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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-01-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2007. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Aformer highly partisan politician is finishing a decade as Ontario’s top judge in which it can be said with relief he often gave the back of his hand to his old party. Roy McMurtry was named chief justice, a post supposed to be politically neutral for obvious reasons, after being a high-profile Progressive Conservative attorney general, often scathing of political opponents. He is retiring at 75 and it cannot be said in his second career he favored his former party and some will even grumble he turned into a bleeding heart social activist. McMurtry had been a hard-nosed Tory and even owed his party. He was a close friend of premier William Davis, dating from their playing football together in university. Davis in the early 1970s found McMurtry a riding to run in which the Conservatives had held for four decades, but he lost, and next election the premier forced a well-liked back- bencher, Len Reilly, out of an even safer seat, so McMurtry could run there and win. Davis put McMurtry in the cabinet before he even sat in the legislature, which is rare, and he quickly proved a good talker on popular topics such as curbing drinking and driving and violence in hockey. He became a regular on chat shows on radio and TV and with his Irish background was compared to president John F. Kennedy and nicknamed “Roy McHeadline,” because he avidly sought publicity. McMurtry was a strong advocate of law and order and supporter of police, although under public pressure he created a civilian agency to investigate complaints against the latter. He was the second most influential politician in the province because of his closeness to Davis and would have had a chance of succeeding him as premier if he had not waited out of respect until long after others had organized for the race. When he lost, being a good party man served him well, because Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney made him high commissioner to Britain. Later, a friendship he formed when working on Constitutional reform with Jean Chrétien led the Liberal prime minister to appoint him chief justice. Others helped him get this top post, but McMurtry has been his own man in it. He warned several times governments including those of Conservative premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves were not providing enough funds to ensure speedy and therefore fair trials. McMurtry went further in several speeches in which he urged governments to work together to find new ways to prevent young people sliding into criminal lives. All crime cannot be blamed on poverty, he said, but poverty, lack of adequate housing and jobs clearly are a breeding ground for criminal activity. McMurtry said courts every day expose tragedies involving young people who have been drawn or risk being drawn into crime because of the environments they grow up in. McMurtry also said racism is partly to blame for some of today’s crime, particularly in Toronto, where many young blacks have been involved in crime. He said successive governments have ignored racism “and this is what we have inherited as a result” and the “dehumanizing effect of slum living” is to blame for gang- related crime. This is not what some Conservatives want to hear – they would much prefer to get more police on the streets. McMurtry mentioned as a father of six he has seen `individual struggles’on the issue that involved some of his own children, which gets across that no-one is immune. He also chaired an Ontario Court of Appeal panel that made the historic ruling same-sex couples have the right to marry, because denying them would be unlawful discrimination under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which toppled barriers and produced Canada’s first legally binding same- sex marriages. His former party’s last stand on the issue had been Harris’s comment “marriage is me, my wife and our kids,” so McMurtry definitely has not been looking after his own. Confessions of a neatnik They will come for you when you are at your most vulnerable – in your bed, in the dark, fast asleep. Usually an hour or two before dawn. Burglar alarms and motion detectors are useless. Locked doors are a joke. You will not hear floorboards creak or curtains rustle. Even the lightest sleeper will not feel the mattress sag or the bedclothes move as they slip in beside you, seeking your warm and naked flesh. And then, and then… Why, they’ll suck your blood, of course. That’s what the redcoats do. Sucking blood is the very, well, life blood of redcoats – or of Cimer lectularius, to give them their proper moniker. Our great-grandparents named them redcoats because the brownish uniform they customarily wear tends to turn reddish after they’ve done their bloody business. We’re talking about bedbugs here. Nasty little critters half the size of your little fingernail and skinnier than a side view of your Visa card. Bedbugs are equal opportunity terrorists and they’ve been with us forever. The lowliest vassal that toiled to build the Pyramids knew the bedbug’s bite. So did Cleopatra. And they’re everywhere. You’ll find them in Tokyo and Toronto; in flophouses and in Five Star hotels. And New York? Bedbugs have taken a big bite out of the Big Apple. Last year the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development fielded 4,638 calls about bedbugs. Four years earlier they handled exactly two complaints. So, is New York facing a bedbug epidemic? Not exactly. Upon investigation, New York City officials determined that 75 per cent of the calls were false alarms. People thought they had bedbugs. What they had in their beds were lint balls, tobacco grains, various deposits of unidentifiable debris, and….you don’t want