The Citizen, 2007-03-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Apush is on to elect more women to the
legislature, but it is a bit of a stretch to
conclude this will make that rowdy
institution kinder and gentler.
Women have shown they can be as tough,
obstructionist and stubborn as men when their
causes, they often worthy, are ignored.
Although fewer, have helped the legislature
win a reputation for being as disorderly as the
Jerry Springer Show.
Women also have won four of the seven
most recent by-elections and now have 26 of
the legislature’s 103 seats, still nowhere near
enough. Parties are promising to run more in
ridings where they have a chance of winning
and saying benefits will include improvement
in MPPs’ behaviour.
They may not have seen women politicians
in action like Economic Development and
Trade Minister Sandra Pupatello, who seems
to be warned almost daily by Speaker Mike
Brown to stop interrupting or be thrown out.
Pupatello made her name as a bare-knuckle
fighter in opposition, when she charged
Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris
was “like Hitler” because he wanted to decide
issues by referenda. Equating someone with
the Nazi dictator is about the most offensive
charge a politician can make.
Pupatello has been thrown out of the
legislature at least twice for interjecting
repeatedly and refusing to stop.
But her heart has often been in the right
place. For example, she refused to stop
hounding Conservatives who defended
allowing bar patrons to see how far they could
toss dwarves on the ground.
New Democrat Marilyn Churley, who quit
to create one of the by-elections, was ejected
once oddly for repeatedly interjecting that
Pupatello, as minister of community and
social services, allowed women to die by
failing to protect them against men stalking
them and later for refusing to withdraw the
charge.
Churley was turfed out a third time for
calling Municipal Affairs Minister John
Gerretsen a liar, a word legislature rules
prohibit as discouraging reasonable debate.
The only woman leader a party has had,
Liberal Lyn McLeod, was turned out twice —
first for calling Harris a liar, because he broke
promises not to cut health care spending and
introduce user fees.
The second time was four days later, when
she rejected a demand she withdraw the
accusation and showed persistence on her way
out, walking across the floor toward the
premier, pointing and warning “Mike, you are
not going to get away with this.”
Elinor Caplan, a former Liberal minister,
called Harris’s health minister, Jim Wilson, a
liar and had to leave. Another time she labeled
Conservative comments on her party “crap.”
Former NDP minister Frances Lankin said
Harris misled the legislature, which the
legislature regards as equivalent to lying, and
similarly got the boot.
Harris’s minister of universities, Dianne
Cunningham, infuriated Liberals by giving
them the finger during an exchange and not
many accepted her explanation she was merely
having difficulty adjusting her glasses.
NDP ministers often were belligerent when
that party held government. Lankin jeered a
Conservative questioning her about drug
policies must be on drugs himself. Churley,
when minister of consumer and commercial
relations, told an opponent “just shut up.”
Evelyn Gigantes as a minister told a
Conservative who wanted to keep open an
Alzheimer’s clinic he should pay for it himself
and in opposition was ejected for calling
Liberal attorney general Ian Scott a liar.
The first woman MPP thrown out was
Liberal Sheila Copps in 1984. She accused the
NDP of having unionists tape-record talks
with her party to use against it and mislead by
denying it.
Conservative Bette Stephenson, who went
on to become the first woman deputy premier,
once said a questioner seemed to be paranoid
and should see a psychiatrist.
There are many good reasons for electing
more women to the legislature, including
equity because they form half the population
and special insights they can bring. But they
are not going to turn it into a sedate ladies’
sewing circle.
Surreal it’s scary
Ivan Hogarth was the town bully where I
grew up. A vicious little bugger built like a
fire hydrant and with the personality of a
pit bull with a toothache.
Tough, too. He cornered each of us,
including some kids three or four years his
senior and thumped us out at one time or
another.
I was no match for Ivan and I knew it. I
stayed away from the street he lived on and
the corner of the schoolyard he considered
his kingdom. If I saw him coming I
dropped whatever I was doing and ran like a
gazelle.
Except for one day a year. There was always
at least one day each winter when I went
looking for Ivan. It would be right after a fresh
snowfall and the temperature would be cold –
cold enough to make the snow crunch under
my feet with every step.
That’s when I went after Ivan like a
peregrine falcon power diving on a partridge.
If I was lucky enough to find him, I’d go right
up to him and say, “Hey, Hogarth! Check this
out!”
And I would execute a crisp tarantella,
stomping my snow boots like a Gypsy dancer
on methedrine.
And Ivan Hogarth would clutch his ears, fall
to the ground and writhe. He couldn’t stand
the sound of crunching snow. It disabled
him.
That was Ivan’s least favourite sound –
which automatically made it one of my
favourites.
What about you? What sound drives you
batty?
For many folks it’s some variation of a
scraping noise, the classic being fingernails
dragged across a blackboard. Even Aristotle
grumbled about “the aversive quality” of
certain objects scraping against each other.
Other ‘aural-sensitives’ complain about the
sound of cats in heat or wailing babies, neither
of which will ever be confused with a Mozart
sonata.
My partner claims that ‘loud snoring’ is the
most repulsive sound for her. (Which frankly,
makes me somewhat suspicious. Where is she
getting this stuff? I know that I certainly don’t
snore….)
