HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1995-04-05, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1995. PAGE 5.
1994 a weird year
There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet
Let's see now...there was O.J. Simpson,
who the entire judicial system of America is
pretending may not be a murderer.
There was Roseanne Arnold, who told
reporters she (and her husband) had married
their secretary, then divorced (and sued) her
husband, then married her bodyguard.
There was the the Canadian Federal
Progressive Conservative Party, which,
thanks to the deft management of one B.
Mulroney (remember him?) metamorphosed
from the most powerful political institution
in the country to a backwater rump clique
not quite as powerful as the Flat Earth
Society.
There was the Cod Moratorium, in which
Newfoundlanders, who've been fishing for
cod since the time of Shakespeare, were
prohibited, by law, from fishing for cod.
Yeah, I'd say 1994 was a pretty weird
year, wouldn't you?
Well, you might say so, and I might
say...but Bob Rickard would disagree.
Mister Rickard is the editor of a very
strange magazine called The Fortean Times,
published in Britain. The Fortean Times
Stefan comes
to Canada
The Canon family has recently said good-
by to Stefan Sonderegger, a young Swiss
boy in his early 20s, who spent much of
1994 with us for the purpose of improving
his English to the point where he would be
fluent enough to use it in his proposed line
of work.
That he was with us was something of a
surprise and yet it wasn't. While we have
guests from Switzerland drop in from time to
time, we had never considered taking
anybody for any length of time.
That is until the day his father phoned and
said that the family's plans to have Stefan
live in the United States had fallen through
and was there any good school in London
that he could attend. It was not the father's
plan to see if we would take him in; it was
simply that he would be happier if Stefan
were in a city where he knew somebody and
I had, after all, known Stefan all his life. His
father and I share the same Swiss university
as our alma matter and we had, for some
reason, remained friends down through the
years.
I assured him that London was a good
place as far as schools were concerned.
There was a university, a college and any
number of day and evening courses that one
could attend. I said that I would phone back
in a couple of days and make a number of
suggestions.
Before the two days were up, the Canon
family had a conference and it was decided
that the best thing would be for Stefan to live
with my sister while he was here. She had a
spare bedroom, was a widow and had plenty
of time to help him in any number of ways.
She only lived about five minutes walk from
devotes itself to measuring weirdness,
worldwide, and it says 1994 was slightly
substandard, weirdwise.
Specifically, about two per cent less weird
than 1993.
How so they figure? Well, each year, the
folks at Fortean Times assess 34 different
categories of what they call Weird
Happenings. According to their calibrations,
1994 saw a marked decline in the number of
â well, for example, paranormal experiences,
crop circles, mass deaths and water
monsters.
Which is not to say that 1994 was a Brady
Bunch, Norman Rockwell, Preston Manning
kind of year. Heck no. The Fortean Times
notes significant increases in Alien Big Cat
sightings, for one thing.
The Alien Big Cat syndrome is something
that's been getting headlines in Britain for
the past few months. Felines much bigger
than your average household tabby have
been spotted in some of the wilder areas of
Great Britain. Such an occurrence in British
Columbia wouldn't rate a yawn, but Britain
doesn't have native lynxes or bobcats, much
less mountain lions.
Or so everyone thought, until people
started seeing big cats out on the moors.
Other, even odder phenomena made the
Fortean Times Strangeness Index. It notes
that thousands of small fish were found
flapping about on parking lots and roads in
the Australian desert outback on Feb. 22 last
year.
Strange? A little. What's even stranger is
us and, as we are a closely knit- family, our
sons, my sister and my wife and I are
constantly visiting back and forth.
When I called back, the father first of all
thought that it might be an imposition, but
we assured him that it would not be at all.
My sister would be delighted to have some
company besides the cats.
Finally, an agreement was reached and we
looked forward to the day when we would
pick Stefan up at the Toronto airport. The
only person that he would speak German
with would be me and that only for the first
month. After that, it would be used only in a
case of necessity, so to speak.
Stefan had never been to Canada before so
what was his first impression of the country.
It was the sheer size! He couldn't believe
how far he still had to fly to get to Toronto
after he entered Canadian air space.
Once he got on the road, he was equally
surprised how far apart the towns and
villages were; in Switzerland you do not
have to travel very far at all before you are
in the next locality. He never did quite get
over the large spaces, nor, for that matter,
the fact that Toronto was so much bigger
than any Swiss city.
He also thought that Canadians were
rather reserved, that is, until I reminded him
that Swiss Germans do not exactly run out
the keys to the city when a stranger arrives.
It took a while for him to make friends but it
wasn't so bad, he admitted, since he was not
exactly alone in a foreign country. We also
pointed out to him that, as in Switzerland,
you have to work at becoming friends with
someone.
He was surprised how much cheaper such
things as food and clothing were in Canada
than in Switzerland. He added real estate to
this list when he learned the price of housing
in London.
It should be admitted that the exchange
rate was helping him a bit, but he realized
that this is the fourth reported "fishfall" in
the area over the past six years.
