HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-01-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1996 PAGE 5.
I moved
to Paradise
I moved to Paradise. After a half century
of slogging through snowdrifts, going mano
a mano with battery cables, block heaters,
windshield scrapers and galloping frostbite, I
fmally, this past summer, threw in the snow
shovel, upped stakes and moved to Paradise.
It's a wee island in the Georgian Strait
nestled between Vancouver Island and the
shivering hulk of upper North America.
(That's all I can tell you. The Island Tribal
Council makes you sign a waiver when you
come ashore promising that you will never,
on pain of expulsion, reveal your exact
whereabouts to The Rest of Canada. That
way we keep Paradise to ourselves).
And it is Paradise. It never (well, hardly
ever) snows here. The daffodils come up in
late February. There's a robin panhandling
on my windowsill even as I type. There are
packs of deer as tame as squirrels lounging
in the orchard just across the road. Sea otters
are doing backflips off my dock.
My new home is Paradise.
But I'm Canadian, eh? So naturally I keep
looking for the fly in the ointment. The
worm in the apple. The small print. The
catch in the contract.
I found it. Or rather my dog Rufus did.
Rufus is learning to walk on three legs.
Canada as seen
by others
Nothing galvanized foreign Attention on
Canada as the thought of it breaking up.
I must confess that while I was in Europe
this fall I read more about our country that I
had in any five years before. Not only were
foreign journalists writing about us; they
were even publishing pictures of the
protagonists in action as the separation
theme was acted out.
Comparisons were being made between
Canada and a recent separation which took
place, that of Czechoslovakia where the
Czechs and Slovaks agreed to disagree as it
were, and in a referendum which took place,
the two parts of the country went their
separate ways.
I'm sure this parallel must have been
pointed out at some time in the Canadian
press but I cannot recall having seen
anything.
For those who may not be aware of the
separation or just dimly aware, let me
refresh your memory. Czechosovakia was
formed out of the ashes of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire and became a separate
state in 1918. Czech and Slovak are
considered to be separate languages;
although they are both Slavic, they are very
similar, somewhat of the same nature as the
Dutch spoken in Holland and the Flemish in
Belgium.
At any rate the capital of the country was
Prague which was located in the Czech part.
That's because the fourth one is employed
like a windmill, scratching his sides, his
belly, behind his ears, under his chin. I took
him to the Island vet, who smiled
knowingly. "Ah," he said. "You've
discovered the island fleas."
My Paradise isn't just for humans. Fleas
love it here too. All those deer wandering
around that I mentioned? Ambulatory flea
hotels. And since the thermometer seldom
dips below freezing, even the fleas that get
momentarily scratched off their hosts don't
freeze and die the way they do in the rest of
the country. They just hunker down and wait
for the next fur-bearing flophouse to walk
bY-
I never really appreciated fleas before I
moved to my soi-disante Paradise. I stayed
up late last night doing some research (in
between applications of flea powder to you-
know-who). I have to admit, fleas are hard to
love, but easy to admire.
We are talking about a critter that weighs
one-millionth of a pound. That is smaller
than a freckle. And yet a flea can pull
160,000 times its own weight and can jump
150 times its own length. If you and I could
do that we'd be deadlifting 24 million
pounds and broadjumping 1,000 feet.
You can kill a flea with your thumbnail
but it's a bit like trying to drain Lake
Superior with shotglass. Fleas are alive and
well. There are some 2,375 species overall
and they live everywhere, including the High
Most of the leaders were of Czech origin
with the sole major exception being
Alexander Dubcek, who attempted to
liberalize the country from its Stalinist
regime and for his results was deposed by
the simple act of the Russian army entering
in 1969 and restoring very tight control.
At any rate, the Slovaks have generally
felt that they were on the short end of the
stick when it came to running the country.
Hence their separatist movement started the
breakdown of the Warsaw Pact nations and
the withdrawal of the Russian forces. A vote
was taken and, while it was not as razor-thin
as was the recent referendum in Canada, it
was enough to permit the Slovaks to form
their own country with the capital at
Bratislava, near the Austrian border.
Separatists in Canada generally ignore the
fact that, after the euphoria in Slovakia wore
off, what remains was not the start of a new
dawn. Slovakia, which was poorer than the
Czech part to begin with, has not
experienced-any real renaissance; the chief
news seems to be the continual struggle
between the president and the prime minister
with a few scandals thrown in for good
measure.
I think a fair number of Slovaks were of
the soft separatist variety and were really
surprised when separation did take place. It
was as if they wanted to call the Czechs'
attention to their plight but not to the extent
of breaking up the country.
At any rate the Czechs were very civilized
about the whole thing and divided up many
of the country's assets in a fair way.
As I write this the president and prime
minister of Slovakia are still at logger-heads
(shades of Parizeau and Bouchard), while
the new Czech Republic seems to be doing
Arctic and Antarctica.
It's just as well that fleas ignore our
attempts to eradicate them. The last time
they took personal offense towards humans
was in the 14th century. The history books
refer to it as the Bubonic Plague. It wiped
out a quarter of Europe's population and it
was caused by fleas that hitchhiked on rats.
