The House of Sober Women

In 1867 the people in power chose to model the Canadian Senate after the British House of Lords. It was always intended to be a place for the upper crust to rest their unelected bottoms. But I think we just don't have enough of the historical upstairs/downstairs mentality to carry it off. It may work in Britain because most people there, after a few thousand years of conditioning, really believe that a few aristocrats are entitled to a life of money and leisure. And most aristocrats really feel, not only the weight of the family name, but also beholden enough to the nation to do their minimal part in the governing of the U.K.  But it doesn't seem to be working here according to the shrieks we all heard coming from reporters in Ottawa last week.

There are 105 Senators. Each Senator is making about $300,000 with travel expenses allowed on top of that. Those are your tax dollars and my tax dollars. Is that money being used the way it was intended to be used? The media is making it sound as if we have a group of unaccountable and seemingly unconscionable people draining our coffers. It is hard to prove or disprove something like that when even the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser is not being allowed to inspect the books.

Do I detect the aroma of Senate reform in the air? Hope so.

This week I came across a quote from George Elliot. She said, "It's never too late to be what you might have been." Maybe we need to go back to the beginnings of the Senate and turn it into what it should have been in the first place. Not modelled on the Brits, modelled on the Iroquois.

My proposal is that we base the new Senate on the Iroquois Clan Matron system. It would be made up of women. There are thirty-six there already and some of the names I recognize as women who have contributed greatly to Canadian society. We would start with them. The senators would continue to be unelected, continue to be chosen from all parts of the country, but have some real power.

The passing of the bills would not be a part of the Senate's mandate anymore. The Iroquois clan matrons controlled the warriors by withholding food if they disapproved of their actions. I'm not saying the Senators would starve an out of control House of Commons into submission. I'm suggesting that each new law or tax would have to be presented to the public showing the Senate's thumbs up or thumbs down. The withholding of approval could be very powerful.

The older I get the more I see the sexes as equal but different - way different. The House of Commons is never going to be a comfortable setting for most women. Why not just give it to the men? They can holler and shout and curse at each other all they want and the women can meet in the Red Chamber, bring the grandkids, drink tea and do the work of monitoring the actions of the Members of Parliament.

Then, truly, at long last, we would have the "house of sober second thought" that Sir John A. always wanted.

The Secret Diary of Frazzee1

Dear Dairy,

I'm being followed by a tomato in Twitter.

The tomato doesn't do anything. It never posts an entry. I mean I suppose nobody really cares how things are going in the vegetable garden, but still you'd think it would make an effort. Post a new recipe for chicken cacciatore or something.

The tomato found me. I didn't follow it first, I swear, although I might have if I had known about it. I mean If there had been a vegetable category when I first started browsing through Twitter looking for interesting people to follow, maybe I would have picked the tomato over say, the bean sprout.

Not that there is a lack of things to admire, but sometimes I wonder what is it about me that is so attractive to the tomato. Given my gene pool, if it had been a potato or a haddock following me around I could understand. But a tomato? I'm at a loss.

It's kind of creepy knowing this big, red blobby thing is in my personal cyberspace. Watching. Well maybe tomatoes don't actually watch. But they can hear. Remember the earmuffs in "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"? Or was that in "Killer Tomatoes Eat Paris"? Hard to remember, so many good movies.

I guess I shouldn't go to Twitter alone at night, diary, but I can't help myself. I need to keep up with things. I'd even miss those two weirdoes who keep trying to sell me naked pictures of themselves.

You are the only one who knows about the tomato and I trust you not to tell.

Until next time, dear diary, I remain your intrepid,

Frazzee1

Beam Those Socks Up, William Shatner!

My whole outlook on the future of Canadian politics was changed because I decided to search through my coloured sock drawer this morning.

To be politically correct, I suppose I should call it my 'socks of colour' drawer. Anyway I had a half baked idea that I would do something about finding last year's summer clothes. Don't ask why I was looking at socks, I know we don't wear socks in the summer. It just happened that way, okay?

One of my favourite pink socks was waiting for me when I opened the drawer. It had obviously squirmed to the top of the pile overnight. A grim reminder that its mate went AWOL last year and I have been waiting far too long for its return. I was wracked with indecision. When do you actually give up on a lost sock and put the other one down? How long do you wait? I poked at the drawer while I contemplated the question and to my horror I found four more socks without mates!

