The Citizen, 2009-05-21, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2009. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
O n behalf of all Canadians I would like
to extend an apology to New
Zealanders, all 4.3 million of them,
and that’s not counting sheep and kiwis.
It concerns an international incident initiated
by a Canadian – one Seeka Parsons, of
Nunavut. Ms Parsons, on a visit to New
Zealand, chanced to visit a corner store where
she beheld, horror of horrors, a candy
confection being sold to the public under the
name of – be brave, O typing finger…
Eskimos.
That’s right – a candy called ‘Eskimo’. It is
even in the shape of a person wearing a fur-
lined parka.
Ms Parsons was appalled to learn that not
only was the sale of ‘Eskimo’ candies legal,
but New Zealanders had been enthusiastically
chowing down on them for the past half
century.
Ms Parsons knew what had to be done. She
called a TV station which led to a press
conference at which she denounced the
product as an insult to her people. She vowed
that she would send packages of the candies
back to Prime Minister Stephen Harper as well
as to tribal elders in Nunavut.
“I just think that we deserve to have respect
and by having a lolly or a candy that’s made of
a whole entire race of people, my people, I
right away knew that I had to make a change,”
she said into the camera of New Zealand’s
national TV news program.
Actually, they are not made of an entire race
of people; they are made of chocolate-covered
marshmallow. And they are not genetic
beacons, racial signifiers or tundral Arks of the
Covenant.
These Eskimos are merely candies.
Lots of nationality-branded goodies end up
going down the cake hole – Dutch cobbler,
Irish coffee, English muffins, German
bratwurst, Belgian waffles and French
pastries, to name a handful. The peoples so
‘disrespected’ seem to be thriving nicely.
Ms Parsons claims that even the name is an
insult to her people – the Inuit. She says that
‘Eskimo’ was a derogative term appropriated
by early white men and that it means ‘eaters of
raw meat’ – but the jury’s out on that.
According to a Smithsonian expert,
‘Eskimo’means ‘snowshoe netters’; according
to Quebec linguist Jose Mailhot, it means
‘people who speak a different language.’
None of it (Nunavut?) – including ‘eaters
of raw meat’ sounds terribly offensive to
my ears.
You want offensive, Ms Parsons? Consider
my people – the Scots. We have been reviled
down through the ages as kilted crazies,
bagpipe buffoons and dour, unsmiling
skinflints who could squeeze a Canadian
nickel until the beaver wiggled its tail for
mercy.
Have we ever given the world anything so
gastronomically tantalizing as a chocolate
covered marshmallow candy? Och, I wish. We
have given the world porridge, Scottish
oatcakes and haggis.
Luckily for the PM, we Scots are far too, ah,
thrifty, to send him any samples in the mail.
If I could offer two words of advice to Ms
Parsons of Nunavut they would be ‘Lighten
up’. Food can be fun, you know. Ask Ben &
Jerry.
That would be Ben Cohen and Jerry
Greenfield, two 60s hippies who started an ice
cream business with just two rules: it had to
taste good; and it had to be fun.
And they made it fun. They came up with
flavours like Jamaican Me Crazy, Vermonty
Python, Mission to Marzipan and, in honour of
their favourite band, The Grateful Dead –
Cherry Garcia.
Ben and Jerry even managed to have fun
with the last hapless occupant of the Oval
Office, for whom they felt minimal affection.
Still, in honour of George W., they created
flavours like: Grape Depression, Chock and
Awe, Iraqi Road, and imPeachMint.
Not to mention Nougalar Proliferation, Wire
Tapioca and Fudgin’ da Books.
And here’s a gesture that, as a northerner,
Ms Parsons could get behind. On Earth Day in
2005, as a protest against the Bush
administration proposal to open the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, Ben
and Jerry’s created a humungous dessert
and deposited it – all 1,140 pounds worth – in
front of the U.S. Capitol Building in
Washington.
A Baked Alaska, of course.
The last I heard, Cadbury New Zealand, the
company that makes the Eskimo candy,
dismissed Ms Parson’s complaint out of hand.
A spokesman said that they sold 19 million
Eskimos last year and that the candy is “one of
our most sought after.”
I say, good for Cadbury New Zealand. They
recognized the controversy as a mere humbug
and wisely decided not to get inuit.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
Candy offensive? Bah, humbug
C andidates for leader of Ontario’s
Progressive Conservative Party are
coming up with some provocative and
aggressive ideas that could set sparks
flying and make the 2011 election more
competitive.
Finance critic Tim Hudak, who is generally
considered the frontrunner, has suggested a
Conservative government should scrap the
province’s wage agreements with public sector
unions and negotiate others more affordable in
today’s tight economy.
The Liberals under Premier Dalton
McGuinty signed agreements before the
economic downturn providing as much as
three per cent pay increases a year for several
years that seem excessively generous now
many in the private sector are losing jobs or
having pay cuts.
The Liberals have benefitted by less friction
with the unions and the public by fewer public
sector strikes, but many will feel the price is
too high.
Hudak also would freeze the pay of the
province’s non-unionized employees as long
as the recession lasts, and go even further than
the former extreme right wing premier,
Mike Harris, on whom he has patterned
himself.
Harris was strongly anti-union and
for a time even refused to speak to their
leaders.
