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The Citizen, 2005-05-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2005. PAGE 5. Other Views The genetic genius of the French A relatively small and eternally quarrelsome country, fountainhead of rationalist political manias, militarily impotent, historically inglorious during the past century, democratically bankrupt. Communist-infiltrated from top to bottom. - William F. Buckley France: where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper. - Billy Wilder Harsh words, indeed, for La Republique Glorieuse, but the French have a genetic genius for ticking people off. Especially Americans such as the patriotic duo quoted above. Yankees and Frenchmen have had passionate hate-ons for each other for most of the past 200 years. As I write, there are three books in American bookstores that are cashing in on the spleen. Their titles are: Vile France: Fear. Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese; The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can't Stand Us and Why the Feeling Is Mutual and Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France. Americans, thanks to France’s refusal to support the war in Iraq, are currently reaching a crescendo of anti-Gallic sentiment (on Capitol Hill, French fries have been defiantly renamed Freedom Fries; senators are tucking into Freedom Toast and French’s Mustard is no longer available) but for the French in France it’s pretty much business as usual - they’ve pretty much hated the U.S. of A. from the get-go. Back in the 17th century, French naturalists dismissed all of North America as “small, wet and poisonous”, insisting that all flora and fauna from The New World was inherently Politicians can fall a long way Politicians can fall a long way and Ontarians have been given two reminders of it. Michael Davison, 54. who was a New Democrat MPP in Hamilton from 1975-81, pleaded guilty to harassing a 16-year-old girl and a court gave him a conditional discharge and probation. Davison’s father, Norm, earlier represented the same riding for 16 years and was what is called a good constituency man, a euphemism for being able to win his seat but not contributing much to debates. The son was ultra aggressive and the patrician Progressive Conservative treasurer, Darcy McKeough, called him a guttersnipe, a term Winston Churchill applied to enemies but not heard much in Ontario politics. Davison also was popular enough to defeat Sheila Copps, although she came back to beat him before she rose to the giddy heights of deputy prime minister. Davison bounced back on to Hamilton city council, where he was a strong voice, and became a political columnist for that city’s major newspaper and TV commentator. He had been a factory worker and wrote literately and interestingly enough to make a professional journalist envious - clearly a talented guy But he drank heavily, separated from his wife and wound up telling the teenage girl he would like to see her breasts and train her as a dominatrix, selling sadomasochism. The girl was disgusted and depressed and suffered nightmares. Davison at one low point could not even get anyone to put up bail. The judge said he once was a pillar of the community, but stress and alcohol helped turn his life into a major tragedy. Arthur Black pallid and undernourished (Moose? Orca? Redwoods?) The French were also convinced that any two-legged denizens foolish enough to inhabit North America were doomed to eternal last place in the Homo Sapiens sweepstakes. When a team of U.S. athletes unexpectedly trounced the French at rugby in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, a mob of incensed patriots tried to lynch the winning team. As for American intellect - what’s that? The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre dismissed the entire American populace as ‘rabid animals’ and resolutely refused to cross the Atlantic in his lifetime. The famously near-sighted writer suggested, myopically enough, that the solution was for France to “break all ties that bind us to America”. But France did not reserve all its disdain for the U.S. It flipped the bird to Great Britain and to Canada — to any nation, in fact, that did not have the supreme good fortune to be, well, France. General Charles de Gaulle, the hulking giant with a nose like a bridge parapet, was the personification of French arrogance and pride. v (“When I want to know what France thinks” he said, “I ask myself”). His meddling and mischievousness on the world stage knew no bounds. On a state visit to Canada during our centennial year de Eric Dowel From Queen's Park Around the same time, John Brown, also a former NDP MPP, who represented a Toronto riding from 1967-71, died. An MPP from each party paid tribute in the legislature, a tradition when former members die. MPPs often praise predecessors who left before them and whom they never knew. No current MPP was elected before 1977. MPPs also say only good things about members who die, although one mentioned briefly Brown “found himself in troubles in his later life.” Brown in fact was sentenced to the longest jail term given a former MPP in memory, three years for fraud. He had been a bright hope for the NDP, an innovative social worker successful in treating emotionally disturbed youth in group homes he directed and later owned. But he diverted nearly $1 million the province provided to maintain his treatment practice into lavish living, including flying his own plane, and particularly expanding homes outside Ontario that failed. These two were NDP MPPs, but it should not be assumed New Democrats have had a monopoly on getting in trouble with the law over the years. Far from it. Will Ferguson, an NDP minister under Bob Rae, was jailed for punching his estranged Gaulle stood on the balcony of Montreal’s city hall and cooed “Vive Le Quebec libre” into the microphones, inciting Quebecois separatists into a frenzy. He was no less subversive