A "gender" budget!!??

What's next, an LGBTQ budget?!?!  A Black Lives Matter budget??!!  Probably.  Whatever happened to budgets about the finances of the country?? 

And don't get me started on child care.  The working women of my generation figured that out more than 40 years ago.  When I had my first baby 42 years ago, I knew I had to hire a "wife" if I wanted to keep working.  So I did.  I hired a very expensive live-in nanny and after six months, went back to work.  But back then, we didn't get a year off.  We got six months and "a" job back, not our own.  And we didn't get our salary, we got unemployment.  It was disconcerting indeed to return to the office to find someone else sitting in yours doing yours.

I also had to deal with two step-children and their care in the face of  their very bitter and hostile mother.  Oh, how much fun was that!  Not. 

But I regret nothing.

As part of the generation that went to the barricades for working mothers, I am appalled when I see well-educated mothers sitting on their asses at home.  These women took up expensive seats in post-secondary institutions, got good degrees and then decided to stay home.  That is not what we fought for.  We fought so new mothers could go back to work and not lose their jobs.  Actually, I take it personally and usually give these women an earful.  "I'm so glad I have the choice to stay home," they say.  Really?  Hey ladies, support yourselves and do something society values in the workforce.  Society still penalizes women for having the biological function of having children, but women have to accept it and keep working.  Them's the facts. 

Even if we lost ground by staying home for a while, we overcame and moved on.  My kids had a myriad of child-care situations -- nannies, daycare, after-school programs, neighbours -- and they prospered.  I didn't wait for "the government" to figure out my choices.  And as I say, that was 42 years ago!
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Just have to say a word about Kurt Browning.  If I have to see and listen to him one more time about the "Chip reverse mortgage" program, I am going to scream!  As much as I used to love the guy, I'm about to say I no longer do.  At least they have dropped that sad ad he did with the great Don Jackson.   

What a joke

• Strategic brilliance, with the ability to assess what the future holds,
• The capacity to make decisions, drive performance, build business and create partnerships,
• Significant leadership experience at the CEO level,
• Experience leading complex business transformation,
• blah, blah, blah..............

These are the requirements for the position of president and chief executive officer at Canada Post.  Really?  Who can predict what the future holds?  Right there you have a problem.  This was contained in a full-page ad in 'The Economist' this week.  Imagine what that would have cost?! 

All you need to run Canada Post is the ability to push back on the unions and deliver the ever-diminishing mail Canadians are sending these days.  Welcome to the world of social media.  Period, the end.  You don't have to be a brilliant statistician to deal with the likes of the late Joe Davidson and Jean-Claude Parrot.  Remember those two?  They singlehandedly ruined Canada Post, after which Davidson went back to Scotland with his big, fat pension and promptly died. 

B and I were thinking about who could run the Post Office and we came up with the names of a few ADMs he had dealt with back in the day in Correctional Services; I came up with one name, Louis Huneault -- one of the smartest, toughest DMs I ever had the pleasure of working with. 

To run that mess, you have to be tough and smart -- a hard combination to find.   

Cherry pickers

The natives enthusiastically quote The Indian Act, various treaties and The Constitution when it suits them, but when it comes to lawful, jury verdicts they don't like, they are up-in-arms.  It's called lawlessness and anarchy. 

Both verdicts in the latest cases involving natives were reached fairly within the legal system, but who cares?!  The juries have spoken.  Period, the end.  But who cares?!  If there weren't daily marches, I wouldn't keep writing about this, but it just keeps getting worse.  Marches are being held all across Canada and I'm getting sick of it.  Even 'The Globe and Mail' is chiming in about "justice for Tina".  It's outrageous.  She's had justice, due process and every other legal remedy and that should be that.  Here's an unruly, hysterical mob yesterday.  Wonder if they paid for a permit for the march?  Now there's a rhetorical question! 

 

You can't read it, but the bag in the foreground reads, "People over pipelines."  How dumb.  Where do natives think the billions they are handed comes from?  They're standing on it.  Oil. 

 

 

Here's the witless editorial in 'The Globe' today.  Boy, that once-inspirational newspaper has sunk to the level of a trashy tabloid.  





Still upsets me

"There is the record of your baptism," the priest said to my late Uncle, when they met to plan his funeral.  A proud French Canadian, "R" wanted his funeral held at that same Church, Sacre Coeur in Sandy Hill, and B had gone along to help plan it at the request of my cousin.  They were reading the handwritten notice of his baptism, inscribed more than 90 years earlier.

So, when he died in 2014 and I went to Ottawa for the funeral, I was dismayed to see it was not being held at Sacre Coeur, but rather at an English parish a couple of blocks away -- one in which Uncle R had not set foot.  I suspect it was my cousin's wife who orchestrated this manoeuver, because that's the sort of thing she does, but I didn't say anything at the time -- very uncharacteristic indeed.  Why she could not have honoured her father-in-law's final wishes and had him buried out of his childhood parish I do not understand?

