Really?!

Here I was, watching the Tour de France on TV.  What I was watching were a bunch of bums on bikes from behind.  Who effing cares?!  I had gone to a local restaurant to meet a friend for dinner, because B is away visiting his kids and grandkids in the Gatineau Hills, and that was what was on the big TV. 

Why didn't I go?  I went last year, but sadly my stepdaughter has morphed into her biological mother and my son-in-law doesn't like me.  As Carol Matthau said about her own kids, "I don't like people who don't like me."

Me neither.

So, I am on my own and not inclined to cook.  Enjoying meeting pool friends for a bite.  An observer of humanity, I was fascinated by a middle-aged woman two seats down who was tattooed to death.  What was she doing by herself in a bar?  Several men were also at the bar and paid her no attention.  It was sad.     

 

Between cruises....

...they fit in Seniors' Day at Stampede.  It kills me.  These are people with oodles of money, but go to Stampede on Seniors' Day for free.  "Geez," I said, "We must have more money than all the poor working and laid-off stiffs who have to pay full pop," I said sarcastically. 

D and C just laughed.  "We always cheat," D added.  See, this is actually the Wild, Wild West.  People think the rules are for someone else.  But having been born and raised in regulation-ridden Upper Canada, I haven't yet adjusted because I still think rules matter.

Ah well, D and C will continue on their merry three-cruises-a-year way of life and still grab freebies whenever they can.   

Annoying assumptions

I swim with some amazing women.  All excellent swimmers, they also sport some pretty neat bathing suits -- mostly lap suits, but some slightly off-the-wall.  "Where did you get that suit?" I asked one fellow swimmer, who was wearing something a little different.  "Sport Check," she told me.

Sick of all my bathing suits, I went.  "Do you work here?" I asked one young woman attempting to avoid me (thought I was in Canadian Tire!)  Told her I was looking for a bathing suit, as we headed toward them.  "These are for competitive swimmers," she sneered, "for racing."  It's OK, I told her, I swim seriously. 

But here's the deal.  She was about 12 -- OK, maybe 20 -- with an ass on her the size of next week and here she was looking down her nose at me about what suit I should buy because she simply assumed I was some kind of middle-aged aquafitter!  "I used to swim competitively," she added, hoping to give herself credibility.  Didn't work. 

Obviously, she has lost the directions to the Crowfoot Y around the corner.  I mean, if her ass is that big at her age, what shape will it be in at mine?!  Hey kid, get back in the pool. 

Ultimately, she annoyed me so much I didn't buy a suit there.  But I got a new one elsewhere, plain black, which I will wear on my third Lake Windermere open-water swim in August.  Yikes!  Only a month away!! 
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The Calgary Stampede is in full swing!  Watching it on TV over many years from Ottawa, I never dreamt in a million years I would be living here.  But here we are and I have to confess, I have been to Stampede only once because the parking and crowds deter me.  However, I wear a cowboy hat and boots everywhere I go during Stampede, so that counts.  Lots of folks are into it, but lots aren't and that's too bad.

True to Calgary weather, we had hail this afternoon.  My poor flowers!  I rushed out with an old sheet to cover them.  Living in a mountain basin has its drawbacks.                

What a great country!

For the second time in as many days, I actually cheer Globe and Mail columnist Jeffery Simpson's thoughts on our great country.  "No country has handled continuing mass immigration with as little social and political disruption as Canada," he writes.  "There are no backlash parties here -- no National Front, no UKIP, no anti-immigrant parties, no battles about immigration as in the United States. 

"Canada accepts more legal immigrants per capita than any other country," Simpson states.  He goes on to say that we are an experiment, where people of different backgrounds and languages can live together in harmony -- not perfect harmony, but remarkable harmony nonetheless.  He's right.  But one ethnic group that's not buying in is the aboriginal community.  Why?  Because they don't identify as "Canadian" (my words, not Simpson's). 

"Scarcely a week goes by without some non-aboriginal leader apologizing for past practices toward aboriginals.  What good all these apologies will do remains to be seen," he says.  In my view, apologies are not going to accomplish anything, save more digging on the part of aboriginal leaders. 

"One secret of pluralism's Canadian success is that no group that has arrived here during the past century or more has demanded, and received, special treatment.  So that whereas we place multiculturalism on the high altar of national symbolism (and allow people to self-identify, as individuals and collectivities, as being from there or there), within a remarkably short period of time, by world standards, people integrate."

This is why people who integrate cannot understand why first peoples claim special privileges, based solely on longevity of occupation.  It just doesn't make sense to integrated Canadians?  The reality is that it is the French- and English-speaking citizens who are by far the largest two groups -- the founding peoples of Canada.  And yet, any differences between the two have not been enough to split Canada.  Two referenda, constitutional battles, political fights, linguistic psychodrama, demands and backlashes have not managed to break this wonderful country up.  And they never will.

"Canada has flourished by any reasonable measure, offering its people an enviable standard of living, social peace, respect for law, robust public institutions and a sense of civility for which we should be grateful and that we must never take for granted."

It's a beauty way to go, say true-blue Canadians Bob and Doug McKenzie.  Amen.