I did what everyone of us would do in such a dire situation - I googled 'lost socks'.

Not much help out there, but I learned that the Americans actually have a Bureau of Missing Socks. It was a government agency formed on August 1, 1861 during their Civil War. It was run by a man named Joseph Smithson who was terrible at being a soldier but very good at finding socks. He was the first person to document the 'lost sock' phenomena, noting that most soldiers lost only one sock at a time.

The Bureau of Missing Socks passed to civilian control at the end of that war and to this day is still deeply involved in the study of missing socks. They consider all theories from extraterrestrial thievery of socks to... well, ...extraterrestrial thievery of socks.

Hey, at least they are doing something about it, and I think it's time we Canadians stepped up to the laundry basket too.

I feel so strongly about this that I have given up my former goal of finding a home grown monarch for Canada and am now officially on the William Shatner for Governor General Bandwagon. If the Yanks are right then we'll need someone at the helm who has experience dealing with extraterrestrials. And my money is on Shatner. Rick Hanson is a hero, a modest and genuinely nice man who has done much as a goodwill ambassador for Canada, never mind the money he has raised for spinal cord injury research, but can he force evil aliens to return our socks? I think not.

To my mind there is only one man for the job of Governor General of Canada, Canada, and that man is Captain Kirk!


Oh Sh-t. Did I say Captain Kirk? I meant to say William Shatner. Maybe nobody will notice...

Sex, Trees and Dalton McGinty

Boy that was fast. My mind's ability to process things is a lot slower than Dalton McGinty's ability to change policy I'm sad to say.

I'm sure he didn't ask a teacher before he flip flopped on sex ed in grade three and that is a shame because even I could have told him how to introduce the topic to the primary grades. You don't teach about human reproduction. Not at all. You teach the life cycle of the lascivious pine tree.

The first and for some reason, the only time I was called upon to teach the life cycle of the pine tree was at the beginning of my teaching career. It was long before sex ed was introduced into the curriculum. The raunchy behaviour in the staff room ceased the moment the door opened to the rest of the school - no lap dances by teachers in the gym in those days, and certainly n the classroom no attention was given to hormones and changing bodies.

I was teaching grade four. When I first read the notes from the unit on pine trees I was surprised they didn't come in a plain brown envelope. Now thirty years later and after having taught sex ed for years to older kids who probably knew more than I did, I just think it is sweet.

I don't know if I remember all of the details correctly but written for a primary student the story might go like something like this:

Where Baby Pine Trees Come From
You see, children, there are two types of pine cones on every pine tree. The boy pine cones are at the top of the tree and the girl pine cones are at the bottom. When they are old enough the boy pine cones release pollen which is also known as sperm. When the girl pine cones are old enough they open up and release a sticky substance to catch the sperm. If the sperm is caught by the sticky stuff, a long tube is formed inside that section of the girl pine cone. It leads to a special cell deep inside of her called an ovum or egg. The sperm starts a long journey of a year or so as it slowly travels down the tube in search of the egg. When the sperm meets the egg they join together and a seed is formed. This seed is called an embryo. The embryo falls to the ground and if conditions are right, that is, if it finds itself in good soil where there is water and sunlight, a baby pine tree will begin to grow.

And that is just one very charming way to introduce the miracle of life to little kids, Mr. McGinty.

You should ask a teacher next time, okay?

A Pardon For Karla?

I didn't know that people who had committed manslaughter could seek a pardon after a certain length of time.

However, now that I know it, I can tell you that I don't care if Karla Homolka receives a pardon. She's been hounded out of the country with little chance of ever being able to return to live a normal life here, she's pushing forty and raising a son who will one day find out what his mother did. Her day of reckoning will come.

I do care about people who might find themselves through happenstance, in the horrific situation of having been the cause of someone else's death. It could happen to any one of us.

The dictionary definition of manslaughter according to the Gage Canadian dictionary is "the unlawful killing of another humn being accidentally or without malice or premeditation." As it stands now the law doesn't seem unreasonable to me, if anything it is an example of the compassionate society Canadians have built and I would not like to see this law changed because one woman got away with murder.

By This Umlaut Ye Shall Conquer

Apparently Queen Elizabeth II of England is arriving in Canada on June 28.