in British affairs. After the Germans overran France and installed the puppet Vichy government in the early ’40s, the British offered asylum to de Gaulle. He repaid the Brits with characteristic hauteur, quarreling and upstaging his hosts at every opportunity. “When I am right, I get angry,” he explained in an interview. “When Churchill is wrong, he gets angry. So we were often very angry with each other.” The French are masters of linguistic subtlety and pride themselves on their sly wit and withering ripostes, but every once in a while they get well and truly skewered by the very foreigners they disdain. Reflecting on France’s less-than-dazzling World War II military performance and rapid, even enthusiastic, capitulation to the Germans, the English playwright Noel Coward acidly observed: “There’s always something Vichy about the French”. And in 1966, when then-President de Gaulle yanked France out of NATO and told U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk that all U.S. troops were to be immediately evacuated off French soil. Rusk reported back to President Lyndon Johnson. “Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean,” said President Johnson. And Rusk went back to de Gaulle and inquired sweetly if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil included the 60,000 American soldiers who were buried in France as a result of two World Wars. President de Gaulle left the meeting without answering. wife after drinking and Ted Bounsall, an earlier NDP MPP, was found guilty of theft after he left a store with a $7 bottle of vitamins he said he forgot to pay for. Bounsall also was among the most worthwhile backbenchers and his contributions included bringing in the first private member’s bill requiring equal pay for work of equal value (now called pay equity.) But among Tories, ex-MPP Alan Eagleson, who became a hockey agent, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for defrauding clients. Terry Jones was jailed six months for defrauding investors in a get-rich-quick land scheme. Albert Belanger was fined for fraud after a company with which he was involved went bankrupt and William Vankoughnet became the only MPP ever arrested for soliciting when he offered a policewoman, posing as a prostitute, money for sex. Among Liberal MPPs, Claudette Boyer admitted obstructing justice after she encouraged a niece to tell police she was driving when the MPP’s husband reversed a van and injured a pedestrian. Lost her legislature seat over it. None of this suggests politicians get in trouble with the law more than the rest of the population, but neither are they immune from its weaknesses. Final Thought Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you wfrf. - George Bernard Shaw Bonnie The short of it Time flies ... What can I say? I suppose that time sure flies when you’re having fun might be apt. If you would indulge me, let’s take a little nostalgic stroll back to a May day in 1980. After an incredible 24 hours I had anticipated a good night's sleep, but woke instead, much to my surprise, just brief hours later feeling wonderfully refreshed. The grey dawn that welcomed me did little to darken my cheery mood. As the rest of the household awakened around me, a festive feeling permeated the atmosphere. What remained of the seconds and minutes passed in a bustling blur of activity, until it was 7 p.m. and 1 was about to be married. Again. This time, however, for keeps. Unlike Jennifer Wilbanks, the recently infamous runaway bride who pretended to have been kidnapped rather than get married, I experienced no cold feet that day or for that matter, any need to put on my walking shoes since. And now hubby and I have, for this day and age, and for me I guess, reached a fairly significant milestone. Like most young couples the years we’ve spent building our life together have encompassed both good times and bad. It is a quarter-century-old saga told through pictures and memories, through our four terrific kids and their new families. When we married, we were both 20- somethings, certainly mature enough to know what we wanted, but clueless enough to not fully understand what it would always mean. Mixed in with all the good times — fun with friends, the pleasures of parenthood — were unique challenges we could never have anticipated. Also, we were surprised to discover that petty but previously ignored issues such as a balanced cheque book and who does what around the nouse, could on the wrong day and in the wrong situation become foolishly huge points of ‘discussion’. We soon recognized that marriage is no different than most things in life. You put one foot in front of the other day after day. You try to do the best you can. You succeed or you don’t. Then one day before you know it, you look behind you and realize you’ve built a company to be reckoned with. It’s a co-operative that combines all the important objectives of a business relationship — communication, friendship and respect — with love and intimacy. And when you work with someone towards the same goal for so long you realize you know them pretty darn well, even to the point of knowing when they’ll disagree with you. Perhaps it was this future that frightened Wilbanks. The pomp and ceremony of the big day, (and hers was going to be massive) with all its pressure and expectations leads nowhere as we all know, half of the time. No one likes to fail and marriage can present enough surprises and challenges that even the most likely to succeed often don’t. So it is that I look back on a quarter century and unabashedly admit to feeling not just a little proud. It was one foot in front of the other day after day until suddenly two and a half decades have gone by. There’s been a lot of stuff crammed into that time, some of it, of course, that I’d rather not remember. But I’ve been blessed with a husband who has never let one of those day after days go by without making me laugh. Twenty-five years was bound to go quickly.