Category Archives: Humour

Jun 12 2019
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Economy, Humour, Society

Gigging it in the free world

Are you weary of your reliable job? Do your paid vacation, company pension plan and full medical coverage leave you cold? Are you pining for the sort of precarious work that only self-employment can promise?iStock-589429506-e1559794167654Well, friend, you’ve come to the right place.

Here, at GigsRUs, we won’t bore you with bromides about workplace security, dignity and other horse hockey that, frankly, lull lesser beings. No sir!

We’re a jobs board with an edge so sharp you could cut an artery. Take a gander at one of our recent postings: “Got a PhD? Got a GPA so high that the folks who give out the at the Nobel Prizes think your too damn good for them? Fuhgeddaboudit! You want ‘flexible’ hours. You want to wear a nifty uniform. You want a pair of steel-toed boots. You want to answer the phone at 2 in the morning. You want $12.50 an hour. Am I right?”

Absolutely, because our clients know that what you really you crave is the challenge only daily threats of personal ruin and imminent bankruptcy actually offer.

We also know that you are not alone in this great, undeveloped greenfield we dearly call ‘the Atlantic Canadian economy’.

In this region, more and more people of every age and background are choosing to get with the part-time job market. They’re ‘gigging it’ like trapeze artists drawing each breath as if it’s their very last. That’s how much they cherish a little something we like to call ‘freedom’.

But don’t just take our word for it.

According to the latest labour force assessment from Statistics Canada, between March 2018 and April 2019, the number of exciting, death-defying part-time jobs in Nova Scotia grew by 6.9 per cent, compared with an increase of only 0.5 per cent in sleepy, tedious full-time positions.

Over the same period in New Brunswick, the part-time rate soared 12.6 per cent, while the full-time measure dropped like an anchor, by 1.9 per cent. Meanwhile, in Newfoundland and Labrador part-timers gamely swelled the employment ranks (5.2 per cent) as full-time knobs rolled over (2.2 per cent) in their beds.

Even BMO Wealth Management is giggin’ it.

“Over time, the labour market has shifted from one characterized by stable or permanent employment to a ‘gig economy’ of temporary or contracted employment, where an on-demand, freelance or contingent workforce is becoming the norm,” the venerable Canadian financial institution reported recently.

“This type of staffing model allows an organization to fill skills gaps by hiring on a temporary, on-demand basis. These are not the ‘temps’ of the past; instead, they are short- or long-term contracts for personnel ranging from blue-collar light-industrial workers to highly skilled IT, engineering, accounting and HR professionals.”

Then there’s this from Peter Swaniker, founder and CEO of scheduling and time tracking company Ximble, writing in Forbes Magazine earlier this year:

“Last year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 55 million people in the U.S. are ‘gig workers’, which is more than 35 per cent of the (American) workforce. That number is projected to jump to 43 per cent by 2020.

“If you’ve never heard the term, ‘gig work’ is basically just a buzzy way of describing an independent contract or part-time job, like driving for Uber or freelance copywriting.

“Millennials, the generation credited with disrupting everything from housing to marriage, are gravitating towards gig work for the promise of greater work-life balance. Boomers and other generations on the brink of retirement are drawn to gig work because it brings in a little extra income without a major time commitment.

“And recent technologies like Skype, Slack, and DropBox have made the gig life a reality, giving you maximum freedom, an ideal work-life balance, and the chance to pursue your passions.”

Hell, even governments are getting into the act. Last year, the Business Development Bank of Canada – a federal Crown Corporation – wisely advised its clients to consider using temporary workers especially those who are willing to work remotely. That way, private sector employers can pocket the money they’d otherwise waste on things like cubicles, break rooms and indoor plumbing.

So, friend, what’s stopping you from diving into the pool of precarious employment? After all, what do you really have to lose?

I mean, you know, apart from just about everything.

For: Huddle.Today, June 2019

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May 08 2019
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Humour

Welcome back, bug brain

Some bugs don’t know when to quit.

Almost nothing survives a Guysborough winter more buoyantly than the Armadillidium vulgare, otherwise known as the common woodlouse. You might also know it as the sow bug, pill bug or potato bug. My 81-year-old cousin refers to it and its buddies by a more generally descriptive term: “those little bastards”.

