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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2008-01-03, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2008. PAGE 5.Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Where did it go? It’s a brand new year – snow white and unsullied. I thought I might start it off with a Good News Story. Which is based on a Bad News Story. Remember my Sarnia adventure? Perhaps not. A recap, then: Last November, straggling through the tail end of a book tour through southern Ontario, I became, in seconds, a Man Without a Country. Without an ID, even. I had been flying from Toronto to Sarnia, Ontario. Somewhere in the 250-odd kilometres between those metropoli I dropped my driver’s license, never to see it again. It was the photo ID I had been using to board aircraft from one end of the country to the other. As a matter of fact, it was the only photo ID I was carrying. I had credit cards, a Canadian Legion card, a Canadian Tire card, an Aeroplan card – I had 13 other pieces of identification that clearly indicated I was not Al Qaeda, Taliban or a Shining Path suicide guerrilla, but rather a pale, mild-mannered, geezer-type scribbler from west of the Rockies. The hawk-eyed minions of Air Canada would have none of it. They wouldn’t let me on the plane. Finally, after six hours of frenetic faxing of documents (my passport, birth certificate, social insurance card) by my long-suffering spouse on the far side of the country, the defenders of Sarnia sovereignty relented and let me pass. Understand that I had no weapons. I had scrupulously jettisoned a lethal-looking pair of toenail clippers before I even got to the airport. I displayed my toothpaste and shaving cream in the Homeland Security-mandated clear plastic bag for all to see. Understand too, that I was not in transit from the Excited States of America, where a Canuck expects to be treated like a bomb-toting Bolshevik. I was in rural Ontario, for God’s sake, where the closest thing to a military target was a Tim Horton’s – or a Home Hardware with some leftover Halloween firecrackers. Did I get mad? Hell, no. I got even. One of my favourite writers, Nora Ephron, has a sign over her computer. It reads ‘Everything is copy’. It’s true. One of the great things about being a newspaper columnist is that no matter what happens, I can usually turn it into a 750-word Op Ed piece that runs in the paper the next day. I wrote a column about the idiocies of our airport security paranoia. The next day I saw an e-mail in my Inbox tagged ‘from the mayor of Sarnia’. Oops. Before I opened it, I Googled ‘mayor Sarnia’ – and learned that a guy named Mike Bradley had held that post for the past 16 years. He was either very good at his job or he was playing by the Fidel Castro rulebook. Phone my lawyer? Open the e-mail? I opened the e-mail. Here’s what it said. Dear Mr. Black: Just read your column about your book tour that brought you to Sarnia, Ontario and your encounter with Air Canada’s security. While you may mock us, the safety and security of our 993 Tim Horton’s is paramount concern for the citizens of this City and the Airport is a prime entry point. Thus our airport security is second to none. Did you meet Bob our security guard? He doesn’t have a gun but does have a whistle and is trained to use it on anyone who gets in the wrong line. What did you think of the three-foot security fence? How about the x-ray machine borrowed from a local dentist? You may have been partially responsible for your own problems beyond the lack of photo ID. Were you in Air Canada’s terrorist or non terrorist line? They are very Canadian and if in the wrong line you would have been placed on double secret probation immediately by Bob. I apologize for the lack of a coffee machine, however, the machine was removed so no terrorist could hold a hot cup of coffee to a pilot’s throat or even worse make him drink it and demand the plane be flown to Petrolia or Oil Springs instead of Toronto. I have checked with Bob and he says it’s not our fault locally because apparently anyone who works for the CBC is automatically put on the Terrorist Watch List by the Harper Government. Cheers, Mayor Mike Bradley Wow. Imagine having a mayor with a sense of humour like that. It’s enough to make you want to vote for the guy. It’s enough to make me want to go back to Sarnia, even. By train, mind you. Arthur Black Always so lovely, always so anticipated. But where the heck did it go? The ‘it’ referred to in this case would be time. Having spent more than half a century on this good Earth the speedy passage of time should come as no surprise to me. Yet there are still occasions when I’m shocked to see my future now clearly enshrined in my past. This week, I find myself facing it on two levels. The first was my vacation. With the arrival of the holiday season came the added promise of time off from the traditional work-a-day world, and the opportunity to gather family together. So it was that as the countdown to Christmas began, visions of quiet times with a good book or relaxing by candlelight danced in my head. That little sojourn went by at such breakneck speed, however, that I find myself dazedly parked at my desk and perfectly capable of believing it never really happened at all. In the blink of an eye frivolity is finished, it’s back to routine and what passed between is an exhausting blur. Then there is the second shock, as now too, in the whirl of a noisemaker we leave 365 days behind to find ourselves amazingly in a new year. It was with hopefulness those many days ago that I bid farewell to what had been a sorrowful 2006 and ushered in 2007. The 12 months that followed have given more of what life can offer, but in fairer proportion. And apparently in half the time. I am, despite hearing over and over again that time is passing too quickly, despite the