HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-06-23, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2011. PAGE 5.
Runt: noun.
1. A variety of domestic pigeon
2. The dead stump of a tree
3. Any animal which is unusually small
compared with others of its kind.
Icome from a family of two girls and two
boys and I was unquestionably the runt of
the litter.
Oh, I wasn’t feeble or sickly as an infant, but
I was…small – and slower to develop than
most of my kiddie colleagues. By the time I hit
puberty my classmates were already sporting
sideburns and breasts (each to his/her own,
you understand). Public school was unrelieved
misery. I never won any ribbons on Field
Day and I stayed on the bench at school
dances – mostly because all the girls were at
least a head taller than me. Naturally, I
sucked at sports. When the captains chose up
sides for baseball games I was usually the last
pick.
“Okay, you have to take Black,” the
opposing captain would say.
I was definitely low man on the totem pole.
The skinny pup on the hind teat. The runt of
the litter.
It was the best thing that ever happened to
me.
Being a runt reveals social Darwinism at its
most cold-blooded. Runts are automatically at
the bottom of the pecking order and they have
to think fast if they expect to survive. They
have to hone their hearing to stay out of the
way of their more robust siblings. They have to
sharpen their vision and sense of smell to
snatch the scraps before the Big Guys get
them. Runts have to develop a kind of radar to
be able to analyse situations more quickly.
Otherwise they’re toast.
I remember when I was maybe nine or 10
years old, rafting in a creek swollen by spring
runoff. I was poling along the creek doing fine
until Timmy Fermier, a big kid, took a huge
leap from the creek bank and jumped on the
raft with me. Not good. The raft began to settle
ominously in the water which began to creep
up my boots. Inspired, I faked hysteria.
“WE’RE SINKING! WE’RE SINKING!” I
shrieked. “WE’RE GONNA DROWN!”
It worked. Timmy freaked and leapt into the
creek (which was only about three feet deep).
Naturally, when he abandoned ship, the raft
bobbed up and I poled serenely to shore.
True, he beat me up later – but at least I
didn’t get wet.
Being a runt made me learn other survival
skills. If Tommy Farmer was the bull mastiff in
the motley mob of mutts I hung around with, I
was the Jack Russell Terrier – yappy and
annoying but fleet of foot and an artful dodger
when the other dogs turned mean.
In The Brothers Karamazov, the Russian
writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote:
“Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually
they are angels, but together, especially in
schools, they are often merciless.”
It’s true. And it’s a lesson every schoolboy
runt learns early and remembers for the rest of
his life. Some runts never get past it and go on
to live nervous, stunted lives, shrinking from
danger, some of it real, but most of it
imagined. Others learn to play the hand of
cards “Life” dealt them.
As Charles Darwin said: “It is not the
strongest of the species that survives, nor the
most intelligent that survives. It is the one that
is the most adaptable to change.”
My all-time favourite runt hero? The skinny
little guy, who, legend has it, went for a
wilderness hike in the Yukon accompanied by
a larger, beefy guide. After a few kilometres
they come to a clearing and spy a huge male
grizzly on the other side. The bear spots the
hikers, gives a gut-shivering roar and begins to
gallop across the clearing toward them.
“Quick! Take off your jacket and wave it at
him!” yells the guide. Instead, the runt shrugs
off his backpack, opens the flap and pulls out
a pair of running shoes. “Are you crazy?” says
the guide. “You can’t outrun a grizzly!”
“I don’t have to,” says the little guy as he
sloughs off his heavy boots and slips into the
sneakers. “I just have to outrun you.”
Arthur
Black
Other Views Big bully? Big deal says runt
Reporters who were there claimed it was
worse than Toronto’s G20 summit
fiasco, but this time the protest was
over a different new world order: the ‘evil’
Americans owning Canada’s game once again.
The Boston Bruins outplayed the Vancouver
Canucks at every turn in this year’s Stanley
Cup playoffs and they deserved to win the cup.
So on June 15 when justice was served the
Bruins hoisted the cup, fans in Vancouver
weren’t surprised, they were prepared.
Prepared for what you might ask? For a riot,
apparently.
On the ice it was one of the roughest Stanley
Cup finals in recent memory and while people
didn’t know it at the time, the on-ice action had
been setting the tone for the eventual off-ice
destruction all along.
Looking back, there was foreshadowing as
early as the first game of the series when
Vancouver’s Alex Burrows, in extremely
cowardly fashion, bit the finger of Boston’s
Patrice Bergeron. Vancouver Police Chief Jim
Chu said several of his officers sustained bite-
related injuries in last week’s riot following
Vancouver’s loss. And that was just the
beginning.
All in all nine police officers were injured,
including one officer who received over a
dozen stitches after being hit in the head by a
thrown brick. Nearly 20 cars were torched,
including two police cars. Over 150 people
were hospitalized with riot-related injuries
including serious head injuries and stabbings.
Over 100 people went to jail for their
participation in the riot (with plenty more to
come, one can only imagine) and it’s estimated
that over 50 businesses were damaged and/or
looted. A costly loss to say the least.
So after the actions of that night, the people
of Vancouver (those responsible of course, not
the entire city) woke up with one hell of a
Stanley Cup hangover the next morning. And
like any hangover, it’s always the same. Dry
eyes slowly opened, over-sensitive to light, to
see their Canucks jersey draped over a chair in
front of them; each stain of booze, vomit,
lighter fluid, car grease or blood a different
door down a hallway of depravity. They then
shuffled out the door and into the streets amidst
the wreckage of the night, slowly nudging
aside the previous night’s bottles and remnants
of rage to get their morning coffee. They’re
now left only to hang their heads and piece
together the previous night’s events and the
motivation behind them.
