Politicians

I was always optimistic, when I was younger, about politicians. After all, they were working for us, weren't they? My voting awareness started when "Honest John" Diefenbaker was just ending his era in power and he really was the last of the Conservative Party that the populace believed in. However, Dief ended his time in power and he ended the hopes of the nation almost forever when he killed and destroyed Canada's aero-space industry by ordering the end of the Avro Arrow, a fighter plane that was superior to anything known up to that time. The engineers of the Arrow were then hired by NASA to put a man on the moon. The following elections saw the Conservatives defeated but giving the Liberals a minority government, twice.

The Liberal PM, Lester Bowles Pearson but known to everyone as Mike, was a man of great potential. He was a diplomat and had won the Nobel Peace Prize for orchestrating the United Nations into ending the Suez Crisis. Not a fiery orator, soft-spoken with a lisp, he nevertheless could move intransigence. With a minority government, Pearson was obliged to use some of the ideals of the leftist CCF Party, led by Tommy Douglas. During Pearson's tenure, he brought in Universal Health Care, the Canada Pension Plan, and in 1964, our own flag, much to the dismay of royalists who continued to wave the Red Ensign.

The Pearson era was possibly the last in our political life that diplomacy and statesmanship ruled over brute force. With a minority government, Mike Pearson saw fit to use policies of the left, much to the ongoing benefit of the citizenry, to remain in power. Unlike today, when the minority Conservative Party prorogued rather than face a confidence vote.

The real age of optimism in politics began when Pearson stepped down from the Liberal leadership in favour of Pierre Trudeau, who won the next election at the age of 46 in 1965. Baby boomers were just beginning to graduate from high school and endless optimism reigned in spite of, or maybe because of, President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, freedom marches, ban the bomb, anti-Vietnam War. In Canada, Bill of Rights, universal suffrage (finally), first nations could finally vote, go to bars etc. Elvis was King, the Beatles invaded, and the Rolling Stones, well, were the Stones. Dylan, Baez, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Leonard Cohen, the Beach Boys. This was the decade of counter-culture, of be-ins, love-ins, weed, grass, pot, and mary-jane. And don't forget LSD, CIA, NSA, IRA.

When Trudeau campaigned, he was mobbed by young women who flung themselves at him. He was the rock-star of politics. Nothing like it had ever been seen. A few years later, President "Tricky Dickie" Nixon, in the White House Tapes, just referred to Trudeau as that asshole up there. Canada, however, had never seen anything like it. A young, intelligent Prime Minister ready to lead the country into a bright future. However, militant separatists in Quebec took to bombing and kidnapping to, finally, murder to push their agenda which resulted in Trudeau declaring Martial Law through the War Measures Act.

Now, for the first time in Canada, the true power of the PMO, the Prime Minister's Office, became apparent. The power to act, without consultation with the democratically elected opposition, was there. Canadian politics would never be the same. When Trudeau finally wore out his welcome, unlike in Pearson's era, minority governments were unable or lacked the will to include the policies of other minority parties. A number of minority governments, both Conservative and Liberal, followed.

The Conservatives, ascended to majority under Brian Mulroney in 1984 and proceeded to use the power of the PMO to reduce taxes to the rich and industry, to align with the objectives of the United States (right down to singing Danny Boy with Reagan), and tying us to a free trade agreement that appears to be lop-sided in favour of the US. Rules for foreign ownership were diminished or disregarded and deals made with disregard for democratic debate. Finally, Mulroney was thrown from office as the most reviled and corrupt PM in our history and the PC Party lost almost all their seats right across the country.

