtly compare her to someone like Marilyn Monroe with a not-so-clever play on words for their headline: Blonde Bombshell. Every blonde joke comes to mind and that’s not the fault of blondes when you have MP Jim Runciman remarking, “She sort of defined herself as something of a dipstick, an attractive one, but still a dipstick, with what she’s done here today.” His party leader, Stephen Harper, was no role model either, “I’ve never really noticed complexity to be Belinda’s strong point.” In other words, what can you expect from a dumb blonde? Never mind that she won an election - her electorate was probably just mesmerized by her legs.
Finally, both politicians and media used what many consider to be the most insulting analogy that they can throw at a woman: comparing her to a prostitute. Albertan Conservative, Tony Abbott described her as a “political harlot” and as “a little rich girl who is basically whoring her out to the Liberals.” Yech, not a pretty image! The Journal de Montreal ran a cartoon that showed Stronach as a prostitute leaning on a car with the prime minister at the wheel saying, “Climb in?”
Those people who ply “the world’s oldest profession” must be getting a bit fed up. Imagine being compared to politicians. It’s downright humiliating. If a person chooses to be a prostitute, they are selecting a life that will get more miserable as they get older. The only person that they eventually hurt is themselves. You might argue that their customers are being morally sullied by paying for sex but then again, they are the ones who are hurt.
Politicians just steal from everybody. Forget robbing the rich to feed the poor. Many of today’s celebrities in the political business are robbing from rich and poor alike to feed themselves. That makes them thieves on a far grander scale than those who are working the city streets. These folks are reaching into everybody’s pockets and the only pleasure that they give to society is the revenge we can’t help but feel when they get caught.
I’ve always argued that any profession that I wouldn’t want my mother, sister, or daughter to go into is wrong for everybody else’s mother, sister, or daughter. I wouldn’t want a family member of mine working in an opium den, a strip club or a brothel. The way the House of Commons is looking these days, I hope none of my kids chooses a career in politics either!

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One month later, April:

April is a time of mud. How do you make poetry out of mud? It's exhausting. Here in the Eastern Townships of Quebec as we inhale spring and exhale mud, it's just ugly and tiring and if this is the way nature is reborn year after year, than I think we need to rethink the system.

Except it's nature's way of telling me something's wrong. Here's what I wrote in my article in the Sherbrooke Record this week:

King Kong the Garbage Can
It’s hard to make poetry out of mud and verily, this is the mud season. Moreover, it’s the season of garbage and my municipality is giving me the opportunity to throw out more garbage than I can dispose of.
Sorry, Stansteaders, but if you’re not there yet, I’m sure that your turn will come. I live in one of those boroughs of Sherbrooke where the citizens have been compelled to pay one hundred dollars and acquire one of those gargantuan-sized garbage cans on wheels. Literally, that garbage bin comes up to my chin. It’s a veritable mini-dumpster.
To say that its size is inconvenient is only the beginning. I used to keep a reasonably sized garbage can on the back porch and it served our family’s needs very nicely. It was usually about three quarters filled by garbage day and not too heavy to schlep out front to the curb. Plus, the nice men on the garbage truck would often wave or wait a few seconds as my husband or I sprinted to the curb to get it there before they left.
Since my municipality believes in modernization, the first step in being modern seems to be to put a few guys out of work by having a mechanized truck that grasps a compatible bin and empties out its contents. I know that many of us worry about taxes but the more people who are employed, the more people who pay taxes. This makes for a healthy society. While many of us would not choose sanitation work as a career, for some people, it’s a job and the job that puts food on the table. Why eliminate those jobs to save money? Is this reasonable economy?
The size of the bin also sends a big message about garbage. When we finally used King Kong the garbage bin, my husband observed that we barely filled the bottom of the bin with one week’s worth of garbage. We’re a family of three right now. One of my neighbours who lives alone was complaining about the size of the garbage bin too. She feels silly throwing out her little bag of garbage into such a huge container. Another one of her concerns was the worry about senior citizens having to push such exceptionally large containers every week.
If we’re also thinking environmentally, let’s remember that such huge containers require a lot of plastic and if we’re building them bigger than they need to be, that means more consumption of materials and energy than is required. That doesn’t sound very Kyoto-friendly to me. What would Rick Mercer say? The government is shelling out big money to make us more energy conscious and probably paying Mercer quite a bit to be its spokesman. Meanwhile, our municipalities are pushing these overly large containers on us. It seems like a conflict of objectives to me.
With the wonders of science and engineering, surely some company could come up with a way to make containers for the way real people throw out their garbage or should be throwing out their garbage. By giving people smaller containers, the municipalities would be encouraging less waste. With the controversy over our garbage dumps these days, that would be in line with what everybody wants: dumps that aren’t overflowing and people consuming sensibly.
Meanwhile, King Kong lives by the side of my house and I suppose that I’ll have to get used to him even if it doesn’t make sense. Maybe I can write a poem about him.

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Just what every busy mother needs: a blog. This is the blog of the quintiessential Somebody's Mother.

Did I spell quintessential right? When will I learn to iron pants with straight creases that go right down the middle? What year did you say this was?

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