Do you really think....

...much will change at St. Michael's School in the wake of the scandal?  Frankly, I don't.  It will just go further underground and get worse -- especially for those who blew the whistle.  It's all a right-of-passage which has gone on forever.  Heck, I remember frosh week at Carleton, during which we were dragged around and made to do very dumb -- but fun -- stuff. 

And you could not say "no"; you just had to go with it.  Now, I admit using weapons to abuse the boys was pretty brutal, but that's just how things escalate.  Think William Golding's classic 1954 'Lord of the Flies'; think Patty Hearst and the "Stockholm Syndrome".  That's how it all works.  That's how cults work -- and many religions too. 

In fact, engineering students at Queen`s are still the worst and nothing changes.  Engineers are engineers.  Get over it because they can't get over themselves.  When daughter was there, the engineering dorm had signs plastered in the windows saying, " 'No' means more beer!"
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Here's another one I don't get:  `Black Friday`.  Why do we have this in Canada?  Our Thanksgiving was weeks ago, so this is not ours.  But, stupidly, forgetting it was "Black Friday", B and I went to Market Mall yesterday to find it swarming!  I actually had time to drink an entire glass of wine in the time it took poor B to circle and circle the parking lot trying to grab a space!

p.s.  We didn't buy anything.  Here is a sad depiction:

 



        

Thank you Joe Davidson

I remember when Joe Davidson was head of the postal union and you couldn't even understand him because of his severe Scottish accent.  He -- along with the naïve Lester Pearson -- gave postal workers the right to strike.  The disgruntled Davidson brought his British-labour-bad-attitude to Canada and the post office has never been the same. 

What a dumb move. 

After collecting a big salary and pension, Davidson promptly moved back to Scotland and died, leaving the rest of Canada with a whopping mess.  Even turning it into a crown corporation hasn't helped the disaster that is the post office.  Remember his successor Jean-Claude Parrot?  What a sullen soul he was.  Pissed off at everything all the time.  I see now the union has rejected the latest offer, so everything will be effed up for Christmas.

But, in my feeble mind, all labour grievances are the fault of management.  How long has this been going on?  For more than a year.  What have the people who run Canada Post been doing?  I remember when B became DG of training and development at Correctional Services.  The first thing he did was meet with the union and set down some basic ground rules, respect and understanding.  I have to tell you that I know three former vice-presidents of Canada Post and they were all women.  What does that tell you?  And the president now?  Another woman.  Sorry, but there we are.  (But I also know one former MP, who failed to get re-elected and was handed a cushy job high in the ranks there and he was a man; must be a place to dump incompetents because this guy -- we'll call him "DR" -- certainly was.)

There was not one iota of a problem in CSC the whole five years B was there.  If you have a union problem, you have a management problem.  So now I will get neither my Amazon-ordered fireplace garland, nor my bangle for Christmas. 

Oh well, it's not cancer.   

Another botch-up

The arrogance of the governor general seems to know no bounds.  Apparently, she is refusing to move into Rideau Hall.  Really?!  Wow!  She has been living at Rideau Gate while renovations and repairs were made to her official residence, but now has decided not to move into where she belongs. 

I have been to, and worked in, Rideau Hall when I ran the Vincent Massey Awards for Excellence in the Urban Environment back in 1975-76.  I had many meetings there and enjoyed coffee in the kitchen and trust me, it was a very comfortable place.  Apparently, she thinks it's too big.  Well, most of it is not used except for formal occasions; the private living quarters are lovely and cozy.  So, she is hindering the NCC which needs to house foreign dignitaries in Rideau Gate by staying there as a contrarian.  Were I in charge of the NCC, I'd house foreign visitors in Rideau Hall and she could stay outside the gates.  And when she deigns to move in, I'd tell her that she had to wait because the Prime Minister of Japan, or the president of Lower Slobovia was in residence at Rideau Hall.  Time to play a little chess with the imperious Ms. Payette.  p.s.  How can you be "imperious" and a "separatist" at the same time?   

A good friend from Montreal told me a while ago that scratch every French Canadian and you will find a separatist.  "Oh Oui, oui, oui," he said.  "Trust me, we are all separatists."  Frankly, that's what I think Payette's problem is.  She thinks she is making a statement for Quebec and is actually superior to Her Majesty herself!  So, that's why she doesn't want to move into a Vice-Regal residence.  It's not "French" enough -- or at all. 

A very bad choice by "Mr. Feminist".

J-sus! No!

To think that the Silver Cross Mother had to take a back seat to the punk son of the Governor General!  People, get a grip!  It has to be said:  The protocol of the Remembrance Day Ceremony in Ottawa has been officially destroyed. 

Payette has no husband, so show up on your own.  Don't bring your son as your "escort" and for Gawd's sake, don't have him stroll up to lay a wreath!  It was outrageous!  There he was, a nobody, swanning around The Cenotaph with "mummy", his hair hanging about all over, while honoured vets had to walk behind his ass.  Do you think the military would tolerate his hairdo?  That was a rhetorical question.   

OMG, Please!

The other "nobody" was Sophie Trudeau.  What the eff was she doing there?  Last time I checked, she had not been elected prime minister, so why was she there laying a wreath?!?!  She should be with the "grim groper" in France, having café with Macron's wife -- another nobody, but at least she is at her husband's side in the role of "wife".  Would she have been laying a wreath were Macron unable?  Hardly.  The French don't behave that way.  Trudeau's groping incident has obviously turned Gregoire off because she's nowhere to be seen these days. 

