HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-08-13, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2009. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
The last moments for Cuddles could not
have been pleasant – drowning seldom
is – but her second-to-last moments
might have been positively, well, bucolic.
I imagine her standing contentedly on a bluff
overlooking a fast-moving B.C. river – the
Fraser, perhaps – gazing out at skein of
Canada Geese bisecting the sunset, her four
stomachs processing successive mouthfuls of
rich, fragrant meadow grass.
Suddenly the earth beneath her gives way,
she stumbles, tries to regain her footing then
slips, with a mournful moo, inexorably into the
current.
And Cuddles is swept out to sea. She makes
landfall some days later on a beach near
Clover Point, just outside the city of Victoria.
But she is no longer the plump brown cow
she was. She’s now…well, plumper, actually,
due to bloating.
And she is two other things she’s never been
before. For one thing she is now known as
Cuddles, named by an empathetic city
employee. And for another: she is
demonstrably dead.
Still, quite an adventure for your typical
milk cow, most of which get to spend their
lives munching hay, birthing calves and
enduring impersonal mechanical milking
machines attached to their naughty bits before
finally making that one-way trip to the
abattoir.
At least Cuddles got to travel a bit, if only by
employing a bovine variation of the dog
paddle.
Poor girl. She had no way of knowing her
travels were only beginning.
Not only had Cuddles passed from the land
of the living to the underworld, she had also
washed up, hooves first, in that most dismal
and forbidding suburb of modern life: human
bureaucracy.
Simply put: who’s responsible for a dead
cow on the beach? And whose job was it to
dispose of the cow?
Municipal officials came down to the
water’s edge, stared at Cuddle’s carcass and
initiated the opening moves of the game
known as Not My Department. Oh, they sent a
city bucket-excavator and a flatbed truck to
remove Cuddles from the beach – clearly a
municipal responsibility.
But what then? How to dispose of Cuddles?
And who would pay?
E-mails went out. Phone calls were made.
Lawyers were consulted about possible
precedents. Should the city just step up and
bury the cow?
There are no dairy farms within Victoria city
limits, so the owner, even assuming he could
be found, would be outside municipal
jurisdiction.
Wait a minute – didn’t Cuddles float in from
the Strait of Juan de Fuca? That’s international
territory. Cuddles might have mooed with an
American accent! (Please, God -- make
Cuddles a Canadian. Nobody wants to deal
with Homeland Security.)
But even assuming she’s a Canuck cow,
wasn’t she found below the high tide
mark? Didn’t that make it a problem for the
Federal Department of Fisheries and
Oceans?
Sorry, Charlie, it would have, if Cuddles had
been a dead sea lion or a defunct humpback
whale. The DFO picks up the tab for beached
sea life, not livestock.
Hey…livestock! Cows are indisputably part
of the country’s agricultural mosaic! Get
those Department of Agriculture guys on the
line!
In the end, after 48 hours of bureaucratic
ping pong, officials arrived at a compromise
that would make even Canadian Senators
shake their palsied pates in awe. Under the
aegis of The Canadian Food Inspection
Agency, the carcass of Cuddles would be
shipped 70 miles north of Victoria to the city
of Nanaimo and then – wait for it…
Airlifted 700 miles south and east to
Calgary. Why Calgary? To comply with
federal regulations governing the spread of
Mad Cow disease.
Calgary is the nearest centre that has an
official, CFIA-approved disposal facility.
Ain’t bureaucracy wonderful? As good as
we are at it, it’s not a Canadian invention.
Two hundred years ago, Czar Nicholas I
moaned “I do not rule Russia; ten thousand
clerks do.”
How he must have envied Genghis Khan.
The Mongol conquered all of Asia with an
army less than half the size of the New York
City Civil Service.
Genghis Khan would have known how to
handle the Cuddles problem. So, for that
matter, would your grandfather.
He would have looped a tow rope around
Cuddles’ horns, attached the other end to an
outboard motorboat and, at high tide, towed
her out to sea. A few hundred yards offshore
he would have weighed the carcass down with
a couple of rocks and sent the remains of
Cuddles to the bottom.
No fuss, no muss and an unexpected protein
smorgasbord for crabs and other
bottomfeeders.
A clean, even elegant solution. And would
Cuddles have cared?
Mooot point.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Well … how now, brown cow?
Some Ontario Progressive Conservatives
are uneasy with the far-right image of
their new leader. But he is in no rush to
give himself a makeover.
Tim Hudak won by portraying himself as the
reincarnation of the former extreme-right
premier Mike Harris, who won elections in
1995 and 1999. Moderate Conservatives point
out their brand of Conservative won 13
consecutive elections between 1943 and
1985, which may be a record of public
approval unknown outside Soviet-style
dictatorships.
Hudak has spent most of his time since
attacking unions, which was a trademark of
Harris, and taken only one minor step to
appease the moderate Conservatives by
naming Christine Elliott, who ran third in the
campaign to find a new leader, as deputy
leader.
Elliott, wife of federal Conservative finance
minister Jim Flaherty, was described
constantly in the leadership campaign as the
candidate representing the party’s moderates
and she has some history of working for needy
causes.
