#46 Bloviation Black still haunts us
November 05th, 2015
I had six kids trick or treating on Hallowe’en. My daughter got four. We don’t have a lot of kids in the village and most of them go to the Rec Centre for the big get-together there.
Halfway through supper the celestial light show cut loose, lightning and thunder which rolled up and down the inlet and sent down such sheets of rain that I’m told they had trouble getting the community bonfire to burn. So they cancelled the fireworks and will set them off at a later date.
Just as well, there’s nothing they could have come up with which would have rivalled what Mother Nature was contributing to the spooky celebration. I don’t “do” costumes. I don’t know why so many adults do. People trying to hang onto the tattered remnants of childhood?
Well, even though Hallowe’en just passed, if you still want to be scared, just go and Google the words Northern Foundation. Be prepared to feel deeply chilled. These guys could scare the KKK. Which only makes me wonder even more than ever what’n’heck Conrad Bloviation Black is doing in Canada?
Lord Tubby renounced his Canadian citizenship so he could become a Lord in England. Then he got sent to the slammer in the USA. Once out of the crowbar hotel, he comes across the border, back into Canada, the country he had renounced, and he’s been here since.
As a convicted felon, Conrad Black shouldn’t have been allowed entry into Canada but his return seems to have been just about as slick as deerguts on a doorknob.
Kinda sorta makes a person wonder.
After those Tofino drownings, can someone tell me why none of our provincial politicians are speaking up about the need to rebuild the coast guard? If the people of Ahousat hadn’t been so quick to respond the death toll from the overturning whale watching boat might have been much higher.
Full kudos to the Ahousats but the feds don’t have any reason to feel good about what happened. We can only hope the new government will be a bit less doltish about coastal protection before there’s a huge tragedy.
Now Winter is coming. Two days ago I noticed a bird in my Chinese plum tree, a very distinctive and quite beautiful little guy. My “daughter of another mother” was here for our morning coffee and chat and I pointed out this stranger. She had never seen anything like it, either. So out with the birds of the coast book, and we wound up going page by page (except for the ducks, we knew it wasn’t a duck!). Bird wasn’t in the book. Later, I get an e-mail from her and she has gone to a website which features birds of the world. And there he was!
Smith’s longspur. Doesn’t even belong in this part of the world. Is that a good thing? Or is this more strangeness, courtesy of global warming? Either way, if Smith’s longspur doesn’t get on his way soon the weather might keep him trapped here all winter. I thought Lord Black might have to be forgotten in response to more important matters. How do I feed a Smith’s longspur. Plums and imported nectarines? Some watermelon or some dried figs? But Smith’s longspur has vamoosed. So that lovely distraction is gone.
What in hell is a “pundit”, anyway? I know the dictionary says it is an expert who frequently gives opinions in public… who decides who is an “expert” and who is just a windbag. I ask because of all these “pundits” suddenly going on at great length about the number of women in Trudeau’s cabinet… ah, they say, cabinet positions should be determined by merit, not gender… as if, automatically, the fact the women are women means they are probably not fit, that they lack merit.
Merit? Oh, Like Joe Oliver, I suppose… or Peter McKay flying around in air force helicopters so he could have a fun-filled fishing trip, or…. y’know? Why did “merit” suddenly become such a big deal? I would modestly suggest every one of those women was chosen because she is fully capable of doing at least as well in that job than whoever the wealthy white male was who was formerly occupying the position. Wasn’t it Charlotte Whitton who said a woman has to be twice as good as a man in order to get half as far? She added, fortunately, it’s not hard.
I mean, really, John Baird?
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Anne Cameron grows pussywillows on the western edge of Vancouver Island. She received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia in 2010. Her 23 books include Daughters of Copper Woman, the bestselling work of fiction ever written about B.C. and published from within B.C. She has banished herself to Tahsis, a small town not far from Friendly Cove where the shenanigans called British Columbia all began.
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