to know. What New Yorkers seem to have is a mild case of mass ‘delusional parasitosis’. It’s a medically recognized psychosis in which the sufferer believes his or her body and/or home is riddled with parasites of one kind or another. Which is not to say that Gotham is being overrun by hysterical psychotics, but…it’s pointed in that direction. Indeed, it’s beginning to look like a global stampede. In the past couple of years Japanese consumers have shown an obsessive concern not with bedbugs but with even smaller interlopers and hitchhikers – germs. In Japan anti-bacterial wipes and sterilizing compounds are selling like Brad Pitt centerfolds at a Curves convention. Toilets in Japan, public and private, increasingly come with ‘bottom-cleaning sprays’ that hose down the user’s nether regions whether he or she likes it or not. Fastest selling commode in The Land of the Rising Sun? The ‘touchless toilet’. You trip a light beam as you walk into a stall and the seat, already sprayed with a sterilizing mist, flies up automatically. When you’re done you don’t even have to hazard hand contact with the flush handle; the touchless toilet flushes as soon as you stand up. Such a sea change in public etiquette doesn’t come cheap. Japanese hotel owners have had to fork out a Mount Fuji of dough in maintenance costs because it now takes 40 minutes to clean a hotel room where it used to take 15. Thanks to the new hygiene hysteria, every vestige of former occupants of the room must be removed – right down to stray hairs and even fingerprints. Germophobia lives in Canada, too. It’s no longer remarkable to see commuters at airports and train stations wearing surgical masks as they go about their business. I know a stockbroker in Vancouver who refuses to shake hands out of fear of picking up germs. Last time I took the subway in Toronto I watched a passenger pull out her personal subway strap which she slapped around the overhead bar. I saw an ad yesterday offering “personal air purifiers” that supposedly intercept allergens and pollutants by emitting healthy negative ions. It goes around your neck like a necklace. “Wear it anywhere,” carols the catalogue, “Airplanes, trains, elevators, subways and office.” Sure. Right next to my neck placard that reads: DON’T STARE. I’M PARANOID. It’s a wonder I’m not. When I was a little kid, my Old Man used to send me to bed each night with the same creepy mantra. I can hear him now, bellowing up the stairwell: “Nighty-night! Sleep tight! Don’t let the bedbugs bite!” If that didn’t make me paranoid, nothing will. Mind you, I do have insomnia. Usually an hour or two before dawn… Arthur Black Politician has changed his spots They’re all special, of course, but one of the presents at the Gropp household this past Christmas was abundantly welcomed. It was that rare mix of utilitarian and indulgence. Add to this the fact it tidied up an area that had become a bone of contention in my life and folks, we had a winner. The problem here resulted strangely enough with music. My husband and I enjoy a variety of genres and love to fill the quiet air around us with melody. Silence may be golden, but music enriches life. And in our case, filled a corner of our den with a colossal collection of CDs. So finally, after talking about it for ages, we had a unit created to match our bookcase. Aesthetically it has pleased me. The fact that since its arrival my husband has felt compelled to single-handedly fill it, I’m less thrilled about. With oodles of CDs and counting, and let’s not forget many, many albums kicking around too, I fear that music will soon be filling more than the air around me. And filling any space around me is not a good thing. I am seriously disturbed by clutter. I am happiest when my home at a glance looks unlived in. In my perfect world, I would have a house full of family, all of whom are only content in touching nothing and picking up after themselves. This penchant for tidiness has nothing to do with housecleaning, understand. I am not by any stretch bragging that my home is an antiseptic environment. I have missed dust in corners, I don’t always get to cleaning the fridge and stove when I should. Closets and cupboards may get overlooked. No, I’m actually confessing to a compulsion here. I’m obsessive about neatness. A wrinkle in the bedspread will unsettle me. Things that are out of place annoy me. And too much clutter anywhere can send me into a panic. When I cook or bake, there is a sink full of water so that I can clean the dishes as I go. This fanaticism even extends to a computer desktop. If I find myself in front of a screen (obviously someone else’s) covered in folders I am momentarily uneasy. And if I open one and find it chaotic I really have to take a moment to get my bearings. I’m not sure when it started, but I may have to blame Mom. My earliest recollections are of a house that never had anything out of place and of strict orders that my bed be made and my clothes put away. Or maybe it’s because I’m a Libra, who loves order and balance in my life. Either way, I know that my need for neatness may be seen by some as a little too much. But it doesn’t hurt anyone else and as it doesn’t affect life as I know it, so in my book, it’s not exactly a bad thing either. Being neat helps me be organized. And it’s actually fooled a lot of people into thinking I’m a good housekeeper. Besides if we are honest, most of us would admit to some obsession. I know a woman who could care less if she has to wade through junk to get around her apartment, but the fringe on the rug had better be straight. I know another whose clothes hangars must be placed evenly across the bar in her closet. Me? I just want a place for everything and everything in its place. And now my CDs are in it — filed by genre and alphabetically, of course. Other Views The redcoats are coming Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.