No doubt she read my January, "Queen of (Seal) Hearts" blog, and is trying to reëstablish her sovereignty. Personally I think it is too little, too late. However we do need to tread carefully here. We don't want the Brits to get cranky with us because there is nothing they like better than a good invasion now and then. That's when they get all lean and noble like Alec Guinness or David Niven say things to each other like, "Damn those colonials all to hell, old chap." Which is very intimidating.

Michaëlle Jean's tenure as Governor General ends in September. Rumours are aswirl that Elizabeth II may appoint a new GG while she is here. We need to politely decline the English Queen's appointment and get on with our future as a constitutional monarchy with our own monarch.

In my January blog I presented all of the reasons why Michaëlle Jean should replace Elizabeth II and become our Queen, i.e., the wardrobe, the contacts, the goofy husband, the daughter, etc., but not being aware of it at the time, I unwittingly left out the key argument, which is of course - her umlaut! How regal is that? I spotted in on the official GG website this week. Very impressive. Definitely a sign from heaven that this was meant to be, sort of like Constantine's, " in this sign ye shall conquer".

So here's the thing. We need to coördinate and double our efforts. We must continue our letter writing campaign to every MP and MPP, except maybe Helena Guergis. Letters are important and they work, they really do, but we need something even more powerful to muster the troops.

Think umlaut, my friends. As a show of solidarity with our future queen, I think Canadians should revert to using the umlaut which evidently hasn't been seen here since the 1940s. It disappeared about the same time as the last timber rattle snake was seen in Niagara.

It is very easy to figure out when to use one. Whenever two vowels that are usually a digraph, (i.e., make one sound, example: ea makes the ee sound), but are not a digraph because each vowel makes a different sound, the umlaut goes over the second vowel. For example cooperation which to a new reader of English probably looks like it must be a type of chicken farm, would be spelled coöperation.


It is a little more difficult figuring out how to get them. You need to go to accessories, then system tools, then use the character map.  Unfortunately there is a lot of cutting and pasting and I haven't figured out how to get the font right yet - but the cause is just!


Time is short and there is much to be done. To arms!

Oops...I mean:

To Umlauts, Canada!

S.O.S.

When "Body Works", the collection of posed plasticised human bodies, first hit the Ontario Science Centre a few years ago, it made me uncomfortable although it was carefully marketed as a science exhibit. To me it looked like an art show. At the time though it wouldn't have occurred to me to question the Science Centre.

But now the science/art line has been crossed and I think we need to think about it. A similar show of plasticized human bodies is coming to Niagara. This time it is being advertised as "artistic, entertaining...also educational" and a real money maker for the area.

A more truthful marketing ploy, I suppose, but still very disquieting because it is literally an art exhibit of soulless humans.

Suppose a local sculptor managed to find a number of dying people and offered to pay them for the use of their bodies after death. Suppose the people were in need of the money and so agreed. Suppose the sculptor draped their naked, dead bodies across frames that made them seem as if they were engaged in an activity of some kind so that we could see the miraculous way the skin works to cover our internal organs and muscles. It isn't likely that many of us would go and see this art show. Because we might have known one of the people? Because it smelled? Actually it doesn't matter because the police would close it down.

I believe the adage that art reflects society. We've become so desensitized to death, especially death that happens far away to people we don't know, that we too are in danger of losing our souls.

Pretty and sanitized as it may be, this art show smells.

Actually it reeks to high heaven.

The Good, The Bad and the Only Too Human

I know the last thing the free world needs is another comment about Tiger Woods, but I just can't resist it.

Is he a good man? A bad man?

A good man is a protector of women and children and sometimes the sole provider in a family, particularly when the children are young. A man who is particularly successful at these things is likely financially secure, intelligent and healthy, jam packed with just the kind of genes the female of the species is hard wired to want to pass on.

Tiger Woods is a very successful man who people clearly identified as 'a good man' and because of his success and 'goodness', women were drawn to him. The problem? It seems he took advantage of several women he had no intention of providing for or protecting and somebody, I'm guessing one of the women, told his wife. Women don't take that sort of thing, if you'll pardon the terrible way I'm going to put it, lying down anymore.

But Tiger Woods didn't kill, maim or mutilate anyone. It doesn't seem that he fathered any unwanted children.

His being good or bad is moot. Few of us will ever meet him and find out. What we know for sure is that he's human and he erred. So have we all.

Go play golf, Tiger.

