HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-12-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2009. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
So you look at your mug grinning back at
you from the bathroom mirror and you
think you’re Pretty Hot Stuff.
You wound up with the spouse of your
dreams, a home your enemies would grow
envy ulcers to see, three picture-perfect kids, a
hybrid in the garage and a sizeable wad in the
bank.
Your health is good, nobody wants to
outright kill you and your biggest addiction is
the Sudoku puzzle in the newspaper.
Yup, you tell your mirror image, I’m leading
a pretty full life.
Think so? Meet Brian Keating.
He’s a mid-life guy. And noticeably bright-
eyed, dark-haired and slim. We’d be slim too,
if we burned calories like he does.
His business card reads Head of
Conservation Outreach, Calgary Zoo. It would
be simpler and more accurate if it just carried
the lyrics of the old Hank Snow song: “I’ve
been everywhere”.
Haida Gwaii? Of course.
Ellesmere Island? Walked across it.
High Arctic? Lived there.
Antarctic? Too many times to count.
Africa? More than 40 visits.
This is a guy who felt vexed hiking the
Rockies because high above he could see
inaccessible valleys and meadows only
mountain goats could reach. So he got a pilot’s
licence in order to fly to them.
He’s climbed Kilimanjaro and scuba’d in the
Sargasso sea. He’s played patty cakes with
penguins and paddled with narwhals.
Once, his kayak was T-boned and cut in two
– by a grumpy hippo.
And he’s been unarmed and face-to-fangs
with a very large and very hostile African male
lion.
“Didn’t know I could run backward that
fast,” he says. “Didn’t know anyone could.”
So who is this guy – Steve Irwin North?
Tarzan of the Tundra? A Stampede version of
Crocodile Dundee?
Nope. He started out as curator of the
Calgary Zoo in 1981, but it wasn’t long before
he was packing his rucksack. Backroom
cataloguing and dusty dioramas held no magic
for Keating.
Nowadays, when he’s not in the jungle or up
a mountain or out on an ice floe chances are
you’ll find him showing slides of his
adventures on some stage to hundreds –
sometimes thousands – of armchair
adventurer wannabes. He’s an international
speaker and he’s hot – addressing audiences
more than 60 times a year.
Why? Because Brian Keating is also a
salesman – and so positive he makes Don
Cherry look like a funeral director.
Keating is flogging the natural wonders of
the world – not as a tour guide, more as a
canary in the mine. He wants everybody to
know about what’s still left of our wonderful
unspoiled earth.
He’s no Pollyanna – Keating knows better
than most the depredation man’s
rapaciousness for raw material and bigger
back yards has caused (and cost). That’s what
keeps him on the circuit.
To paraphrase the old hymn, his eyes have
seen the glory and he wants us to see it too.
See it, in order to save it.
The signature mantra that he repeats as he
shows yet another audience close-ups of
lowland gorillas, basking walruses, trumpeting
elephants or curious wolves: “Isn’t that
AMAZING”?
Yes. Yes, it is.
And so is Brian Keating. Especially since
he really ought to be dead.
Almost was, too – not from the swipe of a
lion’s paw or a tumble into an alpine crevasse
but from the bumper of a car in downtown
Calgary. Keating was standing with his bicycle
at a stoplight on his way to the CBC TV studio
when a car came out of nowhere and creamed
him.
The collision left him lying in the middle of
the road with smashed ribs, a broken arm and
some pretty ugly facial injuries. Keating (of
course) insists that he was lucky.
“The only thing that saved my life was my
bicycle helmet,” says Keating. “It was
smashed into about 50 pieces, all the little bits
dangling, held together by the chin strap.”
The hospital staff was so impressed they
asked if they could keep the helmet and show
it to kids who thought they were too cool to
wear bike helmets. Keating said sure – as long
as they didn’t wash the bloodstains off.
“Tell them that’s what my skull would have
looked like without the helmet,” he said.
Classic Keating. And if one day some kid
goes over the handlebars, lands on his head
and happens, thanks to Keating’s example, to
be wearing a helmet that saves him from a
brain omelette, I know exactly how Keating
will respond when he hears about it.
He’ll say “Isn’t that AMAZING?”
Arthur
Black
Other Views He’s alive! Now, isn’t that amazing!
Premier Dalton McGuinty is on a mission
promoting trade to India and Pakistan,
but it is designed as much to boost his
faltering political image among people who
count.
The Liberal premier, who travels so much he
may be using frequent flyer points for this trip,
is spending seven days (arrives home Dec.12)
talking with government and business, trying
to increase exports and attract investment, and
he can argue his visit is justified on these
grounds.
Ontario needs both, when many thousands
of jobs have been lost in an economic
recession, and these countries are more able to
spend.
But McGuinty also faces a much fiercer
fight for the votes of the huge and growing
number of immigrants from the two
countries and their descendants, enough to
sway the 2011 election, and hopes to generate
enough publicity from this journey to help his
cause.
The premier visited these two countries
shortly before he won the last election in 2007.
Immigrants from South Asia – India, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – have
outnumbered those from other visible minority
groups in recent years.
Three years ago they surpassed immigrants
of Chinese origin as Canada’s largest visible
minority. Immigration from China has eased,
particularly because of that country’s
economic boom, which caused some
professionals to think twice about leaving, and
Canada’s reluctance to recognize foreign
credentials.
