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The Citizen, 2015-01-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2015. PAGE 5. This is an apology to the woman I passed this morning. I saw the alarm in your eyes, how you clutched your purse and veered around me as if you’d stumbled upon a rabid wolverine. You’d noticed that while there was nobody with me, I was chatting away. Crooning, actually. Murmuring creepy Geezer things like “Aren’t you a sweet girl?” and “Oh, what a beauty.” I wasn’t talking to you ma’am. I was talking to my dog. Alarming enough, I suppose. There’s no law against addressing Pomeranians, Persians, palominos or parakeets as if they were salient companions capable of a sage and witty retort, but as human behaviour goes, it is a touch goofy. Guilty as charged. My old girl is 13 and a half, cloudy of eye and stiff of gait but her tail still wags when she sees me and that is reward enough to risk looking ridiculous. All pet owners carry the ridiculous gene – some more openly than others. We give our pets silly names and brag about their ‘human’ qualities. Often the gene doesn’t really kick in until our pet kicks off. Disposing of a pet’s remains can trigger some truly bizarre behaviour. A lucky few get to repose in a shady spot under the backyard apple tree; others occupy an urn on the mantle. Or there’s the Celestis option. Celestis is a Houston enterprise specializing in flights into space. For a mere $995 U.S., Celestis will load your pet’s ashes into a rocket and fire them into eternal orbit around the earth. Too remote for you? Then consider engaging the services of Dutch inventors Bart Jansen and Arjen Beltman. They can transform your taxidermied pet into a radio-controlled drone. Don’t laugh. When their pet cat Orville expired in 1912, they had him stuffed and fitted with wings and a motor. As I write, the Orvillecopter is hovering somewhere over Amsterdam. That’s creepy, even by delusional pet owners’ standards. Much better to spoil your pet when he, she or it is alive. Which must be how the Halversen family of Lillestrom, Norway felt when they decided to take an extended vacation in Thailand. They couldn’t take their bulldog, Igor but they fretted he would feel abandoned, even traumatized. So they hired a carpenter to construct a replica of the family living room and install it at a commercial kennel. The walls of the fake room were painted the same shade of grey. They found a matching coffee table – even installed the family chesterfield – plus of course, Igor’s favourite bed, pillow, blanket and toys. Was Igor fooled? Hard to say. He spent most of his time at the boarding kennel goofing around outside with his new BFF – a Saint Bernard named Helga. The pet/pet owner dynamic is a puzzling one. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out which party got the brains. Arthur Black Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Maintaining balance between home- town pride and impartiality can be a difficult situation for a reporter, even moreso when one’s home municipality seems to be at odds with its neighbour more often than not. Fortunately for me, I usually get to see both sides of the story, an opportunity that isn’t always afforded to many municipal councillors, let alone the ratepayers they represent. During a recent North Huron Township Council meeting, Blyth Ward Councillor Brock Vodden said he felt that relations between his council and Morris-Turnberry Council weren’t being properly represented, as the township has several working agreements with its neighbour. He did not, however, identify where the relationship was being misrepresented. Vodden highlighted the long-standing recreation grant that Morris-Turnberry provides to North Huron to cover the fact that Morris-Turnberry residents use North Huron recreational facilities as proof of their ability to work together. I can, with certainty, say that I agree with Vodden. The relationship between Morris- Turnberry and North Huron is being misrepresented. However, I feel Vodden and his fellow council members are the ones misrepresenting it. That is a tough thing to say because I, for the most part, believe that North Huron Council does a good job. When I attend a negotiation meeting between North Huron and Morris-Turnberry however, the reports that follow at North Huron Council meetings and associated remarks always seem to be quite positive. However, when I read Morris-Turnberry’s reports from those same sessions, I feel they more accurately portray how I felt the meetings went. For example, I need to look no further than the same recreation agreement that Vodden used as evidence that everything is hunky-dory between Morris-Turnberry and North Huron. One of the very first issues that was raised by Morris-Turnberry’s new council was the recreation agreement. Morris-Turnberry Councillor John Smuck suggested that the recreation agreement be terminated. The idea didn’t garner enough support to pass, but it did garner enough support to inspire a lively debate about the issue. Smuck claimed that North Huron was showing favouritism to Central Huron by agreeing to not charge the new gas bar/restaurant at the site of the former Grandview Restaurant (on the southwest corner of County Roads 4 and 25, a property in Central Huron) under the cross-border servicing policy implemented earlier in 2014. This bothered Smuck because Central Huron and North Huron had, in the past, had similar disagreements to those ongoing between North Huron and Morris-Turnberry. The cross-border document outlines some steep fees for people outside of North Huron connecting to North Huron’s infrastructure and could prove to be a detriment to development in neighbouring municipalities. The fees are meant to bring money back into the municipality in lieu of the taxes that North Huron would receive if these developments were in North Huron. Smuck’s line of reasoning, and there is fault in his background information, but not his logic, is that if North Huron is going to issue a pass to Central Huron on this development, why should Morris-Turnberry continue paying into the recreation grant when North Huron won’t budge on servicing developments in Morris-Turnberry? Of course, having sat through (and written about) the Grandview site development, I know that North Huron didn’t display favouritism to Central Huron or the developer. There were already services there and the land wasn’t being completely rezoned, so it wasn’t a new service. That’s one of the benefits of attending both North Huron and Morris-Turnberry meetings: I get to see both sides of the story. I suppose that’s why it frustrates me when someone claims that relations between the two municipalities aren’t being fairly portrayed because, as someone who attends both meetings and who is trained to be impartial, I’m probably one of the few people who has a balanced view of events. Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Vodden probably wasn’t aware of the shaky ground that the current recreation grant is standing on with Morris-Turnberry councillors. He may not have heard or read about the decision or the debate. The problem in my mind with that is that Vodden presented his opinion not as opinion, but as fact. He stated, using the grant as proof, that things were good between North Huron and Morris-Turnberry. Having sat through the meetings, however, I can tell you there isn’t a single Morris- Turnbery meeting that goes by in which some agreement with North Huron isn’t given the third degree because of the past troubles and negotiations. One needs to only look as far as back as late 2014 where Morris-Turnberry summarily dismissed almost every one of North Huron’s requests as far as planning and land development rules concerning the Richard W. LeVan Airport, which is owned by North Huron, but in Morris-Turnberry. Every single one of North Huron’s requests that could have even slightly inconvenienced Morris-Turnberry ratepayers was dismissed due to the typical line of reasoning that if North Huron, which was in the midst of trying to apply the cross-border servicing agreement, wasn’t going to help Morris-Turnberry, why should Morris- Turnberry then help North Huron with these issues? I’m not saying either group is right or wrong in its actions and decisions. I am, however, saying that before people make broad, sweeping comments regarding the stability of relations with neighbouring municipalities, they may want to sit in on a council meeting or three and get the whole picture. Denny Scott Denny’s Den Predict this... People can accuse me of a lot of things. They can say I’m this, or imply that I’m that, but one thing they won’t be able to say after this is that I don’t conduct research for my column. Quite often when I’m writing about this topic or that, I do conduct some research. However, since I’m usually expressing some sort of opinion on a topic I tend to know something about, I don’t have to spend days hidden behind mountains of books, scribbling endless notes to write these 600 words weekly. My inspiration for this came after I got a new cell phone late last year. It’s a Samsung and when you’re sending a text message or writing an e-mail, there’s a predictive text bar that, when you finish a word, offers up what it predicts might very well be your next word. Some are helpful. For instance, if you write the word “thank” it offers up “you”. It’s when I type a name, however, that I have seen behind the curtain of North American life. Two of my best friends, for example, are named Chris and Brett. When I type Brett, my phone expects that my next word might very well be Favre, former NFL quarterback. If I type Chris, the estimation is that I will want to then type Brown, oft-incarcerated woman beater, misogynist and occasional musician. So this was then my quest. To look up some of the most common names in the world today and see who the “most popular” person going by that name is in the world today. So I’ve taken some of the most popular names in the U.S. and Canada, according to Wikipedia, and plugged them into my phone to get an idea of who’s important to the world today – according to the leading authority on such things: my phone. The most popular male name in Canada (most recent statistics are from 2005) is Ethan. My phone’s suggestion then is Allen. Ethan Allen is a furniture store. In both Canada and the U.S., the most popular female name was Emily, to which my phone replies with Dickinson, noted American poet. In both countries, again, the second-most popular female name is Emma. This name is followed by Watson, the British actress who played Hermione in the Harry Potter movies. The second-most popular name in the U.S. is Michael (also my middle name). To this my phone has two responses: notable pop star Michael Jackson and one of basketball’s finest-ever players, Michael Jordan. Another top-10 name is Ryan, which is followed by Reynolds, a Canadian-born actor who has been romantically linked to both Scarlett Johansson and Blake Lively. For these reasons alone, he is already the most accomplished name in this column. Typing in Andrew, it is then suggested that you might want to type Jackson. No doubt there are plenty of conversations regarding this seventh president of the U.S. floating around the text-sphere these days. Keeping with the (once-hopeful) presidential theme, a popular name in Canada, Sarah, yields Palin as a suggested follow-up. She is from Alaska, which might as well be Canada, so that works, I guess. Type in Ashley, you get Ashley Furniture. Maybe the buying and selling of furniture is bigger in the world than it is in my home. I have literally never used any of these suggestions. I’m not sure if that says more about me or about my phone. If I had to guess, the answer would be me (Shawn – which my phone then follows with Michaels, the notable professional wrestler known as The Heartbreak Kid). Other Views Only getting one side of the story The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it. – Arnold Glasow Final Thought We’ve gone goofy for our pets