What other events of 1994 does The
Fortean Times deem newsworthy? Well,
there's that Holstein cow in Uganda that
disarmed a government soldier. And the
Mexican chef who was assassinated by
spaghetti. (He was firing up the stove to boil
the noodles when a freak gale-force wind
whipped the uncooked strands into his chest,
killing him on the spot).
And there is Canada's own contribution to
Weird Highlights of 1994. The Fortean
Times calls it Holy Spirit Fever. Victims (or
lucky recipients) of the fever burst into
joyful tears, roar like lions or simply begin
laughing uncontrollably.
The Fever seems to have its origins in a
tiny church near Lester B. Pearson airport on
the outskirts of Toronto. People come from
all around the world to take part in what has
come to be called the Toronto Blessing.
Whatever it is, it's contagious. The
Fortean Times has documented outbreaks of
Holy Spirit Fever in Africa, India, South,
America and China.
Personally, I'm delighted that the folks at
The Fortean Times are taking the trouble.to
document the odd goings-on going on.
I can't wait until they break a truly bizarre
story like â oh, I don't know - aliens in
charge of photo radar vans maybe, or Elvis
working at a Harvey's in Lunenburg.
Or a politician, who actually keeps his
prom
Nah. That would be too weird.
that, even if you adjusted this rate to get
purchasing power parity, the above
mentioned things were pretty cheap.
Other things that he noticed were the
larger number of house pets here, far more
shopping malls and longer store hours, less
reliance on trains for transportation and the
large number of ethnic groups. The phone
book looked like a roll call for the United
Nations.
We took him off to .ebrate the Swiss
national holiday at th Menzi farm near
Brussels. I don't think he quite knew what to
expect but he had a good time. He did
express surprise that so much English was
spoken there; I explained that some Swiss
had married Canadians and this might
account for some of the preference for
English over Swiss German. The only
French he heard was my son and I talking to
each other.
By the time he had to return, he had
become a full fledged member of the Canon
family. We discovered that his birthday co-
incided with that of my mother-in-law and
so one of our last celebrations was to have a
birthday party for an 87-year-old and a 22-
year-old, twin birthday cakes and
everything.
Then it was time to leave. He has vowed
to come back, perhaps even to immigrate,
which says as much as anything about his
s ay here. We really enjoyed having him.
GOT A BEEF?
Write a
letter to
the editor
The
Short
of âşt
By Bonnie Gropp
My educated assessment
When you think about it school is never
really out.
Only the arrogant would nit acknowledge
that the process of learning is a life-long one.
While formal education may end when we
leave school, we are constantly, throughout
our time on this earth, presented with new
and often interesting lessons to challenge us.
Sometimes education comes easily. Usually
it tests us to the limit. Frequently it bests us.
Unquestionably, however, the way to
understanding is to keep trying, keep
learning and do our best to become
informed.
Reaching life's summit and easing down,
has for my husband, meant a return to the
halls of academia. After 20 years in a
profession that he went through day to day
almost by rote, he now finds himself
confronted by unfamiliar concepts. He has
suddenly found himself in the position once
again of gathering relevant facts, storing
them and later reviewing them to get the
right answers when called upon.
Being educated about specifics is what
keeps us from making mistakes, bad
judgement-calls or uninformed decisions. To
be enlightened you should have as complete
a knowledge and understanding of the facts
as you can achieve, which is why we study
details closely.
But is there a limit to the amount of fact
we need to be exposed to? How much
beyond the basics is necessary to grasp the
fundamentals of a subject?
In a court of law, jurors, judges and the
public, are given evidence on which to base
their belief or disbelief of innocence. In a
e of such magnitude, it is only
re ble that they be provided with
e o ,..gh essentials so that the verdict is
cached through an accumulation of facts.
Also, I think we'd all agree that in
courtroom melodrama there is so much grey
fabrication that it necessitates the production
of as much black and white material as
possible.
But, how descriptive must this be? Though
a picture paints a thousand words, can
eloquence not be just as effective?
When court convenes on Wednesday for
the Paul Bernardo case, it is possible that an
affidavit will be filed on behalf of the
families of murdered teens Kristen French
and Leslie Mahaffy by American professor
and anti-pornography crusader Catherine
MacKinnon. Her point is to argue the
question of whether the public should be
allowed to see videotapes, made presumably
by Bernardo.
While I do see a few potholes in the
feminist trail MacKinnon has blazed over
the years (in 1977 she teamed with radical
feminist author Andrea Dworkin, who once
suggested that any heterosexual intercourse
is the equivalent of rape) her fight on this
issue seems to me to be reasonable.
I believe that a decision should not be
reached until all the evidence has been
presented. I believe we all want to see justice
done in this case. I believe there is no doubt
of the impact these tapes would have on the
jurors in helping them reach a verdict,
though personally I question whether they
need that much education.
However, I can not imagine any earthly
value in public viewing of these tapes
beyond satsifying morbid and perverse
curiosity. Though I admit I will follow the
news reports of the trial, I don't need much
more information to make my educated
assessment â it was a disgusting crime
committed against beautiful innocents. I
don't think I need to see how.
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