The Citizen, 2011-05-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011. PAGE 5.
If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to have
the word ‘gay’ back. Well, not “back” in a
snarly Archie Bunker sense – but I’d
appreciate if we could all agree to at least
share the word again.
I grew up in an age when ‘gay’ was a simple
adjective that meant cheerful, merry, jovial,
sprightly or blithe and carried no sexual
connotations. Our hearts were young and gay.
A night on the town was having ‘a gay old
time’. Our grandparents regaled us with tales
from The Gay Nineties. We could sing the
lyrics “but I feel so gay, in a melancholy
way…” – without a trace of irony or a leer of
double entendre.
Elderly straight pensioners would cackle
into their beers and call each other ‘gay old
dogs’. I had an uncle who was fond of
romancing the ladies. My mother tsk-tsked
and called him ‘a gay blade’.
I don’t know what a gay blade would be
nowadays – a bisexual hockey player,
probably.
Sometime around the middle of the last
century, ‘gay’ became sexual and exclusive. I
still miss the other kinds of gay we used to
have.
While we’re at it, I’d like to rehabilitate the
word ‘beaver’ before its original sense is lost
to us forever.
When I was a kid the word referred to a
doughty little rodent with buck teeth and a
pancake tail that liked to build dams in the
hinterland. We loved the beaver. True, we
turned him into hats for European fops, but we
loved him too. We put him on heraldic charts
and statuary. We honoured him on flags and
postage stamps. There are four beavers on the
Hudson Bay Company Coat of Arms and a big
fat shiny one squats on the back of every
Canadian nickel in our pockets. We even
named Canada’s oldest history magazine in
honour of the noble beast.
For a while.
Then, last winter the folks who ran The
Beaver magazine out of Winnipeg announced
that they were changing the title. Deborah
Morrison, publisher of the magazine said in a
press conference “Unfortunately, sometimes
words take on an identity that wasn’t intended
in 1920, when (The Beaver) was all about the
fur trade.”
She had a point. Ninety years after the first
issue, market research was showing that most
women and people in general who were under
45 reacted negatively to the name of the
magazine. Not only that, but e-mail spam
filters were increasingly blocking any
messages – even The Beaver’s own e-
newsletter.
The Beaver’s new name? Canada’s History.
Yeah, that should fly off the magazine rack.
I wish the brains trust behind The Beaver
had displayed the spunkiness of their
namesake and stood up for their original name,
but they didn’t.
And this wussiness about words seems to be
catching. The U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops has just published a new translation
of the Bible. Unsurprisingly, it contains some
‘changes’ designed to appeal to a younger
generation of readers. The latest edition of the
New American Bible, compiled by a team of
50 scholars and translators, assisted by
language experts and theologians jettisons
the words ‘booty’ and ‘virgin’ from the
Biblical text. ‘Virgin’ becomes ‘young
woman’ while ‘booty’ is replaced by ‘spoils’ –
presumably because young people can’t hear
the word ‘booty’ without being moved to
shake theirs.
Sad, sad.
But all is not lost. At least the citizens of
Fort Wayne, Indiana have what it takes when it
comes to recognizing and celebrating a strong
name and sharing it with history. The city
fathers of Fort Wayne ran an online plebiscite
asking the citizens to come up with the best
name for the city’s brand new government
centre.
The vote was overwhelming. Thousands
upon thousands of citizens made it clear
that the building should commemorate the
name of a much-loved former mayor of Fort
Wayne.
It remains to be seen if the city fathers have
the, um, gonads to accept the wish of the
citizenry and name the centre The Harry Baals
Civic Center.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Shake your booty, gay beaver!
Now that the election is over, Canadians
have made their choice. A Prime
Minister has been elected from one of
Canada’s five major parties and he is now
ready to carry out his party’s platform.
There was a lot of talk about “inclusion” in
this election, as there was in the 2008 federal
election. The big question at the leadership
level was whether Green Party leader Elizabeth
May should be allowed to debate alongside her
fellow party leaders.
I once heard NDP leader Jack Layton say
that while he may debate vigorously and
disagree with rival politicians, that same
politician was voted for by tens of thousands of
Canadians and deserves to be respected.
In 2008, the Green Party held one seat in the
House of Commons, so that was the deciding
factor in allowing May to participate that year.
This year was different, however, the Greens
held no seats and May was not welcomed to
the debate. It was the usual suspects: the
Conservatives, the Liberals, the NDP and the
Bloc Quebecois.
I watched the debate and listened to Bloc
leader Gilles Duceppe speak. Only Canadians
are so nice as to allow someone who aspires to
break the country apart at a federal debate.
As soon as I was old enough to understand
the separatist movement, I hated it. So Quebec
wants to leave Canada to be its own nation, but
still receive Canadian funding. To me that has
always sounded like a snot-nosed kid giving
his parents the finger after moving out of their
house to an apartment he expects his parents to
pay for.
So getting back to this election, at first I
agreed with the decision to not allow May to
speak. The Green Party had no current seats in
the house, so it’s only fair.
But as I watched Duceppe discuss his plans
for Canada that always included a “until
Quebec is recognized as its own nation” post
script, I started doing a little math.