Enter Jean Chretien who had entered politics under Mike Pearson and was Finance Minister under Trudeau. The "Little Guy from Shawinigan" was really aware of the PMO's power and continued to use it. Fortunately, for the citizens of the country anyway, Liberal doctrine was much more benign than the Conservative doctrine. Government was to be seen as doing the bidding of the country. Yes, the Liberal Party still had to answer to their benefactors but not outrageously at the expense of the electorate, until later years.
The Liberal government pulled the country out of the deficit and debt hole that Mulroney had plunged us into. Unfortunately, ten years in power led to a flaunting of power. Chretien famously said of parliamentary debate, "This is question period, it isn't answer period". Chretien resigned under increasing pressure for the misappropriation and misuse of funds in Liberal ridings. Paul Martin's Liberal government was never able to overcome that scandal.

In the downright absence of Conservative seats in Western Canada, a ground roots party emerged, the Reform Party. Again, famously, Chretien with a French-Canadian accent referred to it as the "T'ird Party". The party was developed in the framework of the Social Credit Party of three decades earlier and still right of Attila the Hun in doctrine. The far right was so fragmented in the face of a Liberal majority that some provincial Conservatives and the Reform Party combined to form the Conservative Alliance or the Alliance Party. In 2003, the Conservatives and the Alliance disbanded to form the Progressive Conservatives which eventually became the Conservative Party of Canada, again. Steven Harper, from the original Reform Party, rose to the top as leader.

And the rest you know. The Conservative agenda has always been to dismantle social programs (insidiously by under-funding), reduce taxes to multi-nationals (by downloading onto the middle class), and generally aligning itself with the direction of the United States. This isn't by accident. Powerful and rich corporations are headquartered in the US and funding for political campaigns flows across the border. The prospects of the rich and powerful are aligned with Conservative ideals. The Bush/Oil cabal still calls the shots. Left leaning ideology just costs money. After all, the citizens of a country are only there to support the bloated Conservative bureaucracy, aren't they. Politicians work for the elite, don't they? Until they get chucked out.

Tooth Fairy

We found a note the other day, dictated by my six or seven year old son Shane to the Tooth Fairy. The scribe was his nine or ten year old sister Erin.

Dear Tooth Fairy,
When my uncle was a little boy, he got 25 cents per tooth. So, because of inflation this tooth should be worth about $1.25. I've considered inflation and my needs for nowadays. It now costs $2.50 or $3.00 for a matinee at the theatre, it used to be 25 cents so that means it has increased by 10 or 15 x that price, the same with jawbreakers. They used to be 3 for a penny now for a package of 12 jawbreakers (gobstoppers) is about 45 cents which means the price has been raised so it would be 11.25 cents for 3 which would be about 3 for 11 cents. It has be raised by about 4 x. Most things have had the price raised by quite a bit so that's why I would kind of like $1.25 for my tooth tonight because of inflation 5 x 25 cents = $1.25.

Thanks a lot,
Shane
(P.S. $1.25 or Nothing!)

Now, I can't for the life of me remember whether the Tooth Fairy succumbed to the economic theory or whether he/she responded to the all or nothing threat but it just illustrated that rising costs were a worry for everyone. Some families, of course, had affluent Tooth Fairies but the ones that found our house had always seemed to be the dour "you-need-to-learn-the-value-of-money" or "money-doesn't-grow-on-trees" kind.
I feel that this good effort of putting a case forward for an increase should have received a reward. Fairies are made of money anyway.

Good Neighbour Fences

Good neighbour fences, as they are called, look the same on both sides. One neighbour doesn't get the 2 x 4s and the other gets only the finished side. With a good neighbour fence both neighbours get a finished side. Our house started in 1972 with good neighbour fences and an original is still standing on one side. A little worn and sagging here and there but still standing.

On the other side of the house, the original fence had been made from slab wood so it looked a little rustic. Four or five years ago, the good neighbour on that side got a smoking hot deal on some fencing wood so he and I rebuilt the fence. We're still good neighbours.

Across the back, the neighbour had a boy friend about ten years ago who decided to replace the good neighbour fence on that side. In a conspicuously un-
neighbourly way, without consultation, the good fence was taken down and the new one was built backwards so that we ended up looking at the back side of the fence. The materials were inferior as were the specifications.

