…shortly, anyway. First lunching at my favourite resto on Earth, the Yang Sheng. My wake will be here.
Had a great chat with two very impressive and highly professional Conservatives, while I was here. I won’t name them (a) to protect their careers and (b) to keep everyone guessing.
BBQ pork and noodle in soup awaits!
Anyone miss me yet?
That little person? That’s my daughter. She is amazing. Tonight, somewhat older, she graduates from high school – and, I suspect, she’ll be graduating on the honour roll.
It’s been quite a journey for her, and us, her family. From Whitehorse, to Ottawa, to Vancouver, to Toronto. And this weekend, she’s going back to camp to be a counsellor, and – after that – she’s off to Dal. She was accepted at every single university she applied to – Brock, Waterloo, Lakehead, Guelph, Trent, others – and she was offered scholarships, too. Unlike her closest friends, she has to work hard – really hard – for every “A” she got. But she got plenty.
Every single morning for years, she has gotten up at 5 a.m. to get to the swimming pool, where she turned out to be a bit of a star. She intends to try out for Dal’s vaunted swim team, and she wants to get to the Olympic trials, too. Given how hard she works at things, I think she just might make it.
She has had plenty of struggles. A few years ago, the ostensibly Christian elementary school she attended decided to have a fundraiser at an exclusive golf club down on the water. Given that the golf club had had a history of barring minorities – like First Nations people, and since our daughter is (as of last week) a certified citizen of the Carcross-Tagish First Nation in the Yukon – we objected. Some Rosedale wannabe parents fought us on that, and I fought back. We ended up pulling her out of there, and we haven’t talked to any of those snobs since.
Our daughter, meanwhile, has grown up into this calm, quiet, determined person with great taste in music (we go to all-ages punk shows together all the time, and she loves Bad Religion) and a quirky sense of humour (she and Son 3 and I can recite Scott Pilgrim vs. The World by heart). Oh, and her bedroom is messy all the time. And she loves hoodies and Uggs. She’s an atheist, and she couldn’t be less interested in politics, and she thinks SFH is goofy (all of which I think is wonderful, because she arrived at those positions on her own).
So, daughter, I say to you – in the presence of the many wk.com web site-visiting folks who have gotten to know you a little bit, over the years – I am so proud of you, and I love you tons. I can’t believe how quickly time has gone by, but it has. And, tonight, there you will be – holding your diploma, and heading off to another part in your life, one that won’t involve your parents or brothers as much.
We’ll still be there at poolside, however, cheering you on, and forever reminding you that you are (and forever will be) so, so amazing.
Pic sent by Milo, their Nasties-knowing manager! Will they let us open for them when they return to this side of the pond? Stay tuned!
Quote:
Lessons to be learned from this extraordinary story:
1. If you want something to be off-the-record or background, reach an agreement in advance, not post facto;
2. The media in this country, formerly deferential, are now turning on the Harper Conservatives with ferocity and as one beast; and
3. Justin Trudeau still has them spooked – otherwise, why make such a pathetically-transparent attempt to change the channel, orchestrated in the highest office in the land?
Oh, and Barrie Advance folks? You’ve got balls. Well done.
What part of Canada is the most corrupt?
After Monday — and if you were to ask Maclean’s magazine — it would seem to be Quebec. Monday morning, Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum was arrested at his home by members of the province’s anti-corruption unit. Ironically, Applebaum was named Montreal’s interim mayor last November — because the previous mayor, Gérald Tremblay, was forced to resign due to corruption allegations.
Before Monday’s events, the City of Laval asked to be placed under trusteeship, after gangsterism and fraud charges had been laid against its former mayor and 37 others. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair has claimed — 17 years after the fact — that mayor tried to hand him an envelope full of cash.
And, earlier, one political organizer almost boasted to the inquiry that he had rigged at least 60 municipal and provincial campaigns since 1995. Around the same time, Stephen Harper patronage appointee Arthur Porter -the powerful former head of Canada’s spy agency watchdog — was named in an arrest warrant for his role in the construction of a Montreal hospital. He’s now in Panama, fighting extradition.