Every year at about this time, the population of Port Shoreham – a cartographic afterthought located halfway between Boylston and Saint Francis Harbour along provincial Route 344 – almost doubles as the Bruce clan and associated relatives arrive in cars and caravans to alight, for a weekend, at the old family homestead.

Theoretically, we come to celebrate the springtime, seasonal opening of the “the place” – a putatively festive moment that heralds the onset of reasonably decent weather for the first time in half-a-year or longer.

Still, those of us who’ve participated in this ritual for what seems like decades know better. Practically, we descend from our respective abodes in civilization, where the wifi never wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, to fight the “pitched battle of the bug”. (And of the occasional mouse, bat and some type of vermin none of us have ever seen before. But, I digress).

It’s the bugs that, above all, bug my cousin.

“Did you remember to have the electricity switched on?” she’ll inquire dubiously as we climb the front steps. “We’re going to need every vacuum humming, by gum,” she’ll declare before muttering, “those little bastards.”

I’ve never understood exactly what she’s got against the lowly woodlouse. According to the literature, nothing in Creation could be more benign. Even professional exterminators leave them alone.

“Besides living in the soil of houseplants, these pests cause little damage,” Orkin’s website helpfully informs. “In general, sow bugs are simply a nuisance, as they do not bite or sting and are harmless to humans. Their presence inside usually indicates a large population outside.”

In fact, if you must rid yourself of them, one article published way back in 1990 offers the following tips: “Tobacco water, the color of strong tea, usually works . . . Another home remedy consists of one tablespoon of cayenne pepper, two tablespoons of household detergent added to a gallon of water. Spray this in the area, or drench infested places.” The writer also advises deploying “one quart of rubbing alcohol”.

On such weekends, when I used to drink, I would cart a large tumbler of gin, a big yellow pad of paper and a fat pencil to the woodshed where I would commence to “write”. In no time, a call would sound upon the wind. “Hey Alec,” a bug-brained relative, Hoover in hand, would cry from the kitchen door. “Are you coming? We’ve got work to do in here.”

I would reply, “I am working”, and then return to my musings about, among other things, why geniuses are never truly appreciated in their lifetimes.

Now that I don’t (drink, that is), I imagine I will resort to more sober reflections on the morality of assassinating our creepy-crawly friends. “Hark well,” I will begin. “As the immortal German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once archly commented, ‘any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.’ Or as the immortal guitar-rock hero Mark Knopfler once wisely observed, ‘Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes your the bug.’”

Oddly enough, my cousin and the Orkin man do agree on one thing: potato bugs belong outside or in a vacuum trap – whichever gets to them first.

Now, if we’re talking about the dreaded Simulium trifasciatum (black fly) or the wretched Culex pipiens (mosquito) in Port Shoreham’s merry month of May, that’s a whole other story. And don’t get me going on July’s brutal Tabanus sulcifrons (horse fly) and August’s equally nasty Chrysops callidus (deer fly), both of which roam the Chedabucto shoreline like muggers on a summer rampage.

Indeed, some Guysborough bugs just don’t know when to quit.

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May 06 2019
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Humour, Satire, Workplace

Tales from the gig economy – Part I

A potential employer writes:

We will expect the following from you: Computer literacy, because you’ve been using computers for as long as you can remember, and find it easy to pick up new things. You might not know WordPress in-depth (yet), but you’re confident that you’ll pick it up quickly; attention to detail, as you consider yourself a perfectionist, and having the time available to create high-quality work is important to you; passion for learning, because you love the idea of diving into a role where you’ll learn new things every day, and value constructive criticism as a means of boosting your skills and experience; and a love for remote working, because you value the flexibility and autonomy of a remote working arrangement and ideally have experience working under your own impetus.

I reply:

As for the expectations for this position, I’ve been using computers since PCs cost $5,000 a pop (that’s a long time). Yes, I’m a quick study and, no, I may not “know WordPress in-depth (yet)”, but I’m willing to learn and confident that I’ll “pick it up”, thanks partly to my “attention to detail”. For example, the sentence “know WordPress in-depth” should read “know WordPress in depth” or “in detail” – otherwise the hyphenation signifies an adjective to modify a noun that ain’t, in this case, forthcoming.

