The Citizen, 2012-05-24, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2012. PAGE 5.
The man had a weathered, Prairie
gruffness about him. The lines on his
face were carved into a permanent
frown and the coals of his eyes blazed out
from under a wiry tangle of iron-gray, bushy
brow.
He looked…formidable. But he possessed a
gift that endeared him to almost everyone he
met.
He remembered you.
Not just you, but your spouse’s name, how
many kids you had, where you lived and how
much land you owned.
“Jake Winters, how are you?” he would say,
with a handshake and a searchlight glare that
swept the dark corners of your soul. “How’s
Eunice? Did she have that knee fixed? Got
your crop in?
A chap could parlay a talent like that into a
profitable career in sales, the ministry, the
media. Or politics.
This particular chap chose the latter. His
name was John George Diefenbaker.
No matter how you felt about his politics,
you had to admire the man who became our
13th Prime Minister. He had mastered the
fundamental rule of civilized behaviour:
really, really care about your neighbours. Your
neighbours will get it; and they will never
forget you.
Other cultures get it. The Japanese bow to
strangers; the Hawaiians welcome you ashore
with a sultry song and dance. On Salt Spring
Island, the natives greet you with a bear hug,
doesn’t matter if you’re Matt Damon or the
local dog catcher.
We could all use a hug – or at the very least,
we could acknowledge each other with more
smiles than with studied indifference. As a
country mouse kind of guy I’m always struck
when I venture to the big city by the lack of
eye contact. Urban types usually look away if
you try to catch their eye, and I understand
that, I guess. Where I live, I’m lucky to run
into 20 people a day. If I took the Toronto
subway to just one Maple Leaf hockey game
I’d see thousands and thousands of faces in a
single evening.
And that’s for a Leafs game – just imagine if
Toronto had an actual hockey team.
Dolly Parton, I am told, frequently has to
deal with male fans who become utterly
tongue-tied and speechless when confronted
by Dolly’s twin Icebreakers. She’s found a
way to ‘break the ice’ as it were. Dolly smiles,
puts her arms around the flustered fan’s neck
and mashes his bashful mug deep into her
cleavage.
Not such a good tactic for me, of course. If
I mashed somebody into my cleavage I’d
probably break their nose.
What’s a guy to do? I’d like to make my
encounters more memorable, but it’s not as if I
look like Ryan Gosling, dress like Don Cherry,
sing like Michael Bublé or write like Leonard
Cohen.
The Diefenbaker option is out. My
memory’s too porous to remember the names
of the people I meet, much less their families,
their acreage and their medical history – at
least that’s what my life partner, old what’s-
her-name says.
But I am finally doing something about it.
I’ve signed up for a correspondences course on
how to remember names and faces. In fact, it’s
number two on my bucket list.
Number one is getting invited to meet Dolly
Parton.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Remembering names? I’m a bust
The saga of Huron East’s historic town
hall building in Seaforth has been
ongoing since amalgamation over 10
years ago when the council of the day decided
the over-100-year-old building would serve as
headquarters for the newly-amalgamated
municipality.
An unofficial decision was made then to fix
the building up, but like so many other
decisions in every level of politics, it was
delayed until it became an absolute necessity.
So here we are 10 years later and council has
committed 500,000 of the municipality’s
dollars to the restoration of the roof, windows
and various other items on the heritage
building.
Heritage expert Thor Dingman has been
brought in to give his expert opinion and
provide recommendations on how council
should proceed with the town hall, both getting
the most bang for their buck and preserving the
heritage of the most important symbol of
community in Seaforth, and one of the most
important in all of Huron East.
Except that his expert opinion has been shot
down at every turn.
For example, Councillor Bill Siemon said he
thought Dingman’s report was a good one, but
he would simply like to change the
recommended materials for the roof, the
windows and the eavestroughs and
downspouts.
For those of you keeping score at home, that
is essentially the entire recommendation.
I have seen this kind of behaviour before,
and it was with my sister Dana when she and I
sat down to order a meal at a restaurant years
ago.
I witnessed her order a plate of “Cajun
chicken” asking the waiter to remove the
“Cajun” from it. Yes, that really happened. A
plate of Cajun chicken without the Cajun,
which then begs the question, why order Cajun
chicken at all?
Once again, at last Tuesday’s council
meeting I felt like a bystander watching
someone order Cajun chicken, hold the Cajun.
I couldn’t help but feel for Dingman, who
had provided weeks’ worth of work and
carefully calculated estimates and reasons
behind his recommendations based on a
variety of different factors.
After receiving various degrees and boasting
years of experience in precisely the field in
which he was asked to comment, Dingman was
told by a councillor with a background in
farming and insurance sales that he was wrong.
Thankfully there was a ‘stop the insanity’
moment when Councillor David Blaney spoke
up, asking councillors why they would seek an
expert opinion if they had no intention of
listening to it and when the vote actually
happened, just three councillors disagreed with
Dingman, others chose to go with his years of
experience and education over the story of
Siemon’s durable, vinyl, patio windows.
I have nothing against Bill, I think he’s a
smart councillor and I hate to second-guess
him, but at some point don’t we need to let the
expert take the wheel? That is, after all, why he
was brought in by council in the first place.