Honk if You Love General Motors

Before I retired, I needed a vehicle that would get me out of the driveway during a snowstorm if the farmer down the road didn't arrive with his tractor on time.

Not being a large person, I asked the local car dealer to show me the smallest four wheel drive he had. He took me over to see the only Jimmy on the lot. It was love at first sight. I knew the Jimmy was a keeper when I took it for a test drive. I felt safer in that vehicle than in any other car that I have driven. And it had so much power I was sure there were testicles hanging between its back two wheels.

So I was in a good mood when I arrived at work the Monday after I bought the Jimmy, eager to get to the staff room to brag about my new mode of transportation. I parked, turned off the vehicle and pulled the visor down.

No mirror.

Now you might not think this is a major defect in a car. It will likely depend on your sex. Most women will probably understand my feeling - that GM should announce an immediate recall.

I leaned over and checked the passenger seat visor. There was a mirror. It slowly dawned on me then - this wasn't a manufacturing defect, my poor Jimmy was made that way on purpose. There wasn't a mirror on the driver's side, because GM didn't think that women ever needed four wheel drive and men evidently don't worry whether or not they have a piece of their breakfast hanging off a front tooth.

I wasn't happy about it, but I learned to live with my Jimmy's one defect. My cranky attitude towards GM did get me thinking about some of the other things that bug me about cars though.

For example, I would like a selection of pleasant noises that I could use to communicate with someone who is not in the car with me. I hate being limited to the 'F--- you' sound of my present horn. I would like a polite little beep that I could use if I needed to get another driver's attention. I would like a cheery "Hi,how ya doing" chirp that I could use if I saw someone I knew walking down the street. A friendly ' see ya later' sound would be nice, too.

And what about my purse? It goes everywhere I go. It is my most important possession and yet there is no place to store it safely in my car. I need my purse close at hand but up off the floor away from pedals and dirt. Putting it on the passenger seat is sometimes okay if I have no passenger, but too many times my purse has gone flying if I've had to make a quick stop and if I haven't closed it I have to spend half an hour picking up lipstick, coins, keys, cards etc from the floor.

I could go on, but in the interest of brevity I'll only mention one other thing. In my whole life, absolutely no one, and I must stress this point - no one has ever asked me how many revs my car engine makes. So why is the gas gauge, which is REALLY important to me, such a tiny little Tinkerbelle sized window that I have to squint to see while the dial that shows the number of engine revs is the size of the porthole to the whale aquarium at Marine land?

Well, I don't have the Jimmy anymore. If there is a snowstorm I have the luxury of staying home and besides that, the payments were killing me. I went back to my GM dealer because I'm a loyal customer but I don't know if I would have if somebody else offered a girl friendly vehicle at a reasonable price.

Are you listening GM?

Women buy a lot of cars. You need to sell more cars.

Safe, affordable, practical, friendly, attractive .

You can do it.

A Cover Up in Quebec?

Quebec seems on the verge of banning the niqab, though evidently there are only about a dozen women in the whole province who choose to veil themselves.

I find it a strange but somewhat romantic practice. If it had been at all common in the early 1970's when I was a young art student I might have taken it up myself on occasion. I love the look of the flowing robes and the mystery of the veil.

However this being 2010, I do find it disconcerting to see an Islamic family strolling down the street on a blazing hot day, the husband and children in cool western summer wear and the wife covered from head to foot in long robes. I have seen the same sort of thing in Mennonite communities, ordinary men standing beside wives dressed in traditional garb.

I may wish that the women didn't seem so subservient but I don't feel threatened by Mennonites. I feel more uncomfortable when I see a veiled woman. My mind immediately flies to the 'honour killings' that have gotten a lot of press in Canada recently even though I know that the number of women killed by their husbands or lovers is probably ten times higher in the general population. It is unfair and I've had to really think about how I feel about these things. Watching the Twin Towers fall changed a lot more than the landscape of New York City, unfortunately.

So here are my thoughts on the subject:

The main question that is troubling Quebec politicians seems to be whether veiled Muslim women should have to reveal their faces for things like Canadian driver's licences and passports. From what I have read it seems to have become a question of frightening political correctness.

I think that if it hadn't been for 9 11 we would probably see these Muslim women as just another interesting part of the Canadian mosaic and they would be expected to comply without question to Canadian laws or they would be deported. Obviously the Quran is open to interpretation because some women do not wear a head covering at all, some wear the hajib or headscarf and some the veil or niqab.

