Do you have the receipt?

That's the first clue b-llshit is about to rain down.  "No, of course I don't have the receipt," I replied to the clerk in the jewellery store when I brought back a broken ring this morning.  "It's been a year and I didn't think this ring would snap for no reason.  Afterall, my husband paid more than $1 K and there were no instructions given that it be worn only while stationary," I replied.

"I must be in your system," I said, "because you asked for more coordinates than I had to give when I gave birth."  She then checked and found me, of course, so why she needed a receipt was just BS.  "You bought this just over a year ago and you didn't buy the 'care package', so I'm afraid there's nothing we can do," this b-tch announced. 

"So, you mean to tell me that you don't stand by your thousand-dollar product when it falls apart after 10 minutes?" I said.  Sorry, was all I got.  I grabbed the ring and said, "I have a blog, which thousands of people read and I intend to put this fraud on facebook, so good luck with trying to run your business."   

How outrageous.  B had bought the ring last year, when I had been laid up with a hip injury.  Sweetly, he wanted to cheer me up.

The store is 'Paris Jewellers" in Market Mall in Calgary.  Never shop there. 

Back to "queer"

"Honey, you're not gay, you're miserable," said a dear friend when her son told her in tears he was gay.  She was the Doyenne of New Orleans, the daughter-in-law of a former governor to whom everyone paid homage, very rich and one of the most charming women I have ever known.  Dead now, Betty was very old-school, so "gay" didn't mean to her what it had morphed into.  I too was brought up in the era when "gay" was "happy" and "queer" meant homosexual.  We didn't refer to someone as "queer", we referred to them as "a queer".  Back then, something or someone could still be "queer", such as the colour of a car or the shape of a dress, but a homosexual was "a queer". 

But all that changed a number of years ago and G-d help you if you dared use the word "queer"!  Now I see it's shifted back to "queer" for some unknown reason??  What's that all about?  Owning your "queerness"?  I have no clue? 

The Pride parades this season have brought this to the fore.  I don't care what people call themselves, or what their sexual orientation because it's all a one to me.  However, what I continue to be perturbed about are the outrageous outfits participants wear, which means I cannot bring my grandchildren to watch.  As the sister of a homosexual man who committed suicide 35 years ago, I would like to be involved, but the sexual bumping and base grinding on the floats is abhorrent and not fit for little eyes.

I also think it wrong to have excluded the police from the parade in Toronto this year.  The police have made enormous progress in how they treat "LGBTQXYZLMNOP" people (I've become so confused about categories) and it is too bad parade organizers have seen fit to kick them out.  I also think the organizers have been negatively influenced by the aggressively in-your-face "Black Lives Matter" gang of hooligans who have busted into every issue they can glob onto and shoved their single-minded agenda down everybody's throats. 

I'm for inclusion.  Get over yourselves.     

Who knew!?

And to think, all this time I had no clue that my entire understanding of Canada, its people, its landscape, its history and its place in the world was solely thanks to the brilliance, insight and wisdom of Peter Mansbridge.  Wow!

"He's a Canadian icon," waxed an enraptured Jennifer McGuire, general manager of CBC news.  "For a lot of us, we experienced this country and history through his guidance.  He's been the front door to our understanding of our country and our world.  I think there's a relationship there and that happens in broadcast in a very real way.  They feel they have a relationship with Peter," said the hypnotized McGuire.  For a moment there, I thought she was going to need a cigarette. 

No wonder he is referred to with such reverence as "Pastor Mansbridge".  I feel completely chastened for not having acknowledged him in the religious sense for so many years. 

But wait a minute, what about other -- albeit minor -- Canadian historians?  What about Peter Newman, Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat, Mel Hurtig, Michael Bliss and all those high school history teachers we had?  And to think The Pastor is even superior than the most renowned Canadian critic and historian ever, Northrop Frye!  Didn't they all tell us a bit about our history?  I realize they weren't a patch on His Lordship, but I seem to recall these people having had something to do with what we know about Canada. 

