Depends on our Police

Of all the comments and questions I heard about the G20 Summit the only one that I spent much time wondering about was when a friend asked me whether I thought the police officers were wearing Depends.

I remembered watching the news clips that showed them arriving by the bus load in Toronto. Dark clad, unsmiling people turning away from the cameras, bending down to pick up their kits then heading into the hotel. I imagined the frightening items that were in those kits - batons, guns, tear gas, gas masks, pepper spray, shields, helmets.

The idea that a package of adult diapers might have been tucked inside each kit never crossed my mind.

But somehow, as funny as the question was, it did something for me. It humanized the police officers who were charged with keeping the peace for those two days in Toronto.

I didn't like what I saw in Toronto - especially that scene at Queen and Spadina.

I didn't like the way the 'temporary' law came into being.

I do believe we need to have an inquiry into the events.

I do not, however, believe that in Canada the police are the enemy.

I think we need to keep that in mind.

Something Fishy

I was really intrigued by a letter to the editor that appeared June 7th in the St. Catharines Standard. R.D. Bowman asked why the G20 Summit Meeting, which is scheduled to take place in Muskoka, Ontario, later this month, isn't being held in the Diefenbunker.

For non-Canadians or people under forty-five who happen to read this, the Diefenbunker was a top secret facility built at the height of the Cold War to house Canada's top politicians and military personnel in the event of a nuclear attack. The name Diefenbunker comes from the name of John Diefenbaker who was the Prime Minister at the time.

I have to tell you that I did not know that Diefenbunkers existed until a few years ago. (I say Diefenbunkers with an 's' because I just read that there are quite a few of them spread around the country, most located near major cities. The main one, an underground four storey behemoth, is located outside of Ottawa and is now a museum.)

Silly me. I thought if we were going to be obliterated, we were all going to be obliterated. I didn't know that the politicians and generals, i.e., the people who caused the problem, had made arrangements to save their own sorry behinds.

Maybe it's a good thing that I didn't know because at times it was darn scary growing up in Niagara during the Cold War. Air raid sirens were our occasional creepy lullabies and we were taught to duck and cover from our first days at school. The fear of a Russian missile attack on the hydro electric power plant at Niagara Falls was palpable for years.

But I digress. Sorry. Back to my topic.

R.W. Bowman says that we may end up paying more than a billion of our tax dollars to protect 20 people and their entourages during the G20. Ouch!

He says the main Deifenbunker was built to accommodate 256 Members of Parliament and their families for weeks and could have been easily used by the Summiteers at big savings to us. R.W. Bowman has a point and it's a shame it won't happen because, financial reasons aside, there is also the small matter of the Diefenbunker's address.

This is where the most powerful, cantankerous politicians in the world should meet.

This is good...

The main Diefenbunker is located on Carp Street in Carp, Ontario.