Women who choose the niqab must be prepared to show their faces for identification purposes. It is a no brainer and not worth a lot of fuss in anybody's legislature when there are so many real problems that need attention. However, the niqab should not be banned. Women should have the freedom to wear what they want and to practise their religion the way they want.

It's the almost-totally-free-to-do what-you-want Canadian way.

It Isn't Easy Being Greenish

I'm now a member of the Federal Green Party AND the Provincial Green Party.

But I find it harder being green than being NDP orange. For me, social justice issues are much clearer than environmental issues. Oh I know social justice is part of the Green Platform, that's one of the reasons I joined, it just isn't the raison d'être, and isn't what people have had time to discuss at the meetings I've been to.

" Shift" might happen, but it doesn't happen easily for some of us.

The backlash against the global warming theory unnerved me shortly after I joined the Federal party last spring. There is a strong contingent of very vocal people out there that believes global warming is hogwash. Naturally, just because I had committed myself, every newspaper and magazine article, as well as radio and television show I happened upon, seemed to be promoting that view.

I searched for the truth. But the truth on environmental issues isn't always easily found. Research on Google was overwhelming. I couldn't just pop up to the Arctic and see for myself.

In the end I thought of Hamilton.

For me, the Burlington Skyway has always been the link between Niagara and the great outside world. I remember when there was just one bridge. Heck, I even remember when you had to pay to go over it. But mostly I remember those giant Stelco smokestacks. For decades they spewed a toxic smelling black smoke across Hamilton harbour. The sky and water were a sickly steel gray even on the sunniest of days. The paint peeled on the few houses that were strung along the beach and they looked grim and abandoned. The stench was nauseating. I pitied the few small people I would sometimes see scurrying below as my car safely sped over the span and away from the hellish scene.

I realize now that the environment had to have been affected by Stelco and I believe that global warming, or to use the new and I think more apt phrase, "global wierding" is a direct result of human activity.

So I was in a self-congratulatory mood as I headed to last week's Green Party meeting. "In like flint," I thought to myself with relief, "I've finally got it."

After signing in I made my way across the head table where the books, pamphlets, buttons etc. were spread out for the party faithful to fondle. I picked up a couple of things, more for show than anything else. The buzz in the room was loud and as I'm not one for mingling, I returned to my seat. Waiting for the meeting to start, I turned over one of the pamphlets.

My hair stood on end. I didn't know the Green Party was against nuclear power. I thought nuclear power was 'clean' energy - dangerous maybe, but environmentally friendly unless there was a melt down and millions of people and animals suffered endless agonies and then died lingering painful deaths. But there it was in black and white and green, "We can keep the lights on without nuclear." The pamphlet went on to note that Ontario's wind power potential is more than ten times greater than our total electricity consumption. There was even a cheery little picture of a wind farm.

It shouldn't have been a problem. I should have been able to 'shift' my thinking. Right? Not exactly because lately I've been concerned and puzzled by the reports coming out about windmill farms making people sick.

Sigh. It still isn't easy being Green.

Frogs and Snails and XM8 Lightweight Assault Rifles

On Face Book this week I had a message from a young man. Well actually there was no message, just a request to become his friend. At first I was puzzled. The accompanying photo showed four laughing young men who looked to be about nineteen or twenty standing in a line, arms draped over shoulders, on the pavement in downtown Toronto. Not one of them looked familiar.

I studied the name and out of the misty depths of my teaching memories, a face began to emerge. A thin blond grade six boy with an big, loveable grin. He and his younger brother had been homeschooled but for some reason the family had decided to send the boys to public school one year and I became the oldest boy's teacher.

He was enthusiastic and genuinely glad to be in school with other kids. I liked him a lot. There was only one issue that I remember worrying about and it had to do with something he told me about himself, his grandfather and guns. For the life of me though, after all of these years and so many kids that I worried about, I can't remember what it was. I just remember that an alarm bell rang quietly in my head.

Thinking this might be who was trying to contact me, I went to his home page photo gallery to see if there was a better picture of him. I was quite taken aback by what I saw. A number of photos were of young men in camouflage uniforms holding guns. They seemed to be involved in some kind of military exercise. There were photos of young women holding rifles too but these women weren't Canadian army women, unless halter tops, lots of skin and hip huggers are allowed on the shooting range. I had no idea what I was looking at. Boy Scouts gone bad? A scary gun club? Camp Borden after hours? An Aryan paramilitary group? I found the images alien and disturbing.