Sorry to be such “a perfectionist”, but my “high-quality work is important” to me. In fact, it’s next to godliness and to my clean and cluttered kitchen, which also happens to be next to my comfortable, yet remote, office where, thanks to my ability to parse the mysteries of the online world (Did Kim Kardashian really abuse elephants in Bali by posing with them?), I “learn new things every day”, which, in turn, feed my passion for, well. . .learning. But please feel free to tell me I’m wrong. I would love some “constructive criticism” as I am, in case I forgot to mention, working remotely. . .Oh, so remotely. . .

Your pal,

Alec Bruce

 

 

 

 

 

May 06 2019
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Humour, Technology

The new space race – Nova Scotia style

DSC_0237On some glittering summer’s day, this decade or maybe next, you might find me rusticating on the back deck of my ancestral home overlooking the great, grumbling Chedabucto Bay – as deep and dangerous as the firmament, itself.

There, I will hoist a late-afternoon drink, cast my eyes toward the town of Canso and count down to what my wife and I will have dubbed ‘the greatest show on earth’. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.

“Honey, be quick,” I will bark. “You’re going to miss it, again.”

My beloved will rush from the kitchen, a glass of ginger ale in hand, and settle into a lawn chair – one of several we’ve dubbed ‘pods’. There, above the rolling hills of Tor Bay, about 100 kilometers due north, a rocket carrying orbital satellites – and even, perhaps, the odd, impossibly wealthy cosmic tourist – will penetrate the celestial plain.

Welcome, earthlings, to the future home of the Guysborough Aeronautics and Space Administration (also known as GASA). According to one CBC report last year at about this time, “Nova Scotia is familiar with launching ships, but never quite like this. The province could soon be the site of a $148-million rocket spaceport that will be used to launch commercial satellites into space as early as 2020. Maritime Launch Services confirmed plans to build the facility near Canso and begin construction within one year.

“The Halifax-based company, which is a joint venture of three U.S.-based firms, hopes to launch eight rockets annually by 2022. The facility would launch with 3,350-kg payloads on a due south trajectory at a cost of $60 million (apiece).

The site would include a launch pad and a processing building, as well as a control centre positioned about three kilometres away.

Presumably, the total estimated price tag of $304 million for this Cape Canaveral of the Great White North does not include the cost of a slice of Cyclone 4M pizza, named after the rockets’ make and model, now offered at AJ’s Pub in Canso.

But, I digress. There’s actual news on the wild, blue yonder front.

According to a fine report by this newspaper’s very own Helen Murphy, published late last month, “Maritime Launch Services CEO Steve Matier is sounding optimistic after a setback last year when the company was required to submit a more detailed focus report in its pursuit of environmental approval. During an interview, he told The Journal the company plans to file with the Department of Environment in late March.”

Meanwhile, any groundbreaking in, say, July, would be largely ceremonial on account of a population of nesting birds in the area. Accordingly, says Matier, “We are looking at starting with roads in September” after they’re. . .um. . .done.

Still, this is not the first time stargazing capitalists have turned their attention to this part of Canada’s East Coast as the next home of the putative ‘great frontier’. Some years ago, NASA seriously considered northern Cape Breton as an ancillary location for one of its launch pads into the great wide open. As it happened, that didn’t.

But should a spaceport find its way to the craggy, windswept shores of Stan Rogers’s country, I will do what any sensible chap would: check my property and ascertain how, exactly, I can cash in.

Shall I turn my large, rural home into an Air B&B, catering exclusively to Swiss, German and Saudi techno-junkies? Shall I buy a fleet of limos with which to ‘uber’ my customers to their various look-off points?

Shall I transform my property into a version of Burning Man, where electronic music aficionados, unreconstructed hippies from bygone epochs and creatively mad artistes set fire to effigies of social inequity timed perfectly with the launch codes of distant rockets?

Yes, indeed, on some brilliant summer day, this decade or next, you might find me finishing my drink as I watch a spear of human ambition penetrate the afternoon clouds.

Meanwhile, my wife will have handed me the morning mail.

What’s this?” I will ask.

She will reply: “It’s the new property tax assessment”.

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May 06 2019
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Humour, Weather

Spooky action at a distance

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At this time of the year, when the worm moon greets dawn’s croaking grackles, I find myself unable to quit my weather app, which I check obsessively.

A decade ago, friends of mine from England asked what sort of outerwear would be suitable for our Canadian Maritime climate in the middle of May. I said something like, “Don’t worry your pretty little Brit heads. We’re well past the worst of Mother Nature’s seasonal tantrums.”

They arrived, happy and shiny and right on schedule, at Stanfield International Airport. Two days later, 40 centimetres of snow dropped.