Let’s be clear on this, I suck at math, but with
304 representatives across the country this year
(Canada has 308 districts), it would seem to me
that May’s Green Party would have over a
four-to-one advantage on Duceppe’s 75
candidates (all in Quebec). But no one had a
chance to hear from May, as she had not been
welcomed to any of the debates.
So while Canadians from nine provinces and
three territories who couldn’t vote for Duceppe
even if they wanted to were forced to endure
his separatist diatribe, the leader of a party with
a representative in nearly every Canadian
district was relegated to the debate’s sidelines.
In a letter to The Citizen last week,
Independent candidate Dennis Valenta cleared
up his absence at the April 20 all-candidates
meeting in Goderich. He informed voters that
he had not been invited to take part in the
debate that night and that’s why he wasn’t
there and received no media coverage.
And while I may not support Valenta’s
stance on many issues and I may not choose to
vote for him, that’s my decision to make.
Unfortunately for those who attended that
meeting, that decision had already been made
for them, despite the fact that Valenta’s name
was on the ballot just like everybody else’s.
I didn’t write about the election last week
because I felt that if someone wasn’t planning
on voting, no column of mine would change
their mind. I also didn’t want to suggest that I
think I’m important enough to tell anyone how
they should vote.
Unfortunately, at several levels, there seem
to be plenty of people who must think they are
that important.
Know the players
Let it never be said I can’t admit that I’m
occasionally wrong. Whenever I spoke
to people about Monday’s election, I
said I foresaw another minority government.
Well, I was wrong.
Last night the Conservative fortresses rang
loud with celebration as they succeeded in not
only repelling the invaders at their door, but
pushed back into enemy territory, taking a
meager minority government and creating a
blue majority government the likes of which
hasn’t been seen since I was swaddled.
I can’t say I’m entirely happy about the
results, but I can’t claim to be entirely
unhappy either.
As I have alluded to in previous columns,
my family has a rich, red tradition on one side,
however, as a tie-in to the column I wrote last
week – the Liberals today aren’t the Liberals I
grew up with. They are lacking something.
Whether it’s leadership or a clear goal, or even
a clear definition of what makes them different
from other parties, something is different.
The suggestion has been made that I’ve
viewed my past through rosy goggles (and
rosy ear-buds) and that it looks (and sounds)
better in hindsight (and... you get the idea)
than it actually was. I hope that isn’t true.
But back to the matter at hand – the election
results.
As I sat there and watched the Conservative
numbers climb, I realized that, Liberal,
Conservative or NDP, this election signified a
shift in thinking on several different issues.
First off – Canadians are tired of a stale-
mated government.
They may not have gone the way I would
have, but having a government capable of
action is a good step forward. I just pray that
the actions taken are the right ones.
One of the other things I noticed is that
Canadians seem to have the memory of a
goldfish.
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were found
in contempt of Parliament.
I know it was downplayed, but this is a
really big event.
Again, I’m not for or against the
Conservatives, however, I find it disturbing,
and also find it fills me with dread, that a body
found to break the rules of governance be put
not only back in power, but also given greater
power.
It also disturbed me that Conservative Bev
Oda of Toronto’s Durham riding won her seat.
I explained to some friends last night that I
was not concerned with Oda’s affiliation. If I
was anti-C, hers was not a nail in the coffin
riding. If I was pro-C, hers was not a riding
that would dictate the outcome of major
elections, given the number of votes the
majority have.
No, I am of the belief that Oda should not
have been allowed to run.
Oda jeopardized her position, her name, and
her government’s position of power by
breaking the rules and illegally changing
government documents after they had been
signed.
The only equivalency I can draw is if
someone snuck into Parliament tomorrow and
changed the words on the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms to read, instead of everyone,
that no one has the right of freedom of
conscience and religion.
These are big things people. This is a huge
deal. How can we trust the people we elect if
they allow these actions to go unpunished?
This is why I think that Canada, as a whole,
seems to share a memory length with a
forgetful fish from Finding Nemo.
Ideals are a wonderful thing, enacting them
is a great idea, but bending, breaking or
subverting the rules to reach an end, especially
doing so while representing hundreds,
thousands or millions of people, is totally
unacceptable and totally unforgivable.
To an outsider, or an insider wanting to try
and get an outside view like myself, this
election looks like we’ve condoned the actions
of a government who broke the rules by not
only giving them a second chance to do
wrong, but also by giving them more power
with which to do wrong.
Where does accountability fit in?
As I began finishing that last statement, I
had to laugh. A Conservative MP on CityTV’s
election coverage stated he was glad he could
get back to work and start working on
legislation dealing with crime and prisons that
had been interrupted for the election.
The irony of what I had written being
punctuated with that statement was palpable.
It was as if my point was being made for me;
we gave these Conservatives a reduced
sentence for their crimes so they can crack
down harder on criminals.
Seems to me we’re focused on the wrong
criminals.
Of course, it will be nearly half a decade
before the next election rolls around, unless a
schism appears in the federal Conservative
party, so most Canadians will remember Oda’s
crime less, and will probably think being
found in contempt of parliament is a sin
equated with passing gas in an elevator.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
How quickly Canadians forget
“However much I am at the mercy of the
world I never let myself get lost by
brooding over its misery. I hold firmly to
the thought that each one of us can do a
little to bring some portion of that misery
to an end.”
– Albert Schweitzer
Final Thought