Little boys grow up and change but I didn't expect this one would grow up and move to such a hostile planet in some other universe.

I suppose the warning bell that went off in my head as he described the activity he had done with his grandfather was a hint of the direction his life would take.

Jeesh. I wonder what some of the kids I really worried about are doing now.

Hey, Who's the Naked Canadian Guy?

We don't have free speech in Canada and yet everybody is up in arms over this Ann Coulter thing. Somebody needs to tell the emperor he's not wearing any clothes.

If we had free speech we would be able to buy newspaper ads threatening death and dismemberment to any person or group we didn't like and we would be able to encourage others to join us.

We don't even have freedom to own certain things. I'll never be the old lady next door with the Uzi.

I think freedom is what this whole brouhaha regarding Ms Coulter is really about. A lot of people have forgotten who we are. We are the people who accepted the War Measures act in 1970 during the FLQ crisis. We had one Cabinet Minister murdered, a British diplomat had been kidnapped, bombs were going off in Montreal and our Prime Minister did away with our civil liberties. Can't imagine that happening in the U.S. The part about the civil liberties - not the murder, kidnapping and bombs.

As a nation, we prefer law and order over individual rights. One in six Canadians is descended from a United Empire Loyalist after all. They are the folks who were willing to pay the heavy taxes on tea and other commodities rather than go to war against the powerful British during the American Revolution. Sitting on the fence backfired though. People were either with the Patriots or they were against them in 1776 and thousands of refugees had to flee the U.S. for Canada where they could live peacefully under the established British law.

So maybe it's in our gene pool.

Actually, I think that how our acceptance of a modified form of freedom came about, isn't as important as the fact that we need to see ourselves as we truly are. We're not free to spread hate and despair. We aren't free to arm ourselves. Good? Bad? I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that our way is the better way.

Now cover up, you great big naughty boy!

And About Those Baby Seals...

Since my last post, I've spent a sleepless night worrying that anyone who happens to read my blog about polar bears will come to the conclusion that I support the seal hunt.

I don't. I don't I don't. The seal hunt is something far beyond what a human being with a soul would do to a defenceless animal. Unfortunately, up until now I have been burying my head in the sand about the seal hunt because it is too upsetting. I have been leaving the room when there was a television story, glancing away from pictures, and trying generally to avoid thinking about it.

But I crossed a line somewhere in my psyche with my polar bear blog and here I am, finally giving my opinion on sealing.

I was pleased to learn that even PETA, (the international paint and pie throwing group), is not against the Inuit people hunting seal for the traditional reasons. Having spent 12 years in the north I know that food is shockingly expensive and artificial fur will not protect you at 40 or 50 degrees below zero. Seal meat and seal fur are a necessity of life for many Inuit. Inuit use all parts of the animal, not much is wasted, whereas the sealers take only the fur of young seals in the most cruel manner possible.

Sealing started in 1720 or thereabouts. It is not a traditional hunt done by indigenous people in a humane, spiritual manner. It is a merciless slaughter done on an icy abattoir.

So who buys seal pelts? The largest market by far is Norway. The most important seal pelt processing plant in Newfoundland, Carino, (according to the most recent info I could find), is actually owned by a Norwegian company. But don't think they need the pelts, because although Norway is a northern country, it has a fairly temperate climate due to the warm Gulf Stream. Finland and Germany are the second and third largest markets but there are many other countries who import thousands of pelts each year.

PETA and likeminded groups need to go after these markets with a renewed vengeance. If there was no money in sealing the industry would die. Our politicians need to wok to find alternate employment for the workers.

The seal hunt must stop.

Inuit Need Support, Not Critcism

I was quite interested to read the recent reports that Canadian and Inuit leaders were instrumental in the defeat of the proposal to classify polar bears as a species threatened with extinction at the UN wildlife observation meeting. The great white bears can still be hunted. I'm sure that many Canadians are upset at this turn of events and I must say the killing of animals is abhorrent to me as well. However, having had a firsthand glimpse of what our southern values have done to some of our northern indigenous people, I have to say that I think we need to butt out on this one.

Many years ago I learned that you can't teach a child who spent the previous night sitting outside a bar so that he can make sure his parents don't pass out in a snowdrift and freeze to death on the way home. Nor can you teach a child who comes to school dirty, cold and hungry because there is no heat or food at her house.