But I have to be wrong because other luminaries such as Adrienne Arsenault (who?), Tom Clark (who again?) and Mark Kelley also went into paroxysms of praise for the soon-to-retire Pastor.  "Peter has incredible insight on what goes on inside the CBC and even outside the CBC," swooned Kelley.  Wow, a supposed journalist who actually may know what goes on outside the Mother Corp!  That's an incredible feat. 

He claims one of his most inspired hires was 'Power and Politics' host Rosemary Barton, but I beg to differ.  In my view, Barton is an unserious, mouthy, giggling, fat, inappropriate mass of buffoonery.  As to Mansbridge himself?  He is a lazy journalist (and I use the word lightly) who just reads what's put in front of him every night.  If you compare the BBC's coverage of an event with that of the CBC, you'll see that absolutely no original research ever goes into anything the CBC reports on.  Ever.  His worst sin, among so many, is how he introduces 'The National' every evening.  "Good evening, I'm Peter Mansbridge and this is The National."  No, shouldn't it be, "This is The National and I'm Peter Mansbridge."  Incredibly, he actually puts himself above world news and current events!   

Mansbridge can't hang it up fast enough for me, but guess what?  He's not actually hauling his egomaniacal ass out the door after all.  No, he's going to be doing specials on "things that interest me".  Well, that would be a series of features on himself.

OMG.  Please, just go away.....   

Kill me now

The whole file is getting completely out of control.  Yesterday, the hapless Trudeau-lite stood on a dais outside the abandoned and derelict US Embassy building on Wellington and declared that the most important relationship Canada has is with its native people.  He then announced he was turning the dump over to the natives for.....oh, I dunno...something native.  That will be for natives to decide.  Using our money. 

Architect Doug Cardinal immediately denounced the gesture as, "giving an old building no one wants (it has been left to seed since 1999) to a bunch of Indians."  Yet while he was railing against this demeaning "colonial" move, natives in Toronto were celebrating the naming of Massey College's Chapel dedicated to St. Catharine as Canada's third Chapel Royal.  "It is an act of inclusion and solidarity between the Crown and indigenous peoples," said someone in a press release. 

So, on the one hand colonials are vehemently denounced and on the other...well, you get it.  More forked tongue. 

A number of years ago, all the English streets in Montreal were re-named in honour of Quebec politicians.  In a pc "move du jour", Dorchester was tossed for Rene Levesque and Robert Bourassa replaced the venerable and historic University boulevard. 

But now the tables have been turned in the latest "du jour" move and T-Lite has decided to chuck a francophone name -- Hector-Louis Langevin -- in favour of a native one.  You have to remember that the Langevin Block houses the privy council office, as well as that of the PM, and is a very historic edifice.  But because poor, old Langevin -- a Father of Confederation -- came up with the vile residential school system, he is to be dumped onto the rubble pile of history.  Never mind that there was no other way to educate native children at the time, that's all over.  Yes, bad things happened in those schools, but bad things happen in boarding schools all over the world. 

Here's my prediction:  when Trudeau announces the appointment of a new Governor General in a few months, it will be a native woman -- someone like Cindy Blackstock or Roberta Jamieson.  I guarantee this is where we're headed.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, just that it will be done for all the wrong "du jour" reasons.     
  

He gets the Order of Canada?!

Gord Downie?!!  Really!!!!!  For what?  For having terminal brain cancer and befriending natives?  Yep, that's about it.  Talk about de-valuing the currency of this honour, wow!  But then Trudeau skipped out on his PM duties a while ago to go to one of The Hip's concerts, so he's a fan and guess who makes the appointments. 

Inappropriately, Downie looked like a complete bum at Rideau Hall walking up to the Governor General who was awaiting.  The guy is a shaman "townie" from Kingston.  And to have the GG pin the undeserved medal on this egomaniac's tattered jean jacket was the ultimate insult to a fine gentleman decked out it appropriate formal attire.  Here is how Downie appeared:

 

Give the guy the Governor General's Award of Excellence in the Performing Arts, he certainly deserves that, but not the Order of Canada.  The natives don't need any more encouragement, thanks.