Friends of mine from England are no longer speaking to me.

But, then, how was any of this my fault?

I had a weather app, for God’s sake.

“You know I actually work for a living,” a tech-savvy Meteorologist acquaintance of mine protested over the phone the other day. He was alluding to the fact that I am a lowly freelancer who prefers to scribble in his “leisure suit” between bouts of weather-induced paranoia.

“Sure, sure,” I spluttered, “but what do you make of these forecasts? How do you know what is or isn’t going to happen in my backyard 14 days from now?”

One word, he said: “Algorithms . . .The less snow that falls in any given winter, the more snow gets computer modelled and pushed to the end of the year. It’s math, boy, simple math.”

So, all of this is accurate, yes?

“No,” he sighed. “Well, sometimes.”

That, I declared, “is not fair.”

No, it’s not, he sighed. “Neither is the fact that you’re an idiot.”

Be that as it may, in the Great While North – where Spring often meets Winter for a robust afternoon of ice dancing on some cosmic frozen pond of their mutual liking – I am not alone in thinking that I have a right to understand, with a smartphone in hand, the shape of all the universe’s spooky actions at a distance.

Some years ago, under crisp and brilliantly clear late-April skies, I peeled out of the driveway of my Guysborough County farmhouse to commence the first leg of a business trip to Halifax. The coast was clear. The CBC said so.

Twenty kilometres up the highway, a snow squall forced me off the road. When it was over, I limped back to the shore through 12 centimetres of treacherous, rapidly melting muck, listening to the public broadcaster predict, “Nova Scotia will be absolutely beautiful today.”

Of course, the weather – like hockey – is one of those glorious preoccupations Canadians almost never get right. A Farmer’s Almanac item recently observed: “Before there were apps for your phone, Doppler radar or the National Weather Service, people looked to the signs of nature to prepare for what’s to come.”

The venerable source was talking about the American Midwest, but the folklore could easily apply to the Canadian East Coast: “Heavy and numerous fogs; racoons with bright bands; woodpeckers sharing trees; thick hair on the nape of cows’ necks; and pigs gathering sticks.”

On the other hand, according to my limited research, here are some sure signs that spring has sprung: Heavy and numerous fogs; racoons with bright bands; woodpeckers sharing trees; thick hair on the nape of cows’ necks; and pigs gathering sticks.

And what about that balefully glaring “worm moon” (also sometimes known as the “super moon” when it appears, as it did this year, on the vernal equinox). Scientists think it might make certain animals. . .uh. . .friskier than normal. Isn’t that also a sure sign of spring?

As for me, I continue to rely on my weather app. It tells me in its own inimitable, techno-spoken language about thick mists, critter fur, avian condo dwellers, and the porcine obsession with twigs – all that I may expect in the coming weeks.

Thank you, weather app.

Unless it snows.

Then, curse you weather app.

It’s funny how I never do this in the middle of summer.

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Feb 25 2019
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Humour, Society, Technology

One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy. . .

One morning in Port Shoreham, back in the late 1980s, a young woman prompted by a profound sense of neighbourliness impressed a couple of city girls by showing off her new pony, all of 12 hands tall.

At the sight of the hoofed beast loping down the stone path towards our family homestead, my eldest daughter (who was eight at the time) exclaimed: “Yikes, get me outta here; there’s a camel comin’! I need to make a call.”

As I remember, so did I – but not about a horse.

Some weeks earlier, I had yanked my young family from the cacophony and congestion of Toronto and determined to live more convivially, though never impecuniously, in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia.

So, as my kid marvelled at the free-range livestock, I was on the phone attempting to explain to my editor in Ontario’s biggest metropolis why a paying gig in Yarmouth did not entail a mere 20-minute drive down the highway.

The conversation went something like this:

Rewrite Man: “What you mean you can’t file that piece on Wednesday?”

Yours Truly: “It’s already Monday.”

Rewrite Man: “So, it’s just a colour story. What’s the problem?”

I was about to give up when a disembodied voice joined the discussion.

“Look,” the grumbling male baritone said, “it’ll take him the whole day just to get there from here. Then, he has to do the work, jump in the car and spend another day driving all the way back. When do expect him to write the thing?”

To which I responded: “Uh, yeah. . .what he said.”