These things happen to some children in Canada. They happen because a spirit, a culture and a way of life were destroyed.

I don't know if there is a way back for our native people or even if they should go back, but whatever the future holds, we shouldn't try to do it for them. They will find their own way. As Canadians we need to support them.

I think the government did the right thing.

Take the Gun, Leave the Asparagus

_{The hunt for wild asparagus in southern Ontario brings out the Alaskan frontierswoman in me}

_{Many years ago when I was teaching in Dawson City, Yukon, I would on occasion cross the border into Alaska. I went by river a few times. My friends and I could leave Dawson on Friday night and arrive in the village of Eagle, Alaska on Sunday. I have some fine memories of paddling down the Yukon River, eating fresh salmon and camping out under the midnight sun.}

_{Sometimes we would fly into Juneau, other times we would take the 'Top of the World Highway' and drive to Skagway or Chicken.}

_{Chicken, Alaska, in those days was about the size of Eagle but as the name implies, it didn't have the same fierce charm. What it did have was an old lady named Anne Purdy.}

_{Anne Purdy had a big gun and a super-sized Alaskan personality to go with it.}

_{When I first moved to Dawson I came across, " Tisha", a book written about her life. She had been a young New England girl who had gone north to teach school in the 1920s. She had fallen in love with a young man who was part native and the prejudice they faced kept them apart for years. Sarah Palin wasn't the first Alaskan to take advantage of Canadian health care, the climax of Mrs. Purdy's story involved a harrowing, life and death dog sled race to Dawson City for medical treatment at fifty degrees below zero.}

_{When I found out that she was still alive I decided to go and meet her.}

_{Around that time Mrs. Purdy was in the middle of a political brawl with the Alaska Bureau of Land Management. I heard her threaten to shoot every last one of the s.o.b.s if they took one step on her (disputed) property. Imagine a proud old lady, tall, with long gray hair, a floor length gingham skirt over rubber boots and a rifle she was prepared to use. The image stayed with me.}

_{Now years later, back in Ontario, I'm the old(ish) lady with the gray(ish) hair. But my land dispute isn't with a faceless bureaucracy, my dispute is with sneaky city people who steal my wild asparagus. We're talking important issues here, folks.}

_{You see, asparagus often grows on the edge of the road in Niagara, the part that is owned, (on paper), by the region. But psychologically, emotionally and spiritually, that little strip of land on the other side of the ditch belongs to the home owner.}

_{I believe that people have no business picking the home owner's asparagus from the home owner's land!}

_{So be warned, if you are on the trail of the wild asparagus in North Pelham this spring, the crazy old lady standing in the ditch will be me. Being Canadian I don't have a gun, but I have a broom, and by golly this year I intend to use the bristly end of it.}

_{So be afraid, you asparagus thieves, be very afraid...}

The Sky is Falling

re: the national anthem

I’ve always been able to vote. I can’t imagine what it was like for the Suffragettes who struggled for the right to be a part of the democratic process. I wasn’t refused entry to university because I was female. Those battles were long over by the time I became active in the women’s movement in the early seventies.

Was I grateful? Did I feel that we were picking up where they had left off? I’d like to think that we felt a connection but truthfully, winning the vote might as well have happened in the 13th century. We didn’t identify with those long gone women in their big, feathered hats, corsets and ankle length skirts. They were the past, we were the future. We were young and caught up in the excitement of the social change that was steam rolling across the land.

I can’t imagine what it is like to be young in 2010 any more than I was able to imagine what it was like to be young in 1910. But I’m proud that girls today have opportunities that were unheard of in my time. We had a lot to do with that. Because of us, most sexual stereotypes and sexist language are things of the past.

Are they grateful? No more than we were to the Suffragettes. They’ve never known life any other way. Thank heavens.

So I suppose I can understand the lack of interest in changing the lyrics to ‘Oh Canada'.

But geez Louise, it’s the national anthem we’re talking about, the most important song in the country. This one matters - oh, and for those who worry that changing one line will open the door to the atheists, etc., women aren’t a special interest group. We “hold up half the sky”.

The anthem should reflect this.

