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TABLE FOR ONE

“Well, at least you graduated.”

I think all of us can remember our own graduations, and how important they were to us.  The poor cousin of prom, grad was when you were recognized for four, and perhaps five years of secondary school study and achievement.  It was a night of speeches, awards, and pride of achievement for both graduates and their families alike.  The pomp and pageantry is almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.

It can be emotional.

For most of us, maybe all of us, it will be the last time we’re in the same room and at the same event with all the people you shared the journey with.  And although the friendships crafted in high school are the most vital, you realize that many of these relationships, even the tight ones, are now going to drift as you, and your peers, go your own ways and chart your own course in life.

So it’s kind of bittersweet.

Nevertheless, it’s a day and an evening that we’re likely to remember for the rest of our lives.

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SMITHS CREEK

It gets its start in Hurd’s Lake, and from there it winds and m wanders its way through McNab-Braeside and Horton Townships, before entering the jurisdiction of the Town of Renfrew and eventually emptying into the Bonnechere River across and just downstream from Air Force Memorial Park.

Smiths Creek — