Economic advisor?!

Sure, great idea, if you want advice on how to ruin your economy and beggar its citizens, hire Chrystia Freeland.  She's an expert.  Apparently, she told Carney about her appointment to the Ukraine position on December 24th, but they both agreed to keep it a secret so they could shovel another $2.5 billion over to Ukraine.

It would have been kept secret, except for the unfortunate tweet Zelensky put out announcing Freeland's new job.  Oops!  But by then, they had already handed Zelensky the dough -- ostensibly for the war effort, but probably a lot of it to fill his personal, already-overflowing coffers.  I mean, what's another yacht or two.

The woman is shameless.  How could she be serving her constituents, while being deputy prime minister and finance minister.  Then she was appointed some sort of advisor to the re-building of Ukraine, which can't be done while Putin is still bombing the sh-t out of it, and after that, Warden and CEO of The Rhodes Trust -- the latter a job based in London!  

I'll bet the Rhodes regrets appointing her because she will tarnish their hitherto hallowed reputation with her money-grubbing ways. 

She has publicly stated that the Ukrainian cause has been her primary focus all her life, so I guess she's right where she belongs.

All I can say is, ta-ta and good riddance!  

There she goes!

_________________

So, now Carney is off to China for four days of "talks".  Four days!  Gee, I wonder if those chats will benefit Brookfield?  Rhetorical.  I mean how long can you talk about anything at that level?  I think they should announce that Carney will be visiting Canada for two days, because he certainly isn't acting as prime minister.  He pops in, in between trips and visits home to New York, where he, his wife and family actually live.

And how many deals has he secured?  Exactly.  

So many people drank his Koolaid.  I hope they mightily regret it now. 

"I like your lipstick"

"I like your fur coat," they also said.  It's a mink and I am the only woman I have seen out here wearing one.  If anyone objects to fur, they better be a vegan because these mink were bred to be coats; they are not wild.  If you eat meat, you can't object to a farm-bred mink coat.

"I like your earrings," someone else says.

A hit with my students today.

My magnificent mink coat.

That's how I was greeted as I walked down the hall of Elizabeth Barrett school this morning, when I returned to tutor.  How sweet those seven and nine-year-old children are as they greet me.  They do not yet have any inhibitions and tell you exactly what they are thinking.

So, I did my hour with French and another with English students, as I have been doing for more than a year.  Do I make a difference?  Who knows, but I am tutoring as I was taught in the fifties:  All with phonetics.  "Sound it out," I say, as they stumble through a word.

What a privilege to be able to help these darlings, as they start their young lives.  

$5 million

That's how much ex-mayor Jyoti Gondek wasted convening a panel of "experts" to come up with a new slogan for Calgary.  What did they conjure up after two years of navel gazing?  "Blue Sky City".  It used to be "Feel the Energy", but Gondek must have thought that moniker highlighted "evil oil".  So now, instead of looking down at the oceans of valuable oil right under our feet, we have to look up to the blue sky, where we'll find.....uh....um....clouds into which to stick our heads?  There's certainly no oil up there.

You could not make this up!

Let's not forget -- paging the dazzling genius Mark Carney! -- that Alberta's oil finances the entire country via transfer payments.  Without it, we'd be even poorer than we are, thanks to Carney's disastrous "green, net zero" agenda.

Someone needs to sit this "brilliant economist" down, ground his plane and tie him to a chair so he can be educated on how valuable our oil is.  As I have blogged countless times, we have to get it to tide water to sell to countries desperate for this resource.  But, thanks to the ludicrous NDP and the delusional, one-trick-pony Elizabeth May, we can't.

Never mind that Carney has the power to overrule provinces objections and hysterical native protests, he won't do it -- meaningless memoranda of understanding notwithstanding.  That was nothing but Kabuki theatre and a photo op.  It's a piece of paper that has no teeth and will not get a pipeline built, which is Carney's objective.

Keep it in the ground, are his watchwords!  How's that gonna work, now that the U.S. has taken over Venezuela's oil industry?  They produce the same heavy crude as does Alberta, so the U.S. will need much less of ours now.  Having ruined the auto industry, Carney is well on his way to destroying the oil one too.  This is very scary and very serious.

