The Citizen, 2007-05-31, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Any contest to pick the nicest guy in the
Ontario legislature probably would
wind up choosing Ernie Parsons.
Parsons has been Liberal MPP for a riding
centred on Belleville for the last eight years.
He is not much known by the general public.
He got in the news briefly three years ago,
after Sandy, a 25-year-old Aboriginal he
adopted as an infant, died from complications
of fetal alcohol syndrome caused by his
mother’s drinking while pregnant.
Parsons drafted a private member’s bill he
called Sandy’s Law requiring bars, licensed
restaurants and stores selling alcohol to post
signs warning drinking while pregnant can be
dangerous. All three parties passed it quickly,
a rare unanimity.
The engineer and college instructor, with his
wife has adopted four other Native children.
They’ve opened their home to more than 40
foster children, all with special challenges of
some sort, over a period of 20 years, without
making any show of it.
Since a son died, Parsons has driven daily
from his home to the legislature and back, a
total five hours a day, while most MPPs who
live that far away stay in Toronto overnight.
This was a response to another son aged
eight asking “When we go to Heaven, Dad,
will you still have to work? I’m kind of hoping
you don’t, so we can spend a little time
together.”
Parsons said this brought back memories of
fishing with his sons. The family talked it over
and at 60 he has decided not to run again in the
Oct. 10 election.
Parsons has spoken up for Liberal policies,
but is relatively non-partisan. After his son
died, the first person to call him was former
Progressive Conservative premier Ernie Eves,
whose only son died in a car crash.
Parsons said Eves was “very compassionate
and offered to do anything he could do to
help.”
The Liberal backbencher has helped dispel
some of the cynicism that exists often
justifiably about politicians and most people
probably would feel he has contributed more
than his share to public life.
Another Liberal leaving, Richard Patten,
brought excellent credentials, but got little
chance to use them. He had been a relief
worker in famine in Africa and the Gaza Strip,
showing a concern and gaining experience few
others in the legislature could match.
Patten had the success in 1987 of breaking a
New Democrat grip on an Ottawa riding that
had lasted two decades and served briefly as a
minister under premier David Peterson before
the Liberals were defeated.
He would have hoped to be in cabinet when
the Liberals returned to govern under Dalton
McGuinty in 2003, but McGuinty is from an
Ottawa riding and named Ottawa MPPs Jim
Watson, a former mayor, and Madeleine
Meilleur, a francophone woman, as ministers.
This has left no room for Patten and he is
leaving and looking for a post in which he can
“make a worthwhile difference in people’s
lives.”
Patten is remembered also because he had a
severe form of cancer and never missed a day
in the legislature, while many who work
around government take a day off whenever
the sun shines.
Shelley Martel, leaving after 20 years as a
New Democrat MPP, has had a different, more
public career.
She is thought of particularly because as a
minister she warned she had seen the
confidential billings of a doctor who had
criticized the NDP government and he could
be prosecuted, but later said she had lied,
presumably because this seemed a lesser
offence than misusing confidential
information.
But this was an aberration. Martel has been
among the most informed and articulate MPPs
and a tenacious questioner and took a lead role
recently in building inadequate services for
autistic children into a major election issue.
This is not to suggest all MPPs are paragons
of virtue, but many, including some little
known to the public, serve it better than it
sometimes thinks and they will be missed.
On screen, under sky
Here’s a question you’ll never hear
bruited about over lattes down at the
internet café – what’s Gates got to do
to catch a break in this world?
Bill Gates I mean. The geeky Seattle
grillionaire and founder of Microsoft.
I know, I know…the man has undeniably
had a smattering of good fortune come his
way. He is, with $56 billion in his cookie jar,
officially the world’s richest human.
He’s been accorded a slew of honours
including a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth,
a niche in Time magazine’s pantheon of the
100 most influential people of the 20th
century, and enough honorary doctorates and
degrees to paper the walls of his four-level,
eight-bedroom Seattle mansion inside and out.
But that’s official recognition. On the street
and especially among Webheads, Gates is a
swear word.
A cursory browse of the internet will turn up
so many anti-Gates websites, blogs and
crazed, spittle-flecked tirades you’d think they
were talking about someone who strangles
puppies and plants anthrax bombs in old age
homes.
The man is vilified, mocked and derided as
a cruel and ruthless buccaneer who will stop at
nothing to choke off all would-be competitors.
And then there are the Golden Piggy
Awards. Each year for the last decade a gaggle
of doctrinaire Leftoids in Victoria, B.C., have
publicly identified, nominated and satirically
slagged the most egregious land developers,
corporate tycoons, arms merchants and
other large-scale exploiters of the human
condition.
This year, Bill Gates received nominations
in each and every category.
C’mon. Bernie Ebbers, sure. Dennis
Kozlowski, no contest. Enron, Halliburton
and our own Conrad Black -- fair enough – but
Bill Gates?
Why this barrage of hate and invective
focused on one Woody Allenish, mild-
mannered computer nerd from Washington?
“He’s got a finger in a lot of pies,” says A
Piggy Award spokesman cryptically. “He is
the world’s richest man.”
Well, yeah, that’s an indictable offense
alright.