And it’s just that kind of year, so he can’t be
faulted for being tight with Huron East’s
pennies, but again, experts aren’t born
overnight, the term expert is earned through
years and years of experience and a proven
track record.
If only it were so easy to rattle off a story
about improvements you’ve made to your
home to qualify you as an expert, there would
be plenty more Thor Dingmans in this world.
Ask an expert
My favourite part of journalism is the
weird and wacky stories that make
you smile, laugh out loud or scratch
your head and wonder how or why.
My least favourite part is the stories that just
make you hang your head and, feeling shame
for those involved, ask yourself, why?
Confused? Well it’s clear as mud to me.
An excellent example of the former came to
me through my RSS feed: Exotic dancers in
Paris have gone on strike causing The Crazy
Horse Night Club to, for the first time since its
inception in 1951, cancel its nightly shows.
While the article was a bit sparse on the
details of how much the dancers make and
how many hours they work, it does say that the
strip... dancers have to work 24 days a month.
It isn’t all bad, however, as one of the
dancers, simply called Suzanne, pointed out:
“It’s an exceptional place which has the
specialty of presenting a fully naked show.”
She also said that being asked to work for 24
days per month for a “worse than miserable”
wage was unconscionable.
I did the math; on average, I work the same
number of days that these dancers do although
likely more hours daily.
This is a story that someone probably
enjoyed researching and writing for the simple
outrageousness of it all.
Not only does it deal with a culture of the
world that is largely not represented in media
but it also gets to deal with a real problem.
Some people may have a hard time grasping
what the real problem is here but The Crazy
Horse was actually a fairly well known tourist
attraction in its time.
Losing something like a world-famous
burlesque show would be like the CN Tower
suddenly going on strike or the Leafs making
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman wet
himself with uncontrollable glee as his deepest
desires come true and shifting somewhere to
the sunny south while retaining their
inexplicably large and rabid fan base
(inexplicable because they haven’t won
anything in my lifetime).
This story has it all; financial concerns,
tourism concerns, international intrigue and
exotic dancers.
The flip side of unique, interesting and
relatable stories (working a lot for little money
probably describes how a good chunk of
readers feel even if it doesn’t actually match
their reality) are the stories that just seem
unbelievable.
Late last week in Vancouver for example
two young men robbed a woman at the
SkyTrain of her iPad.
Now, this seems inexcusable, but hold on,
it’s going to get worse.
The woman, Cassie Campbell, is in her early
20s, suffers from cerebral palsy and is
confined to a wheelchair.
These two scumbags, and yes, that is the
technical term for people who practice this
level of debasement of the human condition,
stole the iPad of a woman and with it, took the
only way she can communicate with the
world.
She is deaf and can’t speak and ended up
with non-life-threatening injuries due to the
encounter.
The story has a happy and even a redeeming
turn in the midst of the depravity as people
chased the robbers through the station and
these Good Samaritans, as the author called
them, did their best.
Later on, someone who saw a story
regarding the incident bought the woman a
new iPad.
While there is some great human interest
and reaction in the people who chased and the
man who bought the replacement gadget, the
original story is still one that shocks me
despite my occupation and my hunger for
news stories from around the globe.
You expect to see these kinds of acts in other
countries but for some reason I just can’t get
my head around the fact that there are people
in this country that would do that.
Sure, it could be a case of a have-not taking
what they want, but I have every reason to
believe, upon review, that it was probably just
someone seeing an easy way to either make
some money or get their jollies by ruining the
life of someone less fortunate.
That usually seems to be the way of things,
bad things happen because less than morally-
upstanding individuals get bored.
Anyway, I’m glad, and I want to thank the
citizens of Huron County, that odds are I won’t
have to cover many stories involving the latter.
Primarly this is due to the fact that my editor
covers court issues but primarily it is because
of facts like the one presented to North Huron
Township Council a few weeks ago.
Councillors were told, in a police report for
the 2011 year, that there were no youths
charged from this area.
That means that the misbehaving kids are
getting by with a stern talking to or are doing
nothing that brings the eyes of the justice
system upon them.
Congratulations to the youth of Huron
County for proving that there is still a place
where the criminally underhanded individuals
are the exception and not the rule and
congratulations to those involved in teaching
them those values.
However these stories still exist and I hope
that they never stop shocking me regardless of
my own experiences.
I hope that, whenever something like this
happens anywhere, people are shocked at the
depths of vileness that people can call upon
when they have nothing better to do.
I also hope that stories like the one in Paris
continue to amuse and interest me.
Once, I loved orchestral music that
accompanied epic films until I joined a concert
band. (I played the triangle and the cowbell...
no, seriously, I did) and, after knowing how
those amazing crescendos worked and how all
that astounding music was made, I suddenly
wasn’t as interested in it. My mind, instead of
revelling in the amazing lows and dizzying
highs, was more interested in labelling each
instrument being played.
I hope that, regardless of how much I know,
I retain enough wonder in the world to
continue to enjoy things like that. The greatest
gift I have to be able to enjoy the everyday
actions of people around the world as
interesting.
Some people may call me nosey because of
it but interesting stories make life worth living.
Oh and sorry about the Make-Me Laugh rant
earlier on, I guess I’ve just had one to many
taunts about my Montreal Canadiens hat over
the past week.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Dancing isn’t paying the bills in Paris