I did not know then (and I do not know now) who that fellow was, but his ghostly presence all those years ago confirmed for me another dimension of distinctly rural neighbourliness in the setting years of the 20th century in this part of the world: the party line.

I was reminded of this last month when the CBC reported the following: “Canada’s largest telecommunications group is getting mixed reviews for its plan (to) collect massive amounts of information about the activities and preferences of its customers. Bell Canada began asking its customers in December for permission to track everything they do with their home and mobile phones, internet, television, apps or any other services they get through Bell or its affiliates. In return, Bell says it will provide advertising and promotions that are more tailored to their needs and preferences.”

Nowadays, of course, we shrink in terror at the passing thought that somebody could be listening in on us. After all, shadowy hackers are always ready to steal our identities. The “Deep State” is perpetually out for our hides.

Still, once upon a time, before the Internet and depending on where you lived, almost nothing was private. In the days when two or more families shared a telephone connection, you could be sure someone – a stranger, an acquaintance, a neighbour – always knew at least a morsel of your business. Twitter didn’t invent the grapevine.

Naturally, it worked both ways.

I recall, for example, hearing part of an exchange between two people that, for sheer raciness, could easily compete with anything Kim Kardashian now chooses to post on Instagram. Of course, as prolonged eavesdropping wasn’t, and isn’t, my thing, I quietly cradled the receiver and went back to my episode of Coronation Street. (Oh, Percy Sugden. . .You’re such a busy body).

Days after my daughter’s equine awakening, she breathlessly shared her experience in a telephone call to a chum in Toronto. Not long after, she received a neatly-wrapped, locally postmarked envelope festooned with ribbons.

The card read: “Horses are fun, and so are you!”

For an evident breach of privacy, that’s about as neighbourly as it gets.

(Recently published in The Guysborough Journal)

Dec 14 2018
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Business, Economy, Humour

An Atlantic Canadian field guide to surviving recessions

The one thing Atlantic Canadians manage better than almost anything else is recession.

When the economic wind blows cold, we throw another log into the wood stove and cinch our collars.

When our spending money runs short, we whip out a tin of beans and tighten our belts.

When others across the country tremble at the mere thought of stock markets circling the drain, we cast a rueful eye to the storm clouds gathering on the near horizon and mutter, “Yeah, what else you got?”

Of course, we’ve had plenty of practice. Recessions – or weathering them – are kind of our thing. After all, two consecutive quarters of what experts call “negative growth” is, relatively speaking, a permanent way of life along the East Coast. It’s certainly no reason to panic.

But just tell that to the chattering class.

In times of yore, when the mighty wanted to know the shape of things to come, they would instruct an augur to read the entrails of a small animal. Today, they’re more likely to consult an economist.

Are we, in the western world, barrelling toward another recession?

Yup, says Martin Feldstein, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and a professor at Harvard University. “Ten years after the Great Recession’s onset, another long, deep downturn may soon roil the U.S. economy,” he wrote in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Maybe or maybe not, thinks The Toronto Star’s David Olive, who wrote this fall, “The Canadian financial system is among the world’s most stable. . .

But that is small comfort for Canadians. The global financial system is intimately interconnected. . .At all times, the world’s 300 or so biggest banks, including Canada’s Big Six, have enormous short-term loans outstanding to each other. Which means that the failure of just one giant financial institution could bring them all down.”

Anyone ready for a second helping of entrails?

Never mind. Here are some hard-won – if not exactly failsafe – tips for surviving the next recession in Atlantic Canada:

Avoid obvious and precarious flights of fancy. I once worked for a guy in the United States who truly believed that starting a magazine in the middle of a downturn was a grand idea. After all, there’d be no competition. Advertisers would surely flock to his venture, begging to spend their marketing budgets. The lesson learned? Don’t start a magazine in the middle of a downturn.

Still, don’t be afraid to embrace the big, wide world. If we have jobs, we should do everything we can to keep them. But if we don’t, because, well, we just don’t roll that way, we ought to double-down on our enterprising instincts. Is there a promising, new revenue stream just waiting for our particular talents and experiences? Are there two or three or even four? Indeed, when the world finally comes up for air again, our bank accounts will thank us.

Be pennywise, but not essentially miserly. It’s important to know the difference, which is sound advice even when good times roll. Ask ourselves whether the dollar we’re planning to spend will vanish like rain on a sun-caked riverbed, or germinate the seeds of new growth. We might take a course that will upgrade our suite of professional skills. But, unless the world’s supply of wicker suddenly dries up, we should ensure that course is not applied basket weaving.

