HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2004-07-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 15, 2004. PAGE 5.
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Come on, this won't hurt a bit
All this fuss about sleeping together. For
physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist
any day.
- Evelyn Waugh
I 'm not a vengeful man, but I wouldn't
mind running into Doctor Goldfarb in a
dark alley some evening - preferably with
a pair of heavy-duty Vice Grips in my mitt.
Goldfarb was my dentist back when I was a
kid. Correction: he was my Yanker.
"Extractionist" is the term I believe he used.
Doctor Goldfarb did not straighten, brace,
bridge, drill or fill his customers' teeth, he just
pulled them out.
It was a dentally-unenlightened era to say
the least, and I came from a relatively large
family living on a relatively small weekly
paycheque. Hence, there was no
mollycoddling of cavities.
Got a toothache? We know how to deal with
that. my lad. Plenty more where that came
from (well, a couple of dozen, anyway). Open
wide. Hold on. There. Keep that wadding in
your mouth until the bleeding stops. Next.
Doctor Goldfarb had the forearms of a
longshoreman and the- compassion of a Nazi.
He instilled in me a mortal fear of reclining
chairs, white coats and anyone operating metal
paraphernalia anywhere close to my mouth.
For a time I couldn't even bear the thought of
my own dinner fork touching (what was left
of) my teeth.
And for about 20 years, I never arrived for a
dental appointment without being snookered to
the eyeballs with valium, painkillers or at least
three and possibly six fingers of Crown
Royal.
I'm okay with dentists now. I go to my
appointments un-self-medicated and clear of
eye. Dentists don't scare me anymore.
0 ntario's Progressive Conservatives
will choose a new leader in September
and they seem about to do something
no party has done in half-a-century.
That is to pick someone, John Tory (whose
name suggests he was destined from birth to
lead a Conservative party) who has never been
elected to any public office.
All parties traditionally have shied from
choosing leaders withOut elected experience,
because they have not passed the test of
showing they can win and perform effectively
in a public arena.
Parties also have insisted almost invariably
on choosing someone who served in the
legislature and demonstrated ability there.
MPPs who play a large part in the selection
also more selfishly want a leader they feel
more comfortable with and can influence.
Ernie Eves, the Tory premier defeated last
October, was not in the legislature when his
party picked him as leader in 2002, but had
been a minister and MPP for 20 years before
quitting briefly for business.
The only leader chosen by an Ontario party
in decades who had not served first in the
legislature was Bob Rae, snapped up by the
New Democrats in 1982. But he had spent four
years in the Commons and demonstrated there
he was-articulate and effective.
A party last picked a leader without
experience at either elected level in 1953.
when the Cooperative -Commonwealth
Federation, the NDP's predecessor, had only
two MPPs, considered -neither suitable for
leader and chose Donald C. MacDonald,who
ran hisf tiny caucus from the gallery until he
won a seat two years later. -
Knowing the overwhelming odds against
them, few without elected experience haVe
But it's not me that's changed; dentistry has.
Consider a Montreal-based business called
Galerie Dental — Canada's first combination
dental clinic and...art gallery.
Galerie Dental is the brainchild of two
Montrealers, Jean Fortin and Marc Raper.
Monsieur Raper is a dental surgeon;
Monsieur Fortin, a general dentist. They've
banded together to take the terror out of
dentistry. Accordingly, you'll find no hard-
backed chairs circling a coffee table piled with
furry-paged, 12-year-old copies of Macleans
and Reader's Digest in the Galerie Dental
waiting room.
Instead there are comfy couches and plump
arm chairs. For diversion there are glossy art
books scattered about and canvases by Quebec
artists hanging on the walls. Soft classical
music oozes froth the sound system. For the
more culturally down-scaled, there's a flat-
screened TV showing movies (but not
Marathon Man).
M. Fortin says the idea was to offer "a
peaceful feeling not like a dentist office, not
institutional."
Why the art work on the walls? "It gives you
another reason to go to the dentist," says one
patient. "You get there early to look at the art.
It's a very, very peaceful place."
And for die-hard dentophobes, a relaxing
treat awaits even after their chair time is up - a
even run for party leader in recent decades.
The only one who came close to winning was
the rousing evangelist preacher-turned-
broadcaster Charles Templeton, who lost for
Liberal opposition leader to establishment
candidate Andrew Thompson in 1964.
Templeton was criticized for not starting at
the bottom, not paying his dues and not having
an elected record on which he could be judged.
But the Liberals continued struggling in
opposition for two more two decades and
some wondered whether they could have
appealed more under Templeton.
Tory has another handicap in that he has
spent almost all his political career in party
back rooms, having been principal secretary to
Conservative premier William Davis in the
1980s and a backroom strategist in federal
election campaigns.
He is even notorious among his peers for a
serious gaffe in one, when he co-chaired prime
minister Kim Campbell's disastrous 1993
campaign in which his party ran a cruel TV
commercial mocking Liberal leader Jean
Chretien's facial twist, caused by palsy, and
was universally dumped on.
Ontario voters have long shown an
unwillingness to elect backroom strategists
and Hugh Segal, another chief aide to Davis:.
Tom Long, who ran and won two elections for
massage administered by a registered
masseuse who also works out of the gallery.