Some years have passed and the fence has continued to rot. I have doubled up on the posts with treated stakes and 2 x 4s but the neighbour has neglected to refasten the boards as they fall of on his side. Unlike a good neighbour fence, this one is starting to really piss me off. At some point, the neighbour is going to notice that the fence is down and will then expect me to take part in replacing the inferior fence that they put up.

Good neighbour fences really are useful in marking out, without prejudice, each neighbours property. The fence removes the stress, usually on only one side of the property line of unfenced property, should the other neighbour inadvertently live beyond his borders. His animals - dogs, horses, or goats, could wander.

I see this morning that a section of the disputed fence has fallen into his garden. I wonder when he will notice?

Make-Do

I started thinking about a couple of words that you rarely hear anymore - make-do. These words were used a lot in my parents' generation and earlier. On the face of it, make-do sounds like settling for less but it was exactly the opposite. Those two words meant that if you didn't have it, you made it or if you had an income, you waited until you had saved up enough to buy it - you made-do in the meantime.

In the days of make-do, people acquired prestige and standing by their ability to make- do. If a mechanical part was needed, a hacksaw, file and the forge would make a piece of iron into a piece of function and beauty. A fisherman didn't buy boat and nets, he hewed the wood and knotted the twine. Young women filled chests with hand made linens and clothes. Of course, this process was labour intensive but people in the age of make-do had more time than money.

Somehow, the words "make-do" were turned around in meaning to imply that something or someone was not quite good enough. Someone who stood on his own two feet and didn't ask for help was just making-do. Farmers who fixed their equipment, buildings and animals were haywire and making-do. No longer was there prestige in building your own, but a sly winking by the neighbours that he was just making-do.

I was a product of the make-do generation and still had the tendencies, to be stamped out, in my genetic makeup. One look at my basement will show all the good stuff that would come in handy sometime. Oh, don't throw that out, I can use it for... Part of the problem is that I have the manual skills, if not the initiative, to make just about anything. Going to a craft fair is often an exercise in self abuse. Oh, don't buy that, I could make it better, cheaper, etc. When I first moved to the Okanagan Valley, I was able to live rent-free in a pickers' shack. It was more than a shack, it was a small one bedroom house built into the hillside about thirty feet from the edge of Okanagan Lake. The floors, however, were bare boards between which the wind off the lake would blow through. We got roll ends of carpeting for free from the carpet mill in Kelowna to cover the gaps. Now the carpet mill didn't give away good carpet for nothing. These roll ends were the junction between one carpet colour to another - purples, oranges and lime greens. And shag was the "in" thing that year. Making-do.

In the early 1970's, the movement of young people "back to the land", meant that a whole new generation was making do. Houses were being built from cull lumber (sawmill cast-offs) or from farm sheds moved and joined together. Once again, there was prestige within the community of young farmers in making do. Val built a beautiful house of cast-off lumber from the mill in Canoe and even plastered the interior walls with a white home-made plaster rich in barley straw. Don built a house of logs taken from his own forest. Art built with lumber sawn on site from his trees.

It was the same with pick-up trucks. The community became rich with the treasures of 1940's and 1950's trucks that were found in disuse on farms and in orchards. It wasn't unusual at a birthday gathering to find a fine collection of Fords, GMC's, Dodges and Cornbinders (International Harvester) in the yard. What wasn't a pick-up was then probably a Volkswagen.
Make-do doesn't seem to be in the public consciousness at all anymore. Newly-weds will not live in a pickers' shack or an old, small house for a start in life. Buy it new and buy it big. I would like to know what percentage of the huge personal debt that we carry falls into the decade age groups - twenties, thirties, forties. Yes, granted, those of us in our sixties have had more time to work off our debt but typically we started out in a more modest way. I am not slamming the young; they are not only a product of the changing ideas from peers, parents, and marketers but may not have have had the good fortune of having had the exposure to someone making-do. The recent economic nose-dive should have shown that not everyone can afford to have a huge house. Make-do.