Bill Gates is hardly the General Bullmoose
his detractors make him out to be. He’s been
the leader in bankrolling charities around the
world for some time, focusing on problems
consistently ignored or underfunded by
governments and other organizations.
Problems like AIDS, malaria and education
for the underprivileged.
Since 2000, The Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation has given away $29 billion world-
wide.
That’s a lot of good work for one couple to
spark.
And the fact is, there are other very rich folk
out there who are spreading their wealth
around. Ted Turner personally pledged $1
billion to the United Nations a couple of years
back. The Hollywood music mogul David
Geffen put up $200 million towards the School
of Medicine at UCLA.
The generosity of both was dwarfed by the
largesse of Warren Buffet who last year gave
away an astounding $44 billion – most of it to
the Gates Foundation.
Don’t paint me as an apologist for the super-
rich as a class. Statistics show that the 60 top
American philanthropists donated a total of $7
billion to charity last year.
Impressive – until you do the math and
figure out those 60 donors are worth $584
billion collectively. That means they gave up
not even two per cent of their loot.
Which is to say, chicken feed.
The truth is, most of the ultra-rich are
ruthless, greedy, penny-pinching bastards.
That, as far as I can tell, is exactly how you get
to be ultra-rich.
But some of them, like Buffet, Turner and
Gates – aren’t. Some of them give back, and
they should be respected and honoured for it.
Perhaps the good ones, the generous ones,
do it because they know that whatever their
wealth, they have big shoes to fill.
Andrew Carnegie’s size six wingtips, to be
precise. (He may have been an industrial
giant, but he was less than five feet tall.)
In his day – which is to say the late 19th
century, Carnegie was as Big Dog Capitalist as
they come. By the 1890s the Carnegie Steel
Company wasn’t just number one in steel, it
was the largest and richest industrial enterprise
in the world.
But by the time he died Carnegie had given
nearly 80 per cent of his wealth away. He did
it mostly by building free, public libraries
all over the English-speaking world. He
built them in the U.S. and in Canada, in
Ireland, Australia, even the West Indies and
Fiji.
Who can begin to calculate how much good
one capitalist tycoon did by building those
libraries? Who could count the lives he
transformed?
The folks who mount the annual Golden
Piggy Awards in Victoria justify their pageant
and their vilification of Bill Gates and his like
– by the dictum: “The wrong people are rich.”
They throw a good party, but I wonder how
many libraries they’ve built?
Arthur
Black
MPPs quit before the vote
C an it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
—The Way We Were
Alan Bergman, Marvin Hamlisch
and Marilyn Bergman
Anytime I am reminded of the past, it
certainly seems that life was simpler. All of
today’s technology, which has improved
everything from diagnostics to
communication, hasn’t to my view necessarily
made things easier. It often seems that with
more capability has come more work and
responsibility.
Also, in with the new tends to mean out
with the old. And while no one was sorry to
see the demise of eight track tapes, there were
things that were sad to lose.
Take the drive-in theatre for example. When
I was a teenager there was only one place to be
on a summer weekend. Groups of kids would
squeeze into cars and trucks for the promised
double bills, and on long weekends
particularly, the creepy dusk to dawn thrillers.
Of course, at least two people had to be
snuck in via the trunk, which generally made
for a tight fit after they joined their pals in the
already full vehicle.
There was always extra entertainment in
watching young couples clearly not interested
in what was on the screen. I found it
interesting that the folks at the gates were
careful about not letting underage kids into
restricted movies, when there was hotter action
in the car next to you during a general
admission feature.
For little kids there was the playground and
the wonder of those posts and speakers that
delivered the scratchy audio into your vehicle.
For everyone there was the contrast of
watching a technicolour creation against the
natural perfection of a starry sky.
The promos for the food booth were cheesily
catchy and rightly boasted this was the place
for rich milkshakes and the best dogs in town.
Unfortunately, with the introduction of
videos, people began staying home to watch
movies. As attendance trailed off, the high cost
of maintenance and the limited season made
staying open difficult for a lot of theatre
owners. Where once their majestic screens
rose out of the quiet outlying areas of many a
town, only a handful remain as summer
novelties.
We recently took our grandson to one of
these and it was as magical a time as those in
my past. Attendance was huge and people
arrived early to get a good spot. The
atmosphere was like a tailgate party with
everyone outside visiting, open trunks
exposing open coolers full of refreshments.
Carefree kids ran back and forth from the
playground.
While the old speaker posts remain like
hangers-on reluctant to leave the party, the
music coming from open vehicles was the
same as everyone was tuned to the drive-in’s
radio transmission station.
Though the fellow I cuddled with during the
movie was a little younger than I’m used to,
everything was perfect. Our grandson was so
excited to be seeing a movie he had looked
forward to, but was also so excited about the
whole drive-in experience that it was an
absolute pleasure just to watch him.
It’s not often the present lives up to nostalgia
when we get the chance to revisit the past. But
this time was all I’d hoped for and I’ll
definitely not wait so long to go back. It’s a
long trek to make and a late night, no question.
But, the magic simply makes it worth it.
Other Views Come on, give Bill a break
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
The chief danger in life is that you may take
too many precautions.
– Alfred Adler
Final Thought