And what’s Canada’s role in all of this?
We’re the brother. We’re the best friend. This
happened on our watch, on our turf, and we
wish we could have done something about it.
You watch them sink lower and lower and
there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
We feel the hangover too. We feel the same
way you do after that night out with a friend
who has had a few too many and embarrasses
himself. Because, as we all know, you get
painted with the exact same brush.
Vancouver made a fool of itself and it’s the
rest of Canada that has to be rational enough to
explain “that’s not us, that’s not Canada” to the
rest of the world.
There will always be someone ready to turn
a blind eye to the shame of throwing up all over
themselves and there will always be
responsible friends ready with a bottle of water
and a towel in hand to play nurse the next day.
Every year The Economist publishes a list of
the world’s most livable cities. This year’s
winner? The world’s most livable city in 2011?
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Well, no one’s perfect.
All yesterday’s parties
Did anyone see Game 7? I certainly did!
How amazing was it to see a team
comprised of mostly Canadian players
take to the ice against a team based in Canada?
Well, I’ll have to save that answer for
another day because this week, a week when
I should be talking about the Stanley
Cup, Gary Bettman, the riots or anything
NHL-related really, I’m instead talking about
mud.
Wet dirt, sand and water, whatever
composition you prefer, what I thought of as
an incredibly interesting and diverse piece of
Canadian history (Game 7, that is) was ruined
by mud flinging.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well
maybe you shut the television off after the
game, but I didn’t.
I went channel-surfing with the intent of
finding a different angle on Jannik Hansen’s
dirty, after-the-play and uncalled for hit,
instead, I found the first volley of mud for
October’s provincial election.
Did you know Dalton McGuinty has a new
moniker?
I was unaware of it until the Conservatives
told me; McGuinty is the taxman, and he’s so
used to raising taxes that he can’t see how it’s
hurting families.
Following the stark, black and white
portrayal that lists the taxes McGuinty has
implemented, Conservative leader Tim Hudak
outlined his tax plan if he gets elected.
Someone I was watching with said they
didn’t want the Conservatives to win, but also
wanted to get rid of McGuinty. I asked why.
They pointed to the screen and said “The
HST is outrageous!”
Well about that time I quietly excused
myself from the conversation.
It’s not that I don’t agree that taxes are high
and that the HST was an unfortunate move,
but to only be angry about something, or
to only become political because it’s time to
vote seems to undermine the democratic
process.
That and it seems to be the practice of every
single opposition party to say that the party in
power has raised taxes unconscionably and/or
is spending insane amounts of money with no
thought to where it comes from.
The simple fact is the party in power will
spend money to create the programs and
policies they believe are necessary.
For them to do so while cutting taxes means
they would need to cancel expenditures that
are either long-standing practices or are the
actions of the previous party.
Here is where the sticky widget is thrown in;
not a lot of things can be cut.
Watchdogs have stated that, for example,
Canada’s Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty’s
new vague budget that promises to save money
by cutting expenses won’t net anywhere near
the results he believes it will.
This is the legacy of being the leading
party – other parties get to criticize your
spending habits, state that their spending
habits would be more responsible, and sit
comfortably in that position until situations
reverse themselves.
It’s similar to any situation in which
criticism is being launched. Often times the
criticizers would be no more capable of
handling a situation, however, they are able
to make their comments for just that
reason – they aren’t expected to make these
decisions or take responsibility for these
actions.
If Hudak and his Conservatives get elected,
I certainly won’t hold my breath waiting for
the HST to be taken off the table, the same
as I don’t expect the budget to become
balanced under Flaherty’s planning anytime
soon.
The simple fact is governance costs money,
even right wing governance that is supposed to
be as hands-off as possible (although
Canadian Conservatives seem to have
forgotten that core concept of their original
party platforms) costs more money than the
last government, and the government before
that, unless they’re willing to cut programs.
Taxes will continue to rise as long as
Canada’s population doesn’t expand faster
than the cost of the current projects and those
of a new government.
The recipe of the stagnation of Canada’s
population growth coupled with the need for
more health services as our population age
graphs become more top-heavy has higher
taxes as a guaranteed result, to believe that any
government can reduce the taxes you pay in a
year while simultaneously paying off any kind
of debt is nearly impossible unless other
services suffer.
Major infrastructure projects, for example,
would need to be ended. The provincial and
federal grants that are given out for projects
like the Josephine Street improvements in
Wingham are funded by municipal, provincial
and federal tax dollars, as are projects like the
recent subway tunnel connecting York region
with Toronto.
When people joke the only certainties in life
are higher taxes and death, they aren’t simply
being humorous, they’re being honest.
Cut through the nonsense this election.
Realize that taxes will rise regardless of
government affiliation because costs will rise
and start demanding realistic things of our
governments.
Oh... Bettman shouldn’t hand out Lord
Stanley’s Cup, the Vancouver rioters should be
ashamed of themselves and Hansen needs to
have his skates taken away and sit in a corner
to think about what he did.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Political mud begins to fly again
The trouble with life isn’t that there is no
answer, it’s that there are so many answers.
– Ruth Benedict
Final Thought