sense that the quick flipping of my calendar’s pages is not a new experience, completely flabbergasted that 2008 has arrived. These 12 months went by faster than summer. And let me assure you, that’s far too fast. As I sat shell-shocked with my long, long, long-time friends on New Year’s Eve, the passage of time played out before me. I thought of how it seemed such a short time before this that we had been together to celebrate our passage into the year we were now leaving behind us. In particular I took some time to look at what 2007 had meant to me. It was another year of both familiar and new experiences. It was replete with heartwarming and head- shaking moments. It replenished my world with new acquaintances and brought long- missed ones back into my life. Mostly, I felt grateful for another year of health and happiness, for the blessing of my family and good friends. Then, flush with those good feelings, I remembered the first such evening 31 years ago, my first Auld Lang Syne with these people and the man who would become my husband. And recognized how recent it felt. As clearly as if it was yesterday, I could see my shy entrance and their kind acceptance and welcome. Of course, I also remembered a lot less grey hair, and a much later evening than we generally enjoy now. Granted the three decades since have altered the friendship; we have grown apart in some ways, closer in others. We have bade farewell to one, have shared each other’s sorrows and triumphs. But with them, I see a lifetime of memories, accumulated in what seems so short a span. In retrospect the time has seen too much to have passed so quickly. Other Views Sarnia, it’s been good to know ya Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are being urged to dump leader John Tory and return to the far right policies of former premier Mike Harris -- but they would have as much a chance of winning, running as the Flat Earth Society. The arguments for replacing Tory are considerable, because he lost ground for his party and his seat in the October election, although a case can and is being made he has unusual talents that deserve another chance. But there is no sign of a revival of the public enthusiasm for slashing government and riding roughshod over dissent that were characteristic of the Harris regime and unhappy memories of these were among the reasons Tory lost. The Conservatives are itching to return to government particularly because they have run Ontario for 50 of the past 64 years and feel they have lost their birthright. The most outspoken advocate of cloning Harris, his former education minister John Snobelen, is claiming Harris gained reputations by reducing government and taxes, and making promises and keeping them, that remain valuable to the party. Snobelen contends Conservatives under Harris’s short-lived successor, premier Ernie Eves, and later Tory could have won elections if they had reminded voters of Harris and his record. He recalls Eves distanced himself from Harris and Tory went out of his way to stress he was not Harris, and neither did anything to explain and defend Harris’s record. Other Conservatives claim many Ontarians still yearn for Harris’s policies of smaller government, lower taxes and less intervention in their lives and Tory has abandoned them by pushing centrist policies difficult to distinguish from Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s and promising to spend as freely as the profligate Liberals and New Democrats. Several former aides to Harris are among those canvassing to start the formal process of replacing Tory at a party meeting in February and clearly looking for a right wing leader Those urging the Conservatives to return to the far right are telling the truth, but not the whole truth. Many idolized Harris for a time, principally because he saved money, planned privatizations and put new curbs on unions But his popularity plummeted because he weakened essential services and got in so many fights he made Mike Tyson look timid, and those who want his policies and style to return do not seem to have noticed this. Eves took note and became a watered down version of Harris by acts including postponing cuts in taxes and services, promising to restore some of Harris’s huge reductions in welfare benefits and starting to talk to unions. Tory went further by not asking Harris to appear for him in the election campaign, but pointedly inviting the moderate former premier William Davis to join him at a couple of rallies. He also had most of the those running under him describing themselves as `John Tory candidates’ rather than Conservatives, clearly because he did not want them thought of as in the same party as Harris. A small rump of Conservatives wanted their party to look more like that of Harris in the campaign, but quickly ran out of steam. McGuinty also recognized Harris’s record had become heavy baggage for the Conservatives and his TV commercials concentrated on warning against bringing back the Harris era until Tory was careless enough to promise to fund private, faith-based schools and this became an even stronger weapon to hammer him with. Nothing much has changed. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has postponed a federal election mainly because his far right policies have failed to whip up enthusiasm in Ontario, where there are many seats. There is no sign of a return internationally to extreme Conservative policies that were in vogue when Harris followed a path set by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The right’s turn will come again, but those who want to bring back Harris’s Common Sense Revolution do not seem to recognize it is out of fashion. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Tories want a return to right Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. 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