Hudak would underline his differences with
unions in both the public and private sectors
by demanding secret ballots when workers
consider joining unions.
Balloting now takes place ostensibly in
privacy, but both sides, employers as much as
those favoring unionizing, often put pressure
on employees for and against.
Hudak also would enable members to opt
out when their union wants to use their dues to
fund activist campaigns outside work. Current
examples include a union bringing and
maintaining here a Mexican labor leader it
says was victimized in his own country.
Hudak says “workers deserve a say as to
how their dues will be spent by their unions on
issues that deal with political activism outside
their workplaces.”
Hudak’s proposals would start a war
between government and unions and the
prospect of major strikes not seen since
Harris stepped down, but he is calculating
voters, the vast majority of whom are not
unionists, would support reducing union
power particularly when business is
struggling.
Christine Elliott, who appears to be running
second, has opposed his proposal to scrap
wage agreements with pubic sector unions,
saying it would result in “outright
confrontations” that would hurt the province
in difficult economic times.
She said the province instead should look at
saving money by working with the
unions, who are doing a tough job in
difficult circumstances that should not be
undermined.
Elliott, wife of federal Finance Minister Jim
Flaherty, an extreme right winger, has made a
big effort to position herself as a moderate
Conservative of the type that ruled Ontario
most of the past 60 years.
But in a surprising contradiction she has
proposed the province replace its income tax
rates on residents, now graduated so it
increases according to how much they earn,
with a single percentage “flat tax” on all
incomes, which is something beloved of far
right-wingers.
Arguments for a flat tax include it would be
simpler, easier to understand and less costly to
administer and end a system that discourages
hard work and success.
The main argument against is it would end
the progressive element of requiring people
who earn more to pay a higher proportion of
their incomes.
Frank Miller, a Conservative premier in the
1980s, whom Harris has cited as his mentor,
toyed with imposing a flat tax, but no one in
Ontario has implemented it. Proposing it hurts
the image Elliott has been trying to create as
the moderate in the race.
Randy Hillier has proposed eliminating all
human rights commissions, which recently
has become almost a holy crusade of the far
right.
And Frank Klees is refusing to propose
policies on the ground they should be decided
by the party as a whole and not just by a
leader.
This would be a welcome step toward
democracy, but the elected elite and their
backroom advisers who almost always run this
party would never permit it.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Summer began and ended with it. No
matter how long it took for the weather to
warm, no matter how unseasonable the
season might be, this was summer.
Decades ago, beginning as soon as the days
lengthened, the drive-in movie theatre was the
place to be on starry weekend nights. From the
beginning, the fun was never so much about
what was on the screen. As a child, it was a
treat when Mom and Dad would tuck me,
dressed in my jammies, into the backseat to see
Pat Boone, Sandra Dee or the Three Stooges. In
addition to the hotdogs, popcorn, licorice and
watered-down colas, the fun was being
permitted to stay up well past bedtime, if I could
actually manage it. Cozied under a car rug with
a thick downy pillow tempting me, however, it
was usually a challenge to keep my eyelids open
for long after returning to the car from the
playground.
Then when I became a girl riding in cars with
boys, the drive-in theatre was a party place. We
usually travelled in packs, loading cars and
meeting up with others in equally-packed
vehicles once parked.
Of course, there was always the fun of
sneaking in an extra person or two in the trunk,
then trying to squeeze them in with the rest of
us once past the admission gates.
The movies we went to then were usually
dusk to dawns, full of cheesy horror, blood and
gore. The girls gave the requisite shrieks in the
right places and the boys played the hero,
teased, or found ways to enhance the terror.
Some would sneak up to other cars to scare the
occupants or bother those solitary couples who
had found better ways to pass the time.
Sadly time changed things and the majority of
drive-in theatres closed by the time I was a
young mom. A few remained, but they were far
between and so not a significant part of the
culture anymore.
For me, the drive-in movie is youth
remembered fondly. Most small towns had them
and they projected an atmosphere of fun in a
time when things were simply easier.
So it was a few years ago when we were
enjoying the company of our grandson, that my
husband and I hit upon the idea of the drive-in
as some special entertainment. Pulling in, it was
neat to see that the big swing sets and
playground are still part of the experience,
along with the party atmosphere. He had a blast
running and playing before the show and for the
first time in a long time I got to cuddle in the
front seat of a car with a handsome young man,
after the movie started.
We agreed then we should make this a spring
ritual.
The drive-in theatre that we visit now was
there when our kids were young, but while we
often talked about taking the family there were
always others things keeping us busy and before
we knew it the years had passed and we
couldn’t pay them to go with us.
It allowed us to see the importance of making
the time now. Particularly when it comes to the
second chance that grandchildren offer. We are
only too well-aware that moments are slipping
by at a dizzying pace and if we don’t nab them
on the way by they are gone swiftly and often
forever.
Being older, we’ve learned to prioritize,
recognizing when a grandkid is nearby that
nothing is more important than seizing every
chance to introduce them to new experiences, or
share our experiences with them.
Creating a ritual, too, usually means creating
a memory. Hopefully our grandson will recall
these times fondly and will in years to come
remember that his summer began at the drive-in
movie with Grandpa and Grandma.
Tory candidates’ ideas provoke
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to
forgive a friend.
– William Blake
Final Thought
At the movies