But back to the flood.  Why didn't Gondek fix the main water feeder for most of the city, as well as surrounding towns like Airdrie?  This is a complete failure of civic leaders, but I believe new mayor Jeromy Farkas will deal effectively with it -- unlike Gondek and the previous council.  In the meantime, 3,100 families will remain under a boil-water advisory.  

That $5 million would have been far better spent on water.  Great job, Jyoti!

Lots of fun in Calgary the other day.  

Gondek is the first incumbent mayor in memory to have been defeated after one term.  That tells you a lot about her incompetence.  Calgarians are not stupid.  They finally came to their senses -- even the ethnic community, which usually votes en block for any ethnic candidate on the ballot.

Thankfully, we live in Cochrane, so aren't affected.  When that same pipe burst two years ago, however, we lived in northwest and were affected.  So, Cochrane water managers, check our lines!

Would someone please tell me.....

....what in Gawd's name the CBC was doing flying a Palestinian flag in the background during its New Year's Eve television coverage?!

If any flag is to be flown by the CBC, it must be this one.

Once again, the CBC is disgracing itself as a purported objective scribe of international and national news.  How anyone working there can call themselves journalists is beyond me?!  I worked as a journalist in Toronto during the early seventies and, unless one was writing a column, one was required to be objective.  Any opinions were to be kept to oneself.  Period.

Wait, I think I have the answer.  The CBC is funded to the tune of billions by the taxpayer and Mark Carney just officially recognized the state of Palestine.  Unfortunately, someone forget to tell Mr. Carney that there is no such thing as an official Palestinian state, so there's nothing to recognize.

Mahmoud Abbas, along with the late terrorist Yasser Arafat, was a founder of the PLO and has ensconced himself as president of what is known as Palestine since 2005.  Despite having pledged to hold elections, he hasn't.  He also remains a rabid hater of Israel.    

What a joke.  

New Year's Day musings...

As I have blogged, three years ago I discovered, thanks to '23 and Me', that I had five sisters (half) and two brothers.  (See "It's Official", Sept. 16th, 2025). It turned out we shared a father.  That was the biggest "Wow!" in my life, but it was also a gift because two of my sisters keep in touch with me; the other three were evidently horrified because I had burst their hitherto perfect family bubble.

A few days ago, I had a couple of great conversations with Dr. Nora Doyle and Maureen Doyle, the two sisters with whom I am in touch.  We shared laughs and swapped stories as if we'd know each other all our lives. 

Baby sister Maureen

 

Another baby sister, Dr. Nora Doyle.

Note: As you know, I found my birth Mother 45 years ago, pre-Internet, thanks to slogging through city directories, forging letters from my Father to the lawyer who had handled the case and phoning complete strangers until I hit pay dirt.  Sadly, she had died at 49, a year before I found her, but I met her brothers and sister and other relatives and concluded I am glad I had been adopted by my wonderful parents.

My birth Father, however, had been incorrectly identified -- until I spat into a container and sent it off to have my DNA extracted.  Low and behold, it hadn't been the guy everyone thought it had been.  My father turned out to be an American Marine named William (Billy) Doyle; Nora and Maureen are also two of his six daughters (including me).

I will keep in touch with them and be eternally grateful for their presence in my life.  So many genetic mysteries and gifts have now been solved -- like where did all the athleticism come from?  And where did my irreverent sense of humour come from?

_______________________

Right on cue, a main water main has broken in Calgary.  Again.  Two years after the first one.  WTF?!  Apparently, an expensive, state-of-the-art, high tech, fibre-optic acoustic monitoring system was "working normally" when it ruptured.  Huh?!  How could well-paid experts at city hall say it was "working normally" when it burst?  Obviously, it wasn't working normally -- or if it was, they need to get a new "normal" to detect weaknesses and potential leaks.

Pulling back the curtain, I see that all the emergency and water "experts" at city hall are women.  Were they DEI hires, à la Brenda Lucki, the hapless former commissioner of the RCMP who effed up every crisis she encountered?  Sadly, probably.  Leapfrogging women over more qualified men does no one a favour -- especially the women.