(Since she has basically turned my cousin against me, I have no problem finally saying what I have been thinking about this bait-and-switch operation for a number of years.  It was mean-spirited and selfish.) 

Here is the last picture of us.  He was the last of my parent's generation and I still miss him terribly. 

 

 

 

Am I the only one?

The entire front page of today's Globe and Mail was given over to a drawing of Tina Fontaine, the native girl found dead in Winnipeg a few years ago.  The man charged with having killed her was found not guilty a couple of days ago and people have gone insane. 

Am I the only one who reports on the actual facts of this case?  Apparently.  I have yet to read or hear anything that covers what really happened, that she was in the care of her mother at the time, who didn't notice she was missing for a week.  A week!  This is the same mother deemed unfit to raise her from the time she had been born.

But the capper was CTV's interview yesterday of Perry Bellegarde, chief of the AFN.  Not answering a single question, all he did was rail against the system.  "We need more indigenous lawyers.  We need more indigenous judges and jurors.  We need more indigenous crown prosecutors!" he ranted.

Really?  Where are you going to find them?  Certainly not on the remote reserves, where you insist they remain so you can get money.  Living in Upper Rubber Boot Saskatchewan, the only jobs open aren't doctor or lawyer -- just Indian chief, as the rhyme goes. 

Today's journalists are a very unprofessional bunch.  They are lazy and don't bother to get the whole story.  To think that 'The Globe and Mail' is part of this crowd is outrageous.  Man, have they slipped.     

What a knob

I refer to that sanctimonious hypocrite David Suzuki.  'The Globe and Mail' has a regular feature entitled "20 Questions"; this week they interviewed perhaps the most egomaniacal phoney in the public thoroughfare. 

What is the greatest issue facing Vancouver?

"Like every city in the world -- climate change."

I have a bulletin for him:  Lil' old mankind cannot really affect climate change.  Natural warming and cooling of the earth has happened for millenia and whatever we do -- or don't -- doesn't make any difference.  Back a few centuries, they were growing wine in Scotland, it was so temperate, so car exhaust wasn't the problem. 

Least favourite holiday?

"Victoria Day."

That response is so obvious it's ridiculous.  Another bulletin:  Canada is part of the Commonwealth, of which The Queen is head, and we celebrate Victoria Day to honour our heritage.  Guess he doesn't realize in which country he resides.  Must still feel downtrodden and oppressed, poor thing.

What is Vancouver's greatest park?

"It's not a park, but it should be.  Namely, the entire shoreline."

So unrealistic it's laughable.  Someone needs to stop this guy before he corrupts more gullibles than he already has!

If, thanks to a time machine, you travelled back to 1975 and had the floor at a city council meeting, what advice would you offer?

"Give all Crown land back to Indigenous people of the area."

OMG!  I certainly hope he follows through and donates his own house and land to the Indigenous people it was "stolen" from.  And by the way, how many Indigenous people have served in the Canadian Parliament?  I can't think of one who has bothered. 

And my favourite.......

If you had $1 million to give to charity, what cause would you select?

"People working to find an alternative to capitalism."

Sorry to say "OMG" again, but OMG!  This guy's entire life has been built around capitalism.  How does he think he gets to travel around and promote climate change?  His foundation relies on capitalism and the people who make money and donate to it.  In a breathtaking admission, he said the money he was given for winning an environment award from Monaco he spent on a lavish vacation to French Polynesia!  "I decided not to give it to my foundation," he actually said, without realizing how ridiculous it was.  I guess he'd rather let other evil capitalists donate to his foundation instead. 

Can't decide if he's worse than Neil Young, or at par when it comes to hypocrisy.  Probably a toss up.  On principle, whenever 'The Nature of Things' appears on TV, I switch channels.   
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I don't like to....

...speak ill of the dead, but reading about the death of Sonia Bata, I relived many negative memories of having worked with her.  In 1975, I was in charge of the "Vincent Massey Awards for Excellence in the Urban Environment."  Sponsored by The Canada Council, The Massey Foundation and Canada Mortgage and Housing, the award had a luminous group of judges; Sonia was one of them.

Forty-nine at the time, Mrs. Bata was quite frankly a bi-ch -- especially with me, a 28-year-old, fairly good-looking woman.  She was haughty, dismissive, rude, over-bearing and opinionated.  She didn't like me, that was clear.  In fact, she didn't like women in general.  However, I was solicitous of her and treated her with respect because that was my job. 

Looking back, I wonder how I got this job?  I think it was my private-sector experience in Toronto with IBM, Maclean-Hunter and Dupont of Canada, where I had to work with a myriad of people from all over Canada and the world.  Weekly meetings about the award program's progress were held with Humphrey Carver, Ian McLennan and Hart Massey, during which I was grilled.  Hart Massey was also a nasty guy who never gave me one word of encouragement.  Instead, he criticized everything I did. 

Happily, the program went off without a hitch and we had the award presented by then-Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn at Rideau Hall.  Luckily, I was able to avoid Mrs. Bata. 

RIP anyway.