More than half of Canada’s 1.26 million
residents of South Asian origin live in Greater
Toronto.
They came mostly looking to escape
political instability and make better lives for
themselves and their families.
They are among the most politically-active
of ethnic groups. Sometimes several thousand
of them pack hotly-contested meetings to
choose party candidates, while nomination
meetings elsewhere attract only a few hundred
voters.
South Asians, like other immigrants, have
tended to vote in gratitude more for the party
of the federal government that allowed them
into Canada, which historically has been
mostly Liberal.
This is one reason Liberals of South Asian
background now hold six of the 107 seats in
the Ontario legislature, although McGuinty
has many programs of his own aimed at
immigrants.
The premier needs to protect those seats
and hopes even to add to them, but there
are indications these ambitions are
threatened.
Recent immigrants from South Asia have
been admitted under the federal government
of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen
Harper.
Many South Asians, whenever they arrived,
inherently are socially conservative. They
are particularly inclined to set up their
own, mostly small, businesses and see
Conservatives as more sympathetic to
business.
Many, because of their religions and
traditions, oppose same-sex marriage,
which the federal and Ontario Liberals
promoted and Conservatives at both levels
opposed.
Some South Asians are rankled by
individual issues. For example, there is the
federal Liberals’ promotion of Ruby Dhalla,
the photogenic, high profile community
member they parachuted into a safe seat in
Brampton without a nomination meeting,
which has recoiled because of allegations her
family mistreated caregivers.
South Asians are questioning more whether
they should continue to support the Liberals
merely because they allowed them or their
predecessors into Canada.
The federal Conservatives have assisted
their thinking by making strenuous efforts to
win them over, because of the huge number of
votes they have.
The federal Tories have identified South
Asian opinion leaders, getting to know them
and asking their views, which they feel
flattering. The Conservatives have given some
South Asians public positions and citizenship
awards and bought large space in their ethnic
newspapers, which often promotes more
favourable coverage.
Some Canadian-born children of South
Asians, without prompting by outsiders, are
questioning whether they should continue
their parents’ allegiance to the federal
Liberals, which could hurt the provincial
Liberals.
McGuinty has fallen dramatically in polls,
mainly because he failed to watch public
spending.
But he obtained publicity that made
him look a friend of South Asians on his last
trip and will be looking for more as he
wings his way to and from New Delhi and
Mumbai.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
The warmth of Christmas baking comes
not from the heat of the oven but from
the delectable fragrance that fills the
room as pans of shortbread and sugar cookies
toast to a soft gold and cinnamon, nutmeg,
ginger and allspice produce a pleasantly
pungent medley.
The kitchen during the holiday season is a
special place where families gather and
traditions are re-created year after year.
Grandma’s shortbread, Great-Aunt Betty’s
gumdrop cake, Mom’s coffee cake are not just
labours of love to be placed on the table for
loved ones, but are cherished memories of other
loved ones now gone. The importance of these
recipes ensures that the food on the table is as
much a part of the holidays as the gifts beneath
the tree.
Wrist-deep in dough the other day, seasonal
songs surrounding the space around me, my
thoughts turned to my grandmothers stirring
redolent memories of their kitchens and the
comforting smells that filled them.
Holiday meals were culinary works of art,
sublime and satisfying, rich in colour and
texture. Homemade from start to finish, pickles
to pie crust, they offered solid staples and
special treats.
It was varied, delectable fare, a menu that
seldom deviated except for minor alterations to
accommodate the ‘snoops’, my cousin and
myself, the rather indulged babies of the family.
These were simple variations, however — plain
shredded cabbage over coleslaw, no Christmas
pudding to ruin the rum sauce.
I, however as I begin preparing the foods that
have been part of so many family celebrations
over the years, find myself facing a number of
interesting considerations. While the traditional
Christmas turkey with all the trimmings is very
much in evidence at our holiday table some
modern trends and issues have put a twist on
things.
To start, we have the two vegetarians. And as
I ponder ideas to get some festive protein into
them I can’t help thinking what my
grandmothers would have made of this pair.
These were gals not above performing a hatchet
job themselves on that turkey if necessary. Not
to mention the disgusting prep work one
seldom thinks about that’s required before that
bird can become the golden succulent
centrepiece of the holiday table.
Then there are the food allergies, to dairy and
gluten, something virtually unheard of when
my grandmas were preparing meals. I can
almost see them shaking their heads at the idea
of someone not being able to eat a piece of
cream pie.
The move to healthier lifestyles has made a
difference as well. Where once a festive cookie
tray would have disappeared in a cholesterol
soaked heartbeat, to be replenished time and
time again, today’s temptations are often
bypassed for the veggies and low-fat dip.
I can almost hear my grandmas hurrumphing
at such nonsense. Nibble, they’d say. It’s
nothing a little hard work won’t wear off.
These thoughts all churned through my quiet
mind, as my busy hands sifted, mixed and
rolled. And maybe people are needing some
menu changes for health or preference. Maybe
Christmas pudding has lost its popularity.
Maybe people only have a couple of
shortbreads instead of several.
But Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas
without those hours in the kitchen where the
work is a labour of love and the mouth-
watering aromas that result from it are the stuff
of memories.
McGuinty travels for votes
The stuff of memories