Finally, float like a boat. If history teaches anything about Atlantic Canada it’s that periodic highs and lows in the regional economy are like Fundy tides: They come, they go, and there’s nothing we can do about them.

So, we throw another log on the fire. We crack open a tin of beans. We wait for the light.

Meanwhile, we manage.

We always do.

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Nov 13 2018
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Humour, Idiocracy, Society

A bridge too far?

0044_Bridge-WalkThese days, when I cross the water between Halifax and Dartmouth, I sometimes find myself denying the existence of bridges, especially during rush hour. This is despite the fact that I am evidently travelling on one and, from my perch in the passenger’s seat, I can see boats in the harbour and buildings on the near horizon – that is, if I care to look.

Naturally, I don’t care to look because my eyes are otherwise occupied by my smart phone, that tiny blinking box about the size of an old-timey dime-store novel from which the “real” news of the world, the “true” nature of reality, froths forth by the microsecond thanks to so-called social media.

“Apparently, some guy has proof that climate change is a hoax,” I mutter.

“Is that so?” my driving companion inquires absently.

“Yup,” I reply. “He also rejects claims that the Earth is spherical, that NASA ever sent men to the moon and that ancient Egyptians built the pyramids.”

“Okay,” my friend says, “I’ll bite. Who did build the pyramids?”
“Aliens. . .I suppose you’ll want to know why.”

“Do tell.”

“Interstellar travel lounges.”

Why not? Who are we to begrudge weary Alpha Centaurians en route to Betelgeuse for the biannual lotus festival taking a well-deserved load off their tired dogs in north-Saharan Africa? Not everyone flies first class, you know.

I kid, of course. But there is a point.

In a world where fantasies increasingly supplant facts and rank opinions replace measured judgements, how long before we imagine that the state of things as they actually exist is far less absorbing (and, therefore, less legitimate) than the mechanics of our own tortured hallucinations?

Worse, perhaps, for the health of our public institutions, economy and the democratic rule of law, how long before this type of infantilizing meme-merchandising infects the body politic at the most basic level and in everyday ways?

How long? How does right about now sound?

In a 2016 piece, “Why are people so incredibly gullible?”, David Robson, a feature writer for the web magazine BBC Future, wrote, “Cast your mind back to the attack of the flesh-eating banana. In January 2000, a series of chain emails began reporting that imported bananas were infecting people with ‘necrotizing fasciitis’ – a rare disease in which the skin erupts into livid purple boils before disintegrating and peeling away from muscle and bone.”

The scare was completely. . . well. . .bananas, but that didn’t stop scores of people from rejecting an official report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control debunking the bizarre story. Or, as Robson reported, “Within weeks, the CDC was hearing from so many distressed callers it had to set up a hotline. The facts became so distorted that people eventually started to quote the (Centers) as the source of the rumour.”

Still, you don’t have to be a flesh-eating banana to know how easily and far we are prone to slip. Here in the Canadian Maritimes, we regularly replenish our various silos of stupidity with the cloyingly sweet elixir of self-righteous certitude.

Somebody writing on the Internet declares that hydraulic fracturing for natural gas will kill us all – as will, indeed, fossil fuels in general. Somebody else, scribbling in the ethersphere, rejoins that environmentalists are nuts and that there’s nothing wrong with cracking slate to get at the good stuff to power our industrial lifestyle.

They’re both right and wrong – something they would know if they actually chose to talk to one another, rather than bury themselves in the popular “literature” of half-truths.

Fact: The science of climate change says we must reduce our consumption of petroleum products. Another fact: The science of engineering says we still need the junk to intelligently transition to a cleaner, more renewable future. The only question that should remains is: Can we walk and chew gum at the same time?

Fortunately, in many other ways many can and do here.

Consider the enormous amount of consultation, collaboration, tolerance and good will that was required to begin transforming the Petitcodiac River in Moncton, N.B., into a vibrant waterway that is quickly becoming the envy of nature lovers, commercial enterprises and local governments, alike.

While we’re at it, ask the question: Would Halifax’s state-of-the-art Central Library have stood a ghost of chance without the spirit of multi-sectoral cooperation – from community groups and educational institutions to businesses and municipal planning officials?