And then there was the bro-ha-ha when David Johnston called the natives "immigrants".  Well duh, they were.  "...our, quote indigenous people, unquote, who were immigrants as well 10, 12, 14,000 years ago," said the GG.  Correct, which is why he said, "quote unquote" to denote that they weren't really indigenous because we all came from Africa and Asia, or the "Garden of Eden" as many people believe.  Just to clarify, a Nigerian friend told me, the Garden of Eden is in Africa, Nancy.  Well, of course it is.  I recently had my "23 and Me" genetics done and we all started with the same basics, i.e., Neanderthal.   

On cue, grievance-culture mobs went insane when the GG called natives "immigrants", calling for Johnston to resign.  But as Globe columnist John Ivison pointed out in an excellent piece today, they have the wrong man.  "A less reactionary public figure is hard to imagine," Ivison wrote.  Apparently, "migrant" would have been a better word because there was no immigration system when they crossed the Bearing Straight.  But frankly, I never know what to call natives?  Yes, they came first, but they are not "first nations" because they are not "nations"; look it up.  Neither are they indigenous because they didn't poof here from the start of mankind as we know it.  As I said, that happened in Africa.  And I certainly would never refer to them as "Indians", a nomenclature mistakenly applied when early explorers thought they had landed in India.   

"There is a strain of righteousness that is so convinced of its own veracity that it de-bases perceived opponents," Ivison points out.  "It is not a tactic that will work on this Governor General.  When your reputation is built on a lifetime of flying straight, it is hard to warp."

Quite right. 
   

 

Finally

So, the chiefs and band council of Onion Lake Cree reserve have now been ordered by the court to open their books.  It's about time.  Charmaine Stick, a native activist and band member, partnered with the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation and took the recalcitrant bunch to court for consistently refusing to disclose their salaries, expenses and basic financial information.

Who the eff do they think they are with their "let them eat cake" attitude?  You can bet there have been considerable "irregularities" with the books of this band that straddles the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border.  Sadly, I know they will continue to fight this -- probably all the way to the Supreme Court.  Woe betide poor Ms. Stick if wacko Beverley McLachlin is still in charge because her rulings are a crap-shoot of all-over-the-map nonsense.  Her problem is she is a theoretician who has never run a chip stand so has no clue how the real world works. 

I'll be glad to see the backside of her out the door in the Fall, but with the hapless Trudeau in charge the sky's the limit on what bleeding heart he will appoint.  In the meantime, I hope that other bleeding heart Carolyn Bennett wakes up and smells the financially accountable coffee.

But as Neil Armstrong said, this ruling is "one small step for man."  Whether the giant leap for mankind will follow is anybody's guess. 

Shut up

That's what BC and Quebec need to do about oil and the "dangers" pipelines pose to the environment.  The financial facts put these two provinces -- as well as all the Maritime ones -- in a very poor position.  This country desperately needs Alberta and the energy industry, which fuel economic growth from coast to coast (didn't add another "to coast" because I hate that lame cliche). 

Here's the deal:

• Alberta contributes more money to the rest of Canada via transfer payments than any other province;
• Every single man, woman and child in Alberta contributed $5,501 to the rest of Canada according to the latest stats available;
• BC sent a measly $1,030;
• Quebec contributed nothing, but was an entitled recipient of $1,896 for every man, woman and child in that mouthy and demanding province; and
• PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Newfoundland were also takers.

So, Quebec and BC need to shut up about the evils of oil and let the pipelines through.  Of course, even if they had a Pauline conversion and did so, the natives would be lying  in the path of every bulldozer along the route -- not realizing they are blocking the very money needed to pay them their unconditional billions of $$$$ every year.

Dumb and dumber.