Right about now, Maclean’s magazine is saying, “Told you so.” Back in 2010, a publicity seeking polemicist there wrote a ludicrous story headlined, “The most corrupt province.” Said the magazine: “The history of corruption is…long and deep in Quebec.”
Political corruption exists in Quebec, as the Charbonneau Commission — and, before that, the Gomery Commission –made clear.
But it is inaccurate and unfair to suggest Quebec is alone, or the most corrupt.
In recent years, the politics of every province has been muddied by corruption allegations. A quick recap:
And so on, and so on.
Is Quebec the worst? Decide for yourself. But before you start throwing stones, take a good look around you.
The chances are pretty good you live in a glass house.
I was up at the cabin all weekend, attending to more important matters. So I didn’t hear about Scott Reid’s attack on Jean Chretien in the Ottawa Citizen until I got back.
I won’t link to it. It’s a piece of shit, and what you’d expect.
Here, however, is just a little of what you need to know about Scott Reid.
And so on.
There’s plenty more, but you get the picture. To Jean Chretien, I say: Scott Reid is (unfortunately) living, breathing proof of that old maxim: you’ve been called worse things by way better people.
Beer and popcorn boy isn’t fit to lick the bottom of your shoe.
Dalton McGuinty, we hardly knew ye.
Every time I encountered the former Ontario premier over the course of a decade and a bit — and I did so many times, as the chair of his election war rooms in 2003, 2007 and 2011 — I’d remember that aphorism, most famously applied to one of McGuinty’s heroes, John F. Kennedy.
Funny, easygoing, family oriented, down to earth: All of those descriptions of McGuinty, written many times over the years, were true.
But it was also true that, for most of us, Dalton McGuinty was essentially unknowable. Even now, just days after he has slipped off the political stage (probably) for good, he remains an enigma wrapped in a mystery.
It may have been a case of his inner circle keeping outsiders, even ardent supporters, away from him. It may have arisen out of his desire to keep some things to himself. Whatever the reason, Dalton McGuinty was — and remains — the most private public person I have ever met.
It didn’t hurt him at the ballot box, obviously. He won a massive majority in 2003, and humiliated what back then looked like an unbeatable Conservative political machine. In 2007, he won another big majority against a formidable opponent, John Tory, one of the most decent and sensible guys you could ever hope to meet.
In 2011, he came within one seat — one seat! — of another majority government. I and others were with him on election night in Ottawa, and he wasn’t defeated by that (even though most of us were very, very disappointed). Instead, McGuinty seemed energized by the result, and looking forward to what lay ahead.
What lay ahead, unfortunately, was month after month of political gridlock, bell ringing in the legislature, scandal mongering in committee, and precious little legislation passed. Prorogation, when it came, was simply a reflection of what had been happening at Queen’s Park since the night of the 2011 election — which is to say, nothing.
His policy achievements were myriad and multiple (personal favourites: Naming a stretch of the 401 after fallen soldiers and a holiday in February).
His political achievements were significant, too: He was the winningest Ontario political leader in our lifetimes. It is unlikely anyone will match his big back-to-back-to-back wins anytime soon.
He made mistakes, certainly, as do we all.
I thought it was a mistake to not immediately resign when a new leader was selected.
I thought prorogation was probably unnecessary. I thought his press release about the deleted e-mails — which seemingly threw assorted loyalists in his office under the bus — was a terrible mistake.
Most of all, I thought it was a mistake not to do what my former boss, Jean Chretien, always taught us: Fight back.
Fight, fight, fight — never give any quarter. Never give up. Admit that you’ve lost battles, sure, but never the larger war. After working/volunteering for Dalton McGuinty for more than a decade, I still respect and admire him.owever, I was heartbroken over what happened in that press release about deleted e-mails. As I said to some equally shocked Liberal friends, “Chretien would have never, ever done that to any of us, even if we deserved it.”
My relationship with Chretien was different — basically, I had one.
McGuinty? He ends his two decades at Queen’s Park much as he began it — as a likeable, easygoing guy, who was, in his essence, totally inscrutable to all but a few.
What motivated him? What angered him? What were his regrets and his proudest achievements? What made him happiest, in the centre of his soul?
We never knew. And now, after so long, we still don’t.