She also said in the race the party has a
record of helping vulnerable residents, which
it has failed to emphasize recently, and
should be talking more of providing
compassion.
Elliott said Harris had many worthwhile
policies, but times have changed and
the Conservatives have to devise
policies based on problems they face
today.
She also warned the party should avoid
confrontations with unions, after Hudak
suggested the province scrap generous pay
settlements reached with public sector unions
before the economic recession.
These comments led news media to dub her
“the last Red Tory” and a throwback to the era
of moderate premier William Davis, who
introduced expensive social programs and at
times even had a friendly word for union
leaders.
This description of Elliott was an
exaggeration, because she also stressed at
every campaign stop she is a fiscal
Conservative and would push for tax cuts
and getting tougher on crime, both
mainstay policies of Harris and now
Hudak.
Elliott also wanted to replace the current
graduated income tax, in which residents pay
proportionately more as their incomes rise,
with a flat tax in which all pay the same
percentage, which is simpler to understand
and collect, helps the better-off and is
one of the Ten Commandments for far-right
wingers.
Harris and Hudak never went as far as to
propose this and the only premier to ruminate
aloud in favour of it was Frank Miller, a far-
right Conservative whom Harris has described
as his mentor.
This makes it difficult to categorize Elliott
as a Red Tory and Hudak’s choice of her as his
deputy does not entitle him to the image of
being open-minded he hoped for.
While right-wingers now control the
Conservative party, partly because they are
more committed, a substantial number of its
supporters are concerned it has gone too far
right.
These include a few of its MPPs, but the
moderates at the legislature have lost a strong
voice since John Tory stepped down as leader,
after failing to win a seat.
But some unelected Conservatives are
sounding warnings. Davis, who was one of
those who showed moderation can win votes,
supports the party through thick and
thin and does not rock the boat. He suggested
quickly after the party chose Hudak
it should recognize it needs to appeal to a wide
range of residents to win an election due in
2011.
Other Conservatives are reminding their
party once believed in maintaining traditions,
providing a social safety net to
help the vulnerable and people improve
their lives, and changing society
pragmatically and gradually to achieve
goals.
They say they do not have a lot in common
with newer Conservatives who have a strict
ideology that is intolerant of dissenters and
are harsh on some residents, particularly the
poor.
These Conservatives say those now running
their party have lost some of its values,
particularly the right to be called
“progressive,” and it could cost them
the next election – this is not an argument
that should be dismissed lightly.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Blessed be, two words which may,
according to Wikipedia, be a greeting,
farewell, and blessing in Wicca.
Well, I may not belong to a coven, though I
suppose the idea that I probably use a broom
for something besides sweeping has crossed a
mind or two on occasion, blessed been is
something I sure felt time and time again over
recent days.
The blessings that enrich my existence aren’t
a new awareness. Each morning I remind
myself to count them and be grateful. It can
take a lot of time.
I’ve been fortunate in this life and though I’d
be untruthful in saying I never take it for
granted; life can play some pretty nasty
hardball once in a while that makes you
forgetful; there are unselfish moments when
full appreciation for all the good stuff is
given.
But in this busy, crazy world, it’s rare to have
the feeling wash over with the intensity of a
waterfall, a crystal clear cleansing surge of
peace and happiness. Nothing like a holiday,
therefore, to wash the detritus away.
Not that my time away from work was
particularly relaxing. As my vacation has been
over the past few years this one was chock
full of place to place and activities top to
bottom of each and every day, with
blissful, restful snatches of time caught in
between.
But the brilliant awareness of my fortunes
brightened my day almost from the instant
my respite began, with the acknowledgement
of my ability, my ways and means, that
allowed me to be embarking on a summer
sojourn.
There were then various moments and
experiences when life’s goodness would come
to mind bringing a smile to my face and an
overall feeling of well being. They would come
with the obvious — a Lake Huron sunset’s
blazing collage of colour, a good book in a
quiet garden, boisterous times with family and
friends. And the less obvious to others — the
sizzling sound of a great blues guitarist
or a stroll among classic cars under a cerulean
sky.
They were felt too in the lazy evening hours
of deck time with my special guy, during
movie time with my grandson and fun times
with my kids.
All were deep sighs of contentment and
pleasure.
As noted, none of this was new. Like
everyone else my life comes with its share of
good and bad, doled out in varying proportions
with time’s passing. Everyone knows that
dwelling on the bad gets you nowhere; the only
route to sanity is to focus on the
positive.
But what was new this time was how readily
and easily those good vibes were filling my
head and heart.
And with that ease and frequency came a
reciprocal benefit. The more my blessed life
sprang instantaneously to mind, the more I
thought about it. Until, by the end of the week,
I couldn’t help noticing it was easier to give
the worries and stresses the short shrift they
deserve.
Of course, that old debris began piling up
with the return to the real world. But, I do
appreciate the healthy dose of perspective I
received.
Hopefully I can still find it from time to time
to lift me out from under when necessary.
Tories uneasy with leader’s image
Blessed been