God Has Great Hair

Hair dressers somehow sense that they hold my self esteem between the blades of their scissors. I walk into a hair salon every six weeks glad to finally get something done with my mop of odd cowlicks and inevitably walk out an hour later looking like a shellacked, semi-plucked chicken. It’s a vicious cycle of hope and despair and it has been going on my whole life.

Now, anybody who has taken Art History 101 or has picked up a magazine that features an archaeology dig in Europe, knows that not only was God exclusively female in prehistoric times, She also had great hair. Braided, beaded, coiled, wrapped around the head, the dos were really something. So much effort went into the carving of the hair styles on the ancient Goddess figurines; it seems obvious to me that great hair had as much importance to those women as it does to women of the 21st century.

But who were the early stylists? Without mirrors, the women couldn’t have managed such elaborate coifs by themselves. I can only surmise it must have been a mother/daughter/sister, you-do-mine, I’ll-do yours, sort of thing. Pity the poor cave woman without female relatives. She must have been the schmuck of her clan, forever whining about her hair, avoided at the drinking stream and in the berry patch, passed over by the best hunters.

The conclusion is undeniable. I am channeling some poor cave woman who was an orphan and without sisters or daughters.

Now that I understand this, I can relax. Maybe I’ll let my hair grow. Revisit Woodstock, (not that I was actually there). Get in touch with my inner prehistoric woman. Because one thing is for sure, if the Goddess is reemerging and if you’ve ever seen those small sculptures of Her, you’ll understand, my fellow female persons, we’re going to have other things to worry about.

See you at the gym.

Sevice This, Ontario

I don’t travel much, but I do like to visit the US occasionally.

“I’m going to get a handy dandy enhanced driver's license,” I thought enthusiastically when the government first floated the idea.

After a lot of phoning and e-mailing back and forth, the Service Ontario license bureau was willing to grant me an interview. I anxiously waited the two weeks it took for them to fit me in. They had nailed my appointment time down to the exact minute and I was in a state of high anxiety. If I missed it I might have to wait who knows how long for another chance. I hadn’t been to the States in over a year but because I couldn’t just cross the border willy nilly anymore, I felt a desperate need to see Buffalo again.

I arrived at my appointed time and I waited.

Now the upside of aging is that as your eyesight and hearing diminish, your chutz pah grows. After about half an hour of bench sitting I saw an empty wicket. I scooted into it before the person whose name was called could reach it. I eyed the old lady whose place I had usurped. I figured I could take her down if I had to, so I quickly explained my predicament to the woman behind the counter.

According to her, they had called my name at the appointed time but when I didn’t appear they had simply moved on, but now that I had arrived, they would try to fit me in.

Right. So kind. Get a bullhorn.

I went back to my seat, avoiding the old lady, and waited some more.

Eventually I was indeed serviced and it cost me forty some odd dollars.

I was serviced again last week when I found out my brand new enhanced license had to be renewed on my birthday. Same rigmarole about appointments. This time it cost me seventy-five dollars.

Moo.

Take my advice, folks, if you have a burning desire to see Buffalo – get a passport.

A Terrible Death

The death of the Olympic athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili, was a terrible event.

I was disturbed by the assessment of one Olympic observer – a Canadian, I believe. He said, “Well, these guys are warriors!” The implication being that the possibility of death is something that the athletes accept and we shouldn’t mourn too much.

His words and the fact that young Mr. Kumatritashvili’s death was actually televised chilled me and sent me back a few decades.

The controversial film director, Peter Watkins, directed and wrote ‘Gladiators’ way back in the late sixties. I saw it in the early seventies when it made the rounds of the university campuses.

“Gladiators” was unsettling. The timeframe was the near future. Humankind had somehow realized after the development of the nuclear bomb that war between nations would mean the end of the human race. But what do do with all that aggression? Well, in order to quell our innate bloodlust, each nation agreed to send a team of soldiers to some remote site to compete in what was called ‘The Peace Games’.

Now it has been a long time, but if I remember correctly, the games were fought to the death and they were televised world wide. People got to sit in their own homes or local bars to cheer and watch their nation’s team kill or be killed.

Sound familiar? Feeling queasy?

Let’s not brush Nodar Kumaritashvili's death off. He wasn’t a warrior and his death should have been private. CBC had no business broadcasting the scene. As far as I can see he was a boy from a particularly poor part of the globe who had earned the chance of a lifetime – to come to our beautiful country and compete in the Olympic Games. Olympic Games, not war games.

We need to mourn. For him and for us.