Is there an up side to fleas? Well, sorta. As
I said, they can pull 160,000 times their own
weight. This led some enterprising P.T.
Barnum types to design eensy-weensy
wagons, stagecoaches and the like, hitch
them to fleas and sell tickets to people who
wanted to see trained fleas behaving like
draft horses. They called them Flea Circuses
and they were quite popular a century ago.
Unfortunately, fleas can be trained to pull
miniature wagons but they can't be trained to
stay away from domestic pets. Dogs carry
them. Cats carry them. Even squirrels,
canaries and bats carry them.
There are whole arsenals of sprays and
powders and lotions on the market, but as
near as I can make out they're about as
effective as rubbing toad spit on warts.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you've come up
with a fail-safe, sure-fire cure for fleas.
I'd love to hear about it. On behalf of my
dog Rufus. If you have a cure for fleas, tell
me about it. Or tell one of my fellow
islanders. We're easy to recognize.
We're the people with flea collars around
our necks.
quite nicely for a nation that spent so many
years under the Russians' thumb. They don't
have any big brother to help them out as do
the East Germans.
Even the Swiss have had their own little
separatist movement. A few years ago the
French-speaking minority in the north of the
canton of Berne decided that they were hard
done by and wanted no more to do with the
German-speaking majority in the canton.
However, they were Swiss first and French-
speaking second and their idea of separatism
was to form their own canton; at no time was
there any effort whatsoever to join France
although they border on that country.
In true Swiss fashion a vote was duly
taken, the French separated and formed the
new canton of Jura.
Each year that I am in the French-speaking
part of Switzerland which contains cities
such as Geneva, Lausanne and Neuchatel, I
hear grumbling about being run over by the
German Swiss, but there is assuredly no talk
of separatism. They leave that up to the
French speakers in Canada and Belgium.
The Europeans, therefore, are acquainted
with various kinds of separatism but they
still look askance at the separatist movement
in Quebec. They note, for instance, there is
no great support from French speaking
people elsewhere in Canada to support such
a movement, not to mention the fact that
there is little, if -anything, to be gained
economically.
As one of my European colleagues put it,
would the Quebecois rather be independent
and miserable or united as a member of a
country which is consistently rated as top or
close to the top as a place in which to live?
The French, who pride themselves on their
reason, sometimes seem totally bereft of it.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Coming to terms
with winter
I seem to have come to terms with winter
this year.
For the first time in many, many years, I
did, if not welcome the coming of winter,
feel complacently resigned to its arrival. And
even its early attack hasn't diminshed my
renewed interest in its pristine pallor. A
season that transforms the outdoors to such a
state of cleanliness and crispness is difficult
not to admire, albeit grudgingly at times.
This past week I found myself in
situations where I could not help but notice
and be affected by the best of winter. Sunday
afternoon I had the opportunity to take my
annual snowmobile ride. As we travelled
across open fields, with the brisk nip of the
chill wind biting my cheeks, my vision was
assailed with the picturesque perfection of
sunshine sparkling against crystal crispness.
The trail then took us through a grove of
evergreens, whose shrouded branches arched
above us in a mosaic cover of dark and light.
Monday, as the anemic visage of the
previous evening's full moon hung between
layers of shadowy clouds over the opaque
landscape, I was once again struck by the
wondrous variations such simplistic beauty
can give.
And as I looked appreciatively at its
splendour I was reminded as well of how
relentless and cruel winter can be. Though it
has presented its serenity, its calm majesty to
us lately, those of us who live in this area
realize that, as any force of nature, winter
can become ugly and viscious in a matter of
hours. When it rages, we no longer admire it
for its asthetic power, but rather for its
omnipotence.
Winter's formidable strength is not always
visibile either. The most glorious day can be
less than pleasant when experienced from
outside. In respect for the season, most of us
will trade our vanity for common sense,
burying ourselves under layers of wool and
cotton before spending an extended period in
sub-zero temperatures. It's a challenge we
learn to live with or hide from.
Yet, even with the downside, most of us
appreciate the changing of the season, the
wondrous variety that winter brings to a
world where many places see only earth
tones. We may whine about the cold,
complain about the shovelling, but we have
a grudging respect for nature and its
elements that makes it easier to live with it
and in it.
But there are those in this world, for
whom there is no protection from the chill,
for whom the onset of winter is a challenge
of life and death. While I admired the scene
around me I heard on the news the story of a
vagrant who froze to death while sleeping
without proper shelter. To my sense of
wonder at what I was seeing, I added
gratitude that I have the best things in life
and the ability to enjoy them as they are.
Winter epitomizes so much of our reaction
to life, our discomfort over things less than
ideal, rather than being comforted by the
good things.
What's wrong with winter is easy to
uncover, but as it is with most things, there's
nothing we can do about it. Take heart
instead, in the fact that it covers us in what's
nght, purity and beauty, and be happy you
are in a position to do so.
Arthur Black
International Scene
By Raymond Canon