Vancouver’s Lifeguard Legend

“Ruby Smith Diaz (l.) examines the life of Joe Fortes, a Black lifeguard in Vancouver, during a time of rampant racism, exploring his legacy and identity through research, personal reflections and poetry.FULL STORY

 

#44 Voting Day 2015

October 20th, 2015

It was Voting Day.

Todd came over and off we went to vote. In a village where everyone knows everything about everyone else, I dutifully showed my driver’s licence and we giggled when I proved I was me to everyone who already knew me. The scrutineer said that, so far, it was the best turn-out he’d seen.

We got back in Todd’s pickup and drove out to the “dump bridge” to see if there were any fish coming up the river. No sign of any Northern Coho but there were absolute swarms chum. And gulls, gulls, gulls, screaming and squawking.  On a gravel bar, in the sunlight, side-by-each, there were thirteen mergansers, all of them watching the river, lined up politely, enjoying the warmth of the day, anticipating going into the water, diving down and digging up nests of salmon eggs. You don’t often get to see thirteen mergansers like that, in a neat and tidy row.

The figs are finally coming ripe. It’s been a weird year, the figs usually come ripe toward the end of August, or the start of September, and this year they stayed very small and not the least bit ripe. And here we are, middle of October and some of them are so ripe they had started to split. I picked three of the ones threatening to split and one which had already done that, and took them over to my neighbour’s place. I left them on his table. He loves them. They’ll be a nice pick-me-up after a hard days’ work out at the quarry.

On here, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, we have a marble quarry at Hisnit where some of the finest white marble in the world is found. There’s a quarry in Italy which has a slightly better grade of marble but they’re nearly out of the stuff, which will mean the Hisnit marble will be top quality. It gets trucked from here to Duncan where there is a “mill” which cuts the blocks into countertops and such.

Then after dinner I started watching the election results.

Wow

It was reported that when Margaret Thatcher died, huge numbers of people danced in the streets of London, singing the song from Wizard of Oz, “dong dong / the witch is dead / the wicked witch is dead.”.  Well, Stephen Harper wasn’t exactly a witch and he isn’t exactly dead, but people are celebrating.

I’m a Salmonbelly. We’re taught from infancy that you don’t kick a man when he’s down, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time having a go at Harpy. I hated him. Didn’t know him personally, but I hated him for the things he has done to this country, and in particular to this coast.

So now the voters have soundly rejected him and his right-wing (USA-Republican-inspired) meanness, and have turned to Trudeau. Some media people are making admiring noises about a “dynasty.” They are goo’ing that Justin will be moving into 24 Sussex Street, returning to his childhood home.

As my granddaughter would say, “gag me with a spoon.”

Did folks forget that Justin has supported much that Harpy did?  Have so many people not looked at the fact that we’re very apt to have voted in Harpy-Lite? We might not get saddled with those wretched helicopters but we might not get rid of enough of the Secret Squirrel spying-on-citizens crap to ensure our personal freedoms are, in fact, free.

Bill C-51 is a dreadful fascist move to control us. They can even slap you in jail, without a lawyer, for something they think you might be thinking. Justin Trudeau supported it.
I’m relieved that in my riding the Orange came out on top. I am disappointed the NDP got a total shellacking. They aren’t going to recover from this kick in the arse within my lifetime.  And I can’t help but feel they deserve it.

This election, it was to gag a maggot how many times we heard the term “middle class families” and “middle class values” and various other iterations of middle class. It almost became a contest of who was more middle class than whom.

Well, whatever happened to the working class? Are there so many temporary foreign workers in the country that the number of jobs have evaporated until there are no Canadians working? Is that how the working class has vanished?

The same boys in the backroom who advised and directed the provincial NDP into losing an election in B.C. they were in line to win are the ones who crushed the orange crush and sent the federal NDP into near oblivion. Shakespeare had one of his kings wail, “Will no one rid me of this #$%^ priest?” Well, will no one rid us of those fershlugginer back room boys who seem to be doing more for the Liberals than for the NDP?
The only chance I see for the NDP is to haul out the CCF Manifesto, dust it off, and get back to the socialist roots so admirably put forward by T.C. Douglas. Get in touch with the forgotten and ignored voters, the working class.

I should take the orange sign out of my front window. But I’m bloody-minded enough to leave it up for a few more days.

From where I sit, we mice have just given the boot to the black cats and put the white cats on the throne.

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.

 

 

 

One Response to “#44 Voting Day 2015”

  1. Thank you for another accurate, astute and very funny analysis of the recent election, Anne. I also appreciate your writing, for the way that a ride with a neighbour to the polls intertwines with figs ripening at last, the progress of the salmon run, the polite row of merganser ducks and duplicitous voting patterns, among other delights. Yes, democracy depends on us all paying close attention to certain voting patterns in the House, long after our town and country polls have closed for another four or five years…

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