But that’s her acoustical hang-up. The truth
is, there’s not a lot of agreement on what is the
worst sound in the world.
And if there’s one sound that investigator
Trevor Cox can’t stand, it’s the sound of
silence. Professor Cox is a professor
of engineering at Salford University in
England. Last year, he made it his mission to
identify, isolate and make public the all-time,
no-question-about-it very worst noise a human
can hear.
He embarked on a year-long, on-line study
that consisted pretty much of just one
question:
What sound bugs you the most?
Professor Cox offered a short list of 34
hideous sounds to choose from. More than one
million people responded.
Surprisingly, nails on a blackboard didn’t
even place in the top 10. It came in 16th, just
before the sound of a polystyrene coffee cup
being scrunched.
Other major revolting sounds: the whine of a
dentist’s drill, the inanity of cellphone
ringtones and microphone feedback. Hello?
Can you hear me? Is this thing on?
SCREEEEEEAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK.
Oh. Sorry.
And the number one worst sound? The one
noise most people identify as uniquely
unbearable?
A person vomiting.
Pretty gross alright, but I wouldn’t call it the
worst sound in the world. Still, one person’s
caterwaul is another person’s music of the
spheres.
Samuel Johnson, the world’s most famous
lexicographer and one of the grumpiest men
ever to voice an opinion, once sat through a
harpsichord solo performed by a noted artist.
When she had finished and Johnson had said
nothing, the harpsichordist enquired daintily
as to whether Mister Johnson was ‘fond of
music’.
“No, Madame,” groused the curmudgeon,
“but of all noises I think music is the least
disagreeable.”
The worst sound for me? It’s a hard choice.
Nails on a blackboard don’t bother me.
Crying babies can be somewhat annoying, but
not what I’d call excruciating.
I think the sound that most gets to me is
some nasally-challenged stranger sniffing
continuously. I usually get one of them behind
me in the theatre or next to me in the waiting
room. I can’t count the number of times I’ve
entertained fantasies of violent homicide when
a couple of Kleenexes would have solved the
problem.
Yeah. That’s my number one least favourite
sound: a sniffler.
But snow crunching underfoot? Ah. That’s
still music to my ears.
Arthur
Black
Women MPPs can be tough
It’s an odd place, a maze of hallways and
dimly-lit rooms, where intimidating
silence is punctuated by moments of high-
adrenaline energy. Hushed voices float across
the stillness as people strive to pretend a
semblence of normalcy exists in a place that,
while real, is anything but normal.
There are few among us ordinary folk
comfortable in the surrealistic atmosphere of a
hospital. Walking in the door, you are plunged
into a world where illness and unhappiness are
the prevailing conditions.
I received a call last week that my father had
been hospitalized. The strong man whose
shoulders I rode as a youngster, who hurt
worse than I did when he needed to discipline
me, who took care of things, now, for a while
at least, needs someone to look after him.
It’s a tough dose of reality for any ‘child’.
No matter what your age it’s frightening to
hear your parent has been taken ill, and truly
surreal to see them that way. There’s no other
word for it.
But, I soon realized it’s also about that initial
impression; once you are there for a time you
begin to assimilate yourself with the change
and feel less like this is someone else’s life
you’re living.
The unsettling feeling for me could perhaps
as well have come from inexposure. I’m
blessedly not used to hospitals. (And yes, I am
soundly touching wood with that statement.) I
remarked to Dad, who by the way had his first
hospital stay in his 80 plus years this past
November, that it had been a long time since
I’d been there. Twenty-four years to be exact
— other than the occasional emergency room
stop or simple day surgery.
In those days I suppose I was a bit of a
frequent guest on the maternity ward, where
patients were pampered and indulged. Were it
not for some mild discomfort and a few less
than dignified treatments, it could have been a
relaxing retreat, highlighted by nightly back
rubs. Nurses were almost as plentiful on the
floor as visitors.
Such is not the case anymore. Today’s
hospitals may be the same surreal world
they’ve always been; people still suffer as
patients and as uncomfortable, concerned
visitors; but the level of care has altered
drastically.
The nurses I spoke with during my first visit
with Dad were kind, understanding and
helpful. They took the time to explain
everything they could about his condition. But
their presence was not prevalent and time was
clearly at a premium.
There are just not enough of them to do the
job anymore. A nursing acquaintance recently
told me that she has had to admit patients into
empty beds in areas that no one had been
available to staff. This can only get worse.
Looking ahead to our aging babyboomers
and considering that a nursing shortage
already exists, and is projected to get worse as
fewer young people are entering the field, is
the frightening future we face. Remember too
that among those boomers are nurses, who will
be retiring in droves over the course of the next
few years.
Good health doesn’t last forever, not for any
of us. There’s a large part of the population
who will be in need of care in years to come
and fewer to provide it. The reality is that there
are not enough doctors, nurses or retirement or
nursing home beds for the boomers. And
government seems to be ignoring it.
That’s ‘surreal.’ It’s scary.
Other Views That’s still music to my ears
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Learn to get in touch with the silence
within yourself, and know that everything
in this life has purpose. There are no
mistakes, no coincidences, all events are
blessings given to us to learn from.
– Elisabeth KuBler-Ross
Final Thought