"Oh, you must be a grit," said the now-leader of the Senate to me a number of years ago when I met him at a cocktail party.  Shortly after, when the Conservatives won, he and Eric Nielsen were busy drawing up lists of senior public servants to be fired because the Conservatives were in power and paranoid.  At the time Peter Harder insulted me, I was the DG of Public Affairs in Customs and Excise.  I must have been on his list -- as was B -- but we still managed to survive to collect pensions.  A brilliant turncoat, Harder managed to switch allegiances, ending up as DM of Foreign Affairs and now leader of the Liberals in the Senate.

What a death-defying about-face!  From a frothing Conservative to a "loyal" Liberal, Harder was there with his two faces hanging out alongside other "dignitaries" at The Cenotaph.  It's an insult to veterans everywhere.  Here is my hero:

My late Uncle Rollie, Major R.M. Brousseau, a proud WW II vet.

 

Seen one...........

...seen 'em all.  Frankly, any "John Peter" I've ever seen looks like every other:  Ugly and grey.  What could have been so special about Tony Clement's dick that compelled him to send pictures and a video of it to some woman?  I mean, I know the guy's as ugly as sin, so maybe he thought a picture of his nether parts was a better bet than his wall-eyed face?  But as I always say, if you are going to have an affair, have it with someone who has as much to lose as you.  This woman must be unmarried and without children because anyone with a husband and kids would not want this out, about and frolicking in the public thoroughfare.

What an idiot.  So, that's him done. Caput. Finito.  Forever.

What is superlatively stupid is that it took Andrew Scheer so long to blast the guy.  When it appeared it had been an isolated incident, Scheer was actually going to support him.  Really?!  "Well, he only sent a picture and video of his dick to one woman, so we can just let it go," Scheer must have thought.  Then, when it became clear Clement had been a serial dickster, he decided to kick him out of caucus -- all the while "wishing him well on his journey of healing."  What a joke!  Scheer should have come down hard (pardon the reference) on Clement and kicked him to the curb immediately. 

And as for the grim groper himself, Trudeau, what does he have to say?  I guess not much, his own hands having wandered all over some young woman a few years ago.
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But what I really want to rave about is money.  More for the natives.  Tom Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, wrote a piece in The Calgary Herald that made me seethe.  Here we go:

• $16.5 billion over seven years for the splitting of Indian and Northern Affairs into two departments;
• $71 million to fund programs available to new status Indians;
• $1 billion is Metis claims;
• $250 million a year for 10 years to fund new claims;
• $6 billion to settle historic claims;
• $750 million for "sixties scoop" claims; and
• $1.1 billion for Indians who contracted tuberculosis

That's not an exhaustive list and it's over and above what they routinely get every year, i.e., $17 billion.  It's an outrage and a disgrace. 
  

Puppy dogs and fairy dust

Don't know why I am on facebook, other than to keep in touch with immediate family.  I mean, you'd think the fact that after having been acquitted of blasphemy by a lawful court in Pakistan, a Christian woman would be free to go on with her life.  And you'd also think that someone would have something to say about this horror on facebook. 

But no.  Huge crowds in Pakistan are calling for her to be hanged anyway, yet no one says a peep on facebook.  It's all puppy dogs, fairy dust and silliness. 

As usual, I am out-of-step.   

No fun anymore

If he wasn't leaping out of bedroom windows because someone's husband had come home, he was hitchhiking to tournaments all over North America, or nursing a hangover through the first set of a championship match. 

I am talking about the greatest amateur tennis star of the sixties -- and maybe all time -- Whitney Reed.  Throughout his career, he beat the best of them, but had a ton of fun doing it.  So did Emerson and Laver, who co-wrote a wonderful book entitled, "Tennis for the Bloody Fun of It".

Sadly, those days are long gone.  No one's having any. 

Take the eternally-injured and always-boring Milos Raonic.  Having withdrawn from the Monte Carlo Masters in April and missing the clay-court season and French Open, Raonic pulled out of the Paris Masters with yet another right elbow injury.  Gee, wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that his next opponent was to have been Federer?  The guy is an embarrassment, always needing court-side treatment on his back and every other body part during matches.  Why this is allowed is a mystery?  Why are tennis players permitted to stop dead in the middle of matches to call for a masseur?  If you're losing because your back hurts, you lose. 

Whitney Reed would never have done that. 

But worse is Denis Shapovalov's ditching Paris because he was "exhausted".  What??!!  You're 19 years old, for Gawd's sake.  How can you be "exhausted"?  Another Canadian bites the dust to national shame.

But one of the all-time toppers is the chronically-broken Raphael Nadal.  Returning from a right-knee injury, which saw him retire from the US Open, Nadal also bailed on Paris.  "Maybe I can play today, but if I try to win, my abdomen will be injured for sure," he said.  "It would not be fair to say it is a real injury, but if I play it will be," he continued.  In other words, I am not injured, but I might be injured, so I won't play. 

How's that for logic!  Hey, I haven't been hit by a car yet, but if I go out today I might be, so I'll just stay home.  That's what the guy is actually saying.

Waaaaay too much money and over-training has ruined the game.  Whitney, where are you when we need you?