Classical music ... art exhibits...a
massage...Doctor Goldfarb, are you listening?
And then there's HealOzone.
This device is a German invention only now
showing up in select dental clinics across
Canada. You know that part of the dental duet
where the dentist cranks you back in the chair,
fixes that Cyclopean hi-beam full in your face
and fires up that drill that sounds like a falsetto
chain saw?
Well, forget it. With HealOzone you get a
soft silicone cap snugged over your affected
tooth, then a few painless squirts of ozone gas
pumped into it. The gas kills cavity-causing
bacteria after which the tooth is
`remineralized. naturally.
Proponents claim that with HealOzone a
dentist does 75 per cent less drilling. Small
cavities require no anesthetic at all.
Does it cost more? Hey, do bears use
Delsey? Of Course it costs more. But money
has never been the issue with dental work. Pain
avoidance is the point. Take my wallet, wife
and first-born, Doc, just don't hurt me.
Of course there's an inexpensive way to
handle the Dental Experience. My pal Mavis
has no problem with her dentist. When she sits
in the dentist chair she simply relaxes, waits
Ill he tells her to open wide and just as the
dental probe is about to enter her buccal cavity,
she reaches her right hand down, grasps the
dentist in what (in other circumstances) would
be considered an extremely intimate embrace,
• and murmurs.
"Now we're not going to hurt each other, are
we?"
Wish I'd thought of that with Doctor
Goldfarb.
waters
Mike Harris when he was Tory premier;
Liberal Jim Coutts, prime minister Pierre
Trudeau's anointed chief aide and Tory Dalton
Camp, the supreme backroomer, are examples
of insiders who were turned down by fellow-
citizens.
But despite what normally would be
handicaps in having no elected experience and
a record as a backroom manipulator, Tory is
still being described widely as the front-runner
and man to beat.
This is partly because he exhibited some
strengths when he made a first stab at running
for election for Toronto mayor last year and
was defeated, but by an exceptionally
competent candidate with strong roots in
municipal politics.
Tory also has more publicly acceptable
policies nearer the political centre than his
rivals for leader, Jim Flaherty and Frank Klees,
who both were ministers in the far-right Tory
governments of Harris and Eves, as well as an
ability to communicate them.
But his main asset is he was not part of these
Tory governments which cut taxes, weakened
public services and diverted many million of
dollars to the pockets of politicat•friends. This
is one time lack of elected experience is an
advantage.
Final Thought
When you play it too safe, you are taking
the biggest risk of your life ... Time is the
otwealth we are given.
- Barbara Sher
Bike safety lesson
Summertime has always been such a
great time to be a kid. And growing up
in a small town allows freedoms that
those in the city will never know.
However, there are dangers that exist
regardless of whether the lifestyle your
children enjoy is cosmopolitan or rural. And
one of the greatest may possibly be the
children themselves. Youthful exuberance does
not generally allow for caution. Tender years
have yet to experience many harsh realities,
thus there is a sense of invincibility which
often leads to recklessness and carelessness.
This past week, I was cruising down a
highway when far ahead I happened to spy
something on the road. As I drew closer,
however, my view was blocked by an incline in
the road. Cresting the hill I found myself
within yards of three young boys on bicycles,
weaving back and forth across two lanes.
Being forewarned that something was lurking I
had already slowed my speed. They continued
on seemingly unaware of my approach. Never
a glance over a shoulder as they straddled then
crossed the centre line.
So uncertain was I of their next move, that I
was reluctant to pass. My speed had slowed to
a crawl. Then finally a look and one moved to
the shoulder to let me by, while the other two
continued their writhing path up the opposite'
side of the travelled portion of -road, still
apparently oblivious to my presence.
I noted with no small amount of irony that
each in the trio was decked out according to the
rules with a helmut. The sad fact was that had
I not seen them prior to the hill, I doubt the
head gear would have done them any good,
because I couldn't have slowed in time before
reaching them.
Still shaking my head once I was back up to
top speed and on my way again, my thoughts
ran to their parents and what the reaction
would have been if they could know where
their kids were that day and exactly what kind
of bike safety they were practising.
From the early ages children are taught bike
safety by parents, at school and by the OPP.
What you can't teach them, though, is that
sometimes (life) happens. How can someone
so young understand that some people get
away their whole lives taking chances, while
others will get caught the first time. How can
you make someone who knows so little of life
realize that sometimes one mistake is one
mistake too many.
Thinking back, I was never what anyone
would call a risk taker. But I recall a decision
by my cousin and me, around the age of 10, to
walk into town from her farmhouse without a
word to her mother. Out on the highway and
realizing the trek was much longer than we
considered, we innocently accepted a ride from
a stranger. Fortunately, in this case he was a
decent human being. I know now, he could as
easily not have been.
I too recall travelling on a bike down the
centre lane of a highway, often riding double. I
remember crossing the burgeoning dam to take
a shortcut to the park. At a very young age I
Jhiked back into a bush with my cousin (she
seems to have been involved in a lot of my
stupidity). In each of these cases my parents
found out and punishment followed.
I don't doubt for a minute that the same
would be true in the case of these young boys.
And 1 also don't doubt that just might be the
beA bike safety lesson they'd ever get.
The Tories testing new