_______________________

I see that Queen Camilla has spoken about the sexual assault she endured as a teen on a London subway, so I thought I'd re-post mine.  When I was 12, Dr. Richard Braden, my orthodontist, assaulted me while I was trapped in his chair.  I froze, completely panic-stricken and did nothing.  When he released me, I went out to my Mother, who had been waiting in his outer office.

"Isn't Dr. Braden handsome," she oozed, as he greeted her warmly.  I said nothing and never told her or anyone else.  When I read his obituary, I was tempted to pen my own memories of the horror of his chair, but didn't.  Afterall, the great Dr. Braden was the Commodore of the Britannia Yacht Club and a pillar of the Ottawa community.  

I wondered how many other young girls he had assaulted in his torture chair over the years.  When my daughter and step-daughter were young, I warned them many times about, "anyone touching your private parts" -- even the doctor or dentist.  

I also suffered what is know as "date rape" -- however, adding "date" to the term makes it sound less criminal -- almost funny.  It's not.  It's rape, plain and simple.  This happened when I was invited by my cousin to her boyfriend's cottage.  "Bill will be there too, you'll like him, why don't you come along?"  So I did.  But even though his parents were there, he still attacked me in the dark and, terrified of "making a scene", I did and said nothing.  Again.

A few years later, I met him at a parent/teacher assembly at my children's school -- the famous Rockcliffe Park Public in tony Rockcliffe Park.  There he was, preening around as the president and giving us all a speech.  After he imparted his wisdom, I approached.  "Hi, Bill.  Remember me?  Remember when you raped me at your parents' cottage?"  Surrounded by adoring mothers, he blanched, turned white and took off. 

That was a good moment.

Then there were the unwanted attentions and actions of one of Pierre Trudeau's ministers in 1976.  I was his speechwriter and used to travel with him, but I was vulnerable, had just had a baby and desperately needed the job.  I will leave the details of his actions to the depths of your imagination.  It was not pleasant and again, it was rape.

Unlike many victims, I did not dine out on my horrors for the rest of my life.  I got on with what I had to do to survive and I thrived.  Gratitude overtook any misery I may have harboured and still does.  

_____________________________

On a lighter note, last evening, for no apparent reason, I called an old friend in Ottawa to wish him a Happy New Year.  Flabbergasted, he picked up and we had a great conversation, laughing and tripping down memory lane 45 years after we had first met.  

Thank you, François Proulx for your continuing warm friendship.  I will not let so many years pass between us again before getting back in touch.

So, all in all, it has been a great Christmas and New Year's here in little, old Cochrane, Alberta!

Death of an Icon

"The vast majority of women are being hypocritical and ridiculous," affirmed Brigitte Bardot to 'Paris Match' magazine in response to the "#MeToo" movement.

"Lots of actresses try to play the tease with producers to get a role.  And then, so we will talk about them, they say they were harassed.  I found it charming when men told me I was beautiful or I had a nice little backside."

This was how the peerless Bardot -- or simply "BB", as she was known -- described the phuphera surrounding the Harvey Weinstein kerfuffle.  

Frankly, I have always agreed with Bardot's assessment.  I mean, how many women do we all know who work both sides of the street and them claim 'slut shaming' when they dress like one?"  I mean, we are perceived by how we dress, no?

I know the "feminists" will howl, but them's the facts.  When I received a compliment back in my salad days, I was always flattered.  Still am.  Keep 'em coming!  

So, farewell to one of the greatest stars and dedicated animal rights activists, who has died at 91.  Like Marilyn, Jackie, Elizabeth, Sophia and Audrey, we will never see her like again.

Unconventional to the end.

 

Another Christmas Miracle

THE CHRISTMAS REUNION

Pastor Rob Reid (A true story)

The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in urban Brooklyn, arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.

They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc. and on December 18th were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On December 19th a terrible tempest – a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days.

On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 6 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.

The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home. On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in.

One of the items was a beautiful, hand-made, ivory colored, crochet table cloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall.

He bought it and headed back to the church. By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.

 
She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc. to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.

Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet. "Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?" The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crochet into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.

The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. She was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.

The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.

What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. One older man, who the pastor recognized from the neighborhood, continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving.

 
The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike? He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety, and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a concentration camp. He never saw his wife or his home again for all the 35 years in between.

The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.