Think about the non-stop talking and sometimes-disputatious mediations that paved the way for Moncton’s freshly minted downtown event and cultural centre or the new marine sciences initiative on the Dartmouth waterfront.

These were not bridges too far to cross. And I can only assume that in the rooms where their construction began, all the smart phones were, for once, mercifully silent.

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Oct 18 2018
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Humour

It’s in the air

Today, the snow flies for the first time as fall quickly heralds an early winter in the old port town of Halifax, N.S., where hale and hearty cruise ship passengers scramble down their respective gangplanks in skivvies and shorts. One – and only one – question burns fevered urgency into their one-track minds.

“Where. . .uh. . .can I get a smoke if. . .uh. . .you know what I mean?”

To which the helpful Haligonian – her tote bag of cannabis well and duly tucked away from the inquisitive eyes of the good town’s constabulary (which is already overworked policing the first day of legal, recreational pot in only the second nation on earth to entertain such a thing) – replies:

“Where?” she arches a knowing eyebrow. “Why anywhere you like. After all, we’re all pirates and privateers in these parts. As to where you can smoke it without earning a parting gift, a.k.a. a fine, from these fair shores, try one of our pillars and posts conveniently located at random and for no particular reason along the waterfront, across the suburbs and in the vicinity of some of the finer bus stops we can offer. . .Party on, dude.”

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Mar 25 2017
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Humour, Politics

Cardboard cutouts

IMG_1563If the elements of the human body are worth, conservatively and according to some estimates, about two thousand bucks, what are we to make of the latest order from Global Affairs Canada to remove life-sized cardboard cutouts of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at diplomatic missions in Trumpland?

After all, the placards only cost about $300 and change. That sounds like a good deal, given the treacherous state of public finances across what is becoming the last, truly expensive democracy in the world.

Says a Canadian Press report, published earlier this week: “It’s not clear if the missions ever had departmental permission to use the cardboard cut-outs. According to emails obtained by the Conservatives through the Access to Information Act, the Washington embassy’s interest in using a cardboard likeness was sparked by word that the Atlanta consulate had put one on display at a pre-Canada Day event last year. Asked if Ottawa had given permission, Louise Blais, the Atlanta consul general, advised the embassy that she did ask but ‘never got an answer. . .which I took as no objections. But as added cover, the U.S. embassy in Ottawa has one of the Obamas.’”

The piece continues: “Anna Gibbs, senior events production manager at the Washington embassy, was excited about the prospect of putting Trudeau’s image on display. ‘I think this will be a hoot and extremely popular and go well with our Snapchat filter,’ she wrote in an email. While some of her colleagues felt the magnified photo of Trudeau in a black suit, black shirt and silver tie ‘doesn’t seem very prime ministerial,’ Gibbs gushed: ‘Looks (oh so) fine to me!’”

Uh-huh. Listen people of New Brunswick, it seems we are missing an international opportunity here (big surprise). With no disrespect to the prime minister of this great nation, our very own, GQ-ready premier Brian Gallant is every bit as fetching. Why, exactly, does he not have a cardboard stand-in to call his own? I detect another example of Ottawa bias. Ladies, weigh in on this. As always, we need your vote.

If I were a provincial staffer with money to burn, I would go one step further. I would go deep, baby. Knowing that Mr. Gallant, as respectable and intelligent as he is, is not. . .well. . .an orator of Winston Churchill’s calibre, I would ensure that a ‘talk’ button is installed in every cut-out. Interested citizens of the United States could then press the designated switch and hear something like this (in the voice of Warren Beatty, naturally):

“Hi there. You may not know me to see me, but I am the premier of one of Canada’s smallest, least economically promising provinces of Canada – you know, that great, big country to the north of you. We like to call it, ‘Mexico with snow’. Ha, ha, ha. But seriously folks, we need your American can-do attitude. We need your drive, innovation and incredible ability to create opportunities. Most of all, of course, we need your money. I am Brian Gallant, and I endorse this plea for. . .well, you know. . .your money.”

Given the precarious state of the world these days, it’s possible that cardboard cutouts of our major political figures will become the gold standard of domestic and foreign policy. No more risky plane trips to far-flung nations. No more emotional gaffs by living human beings. No more unfortunate wardrobe decisions before the stern, unforgiving eyes of the world’s internet-juiced cameras.

After all, the elements of the human body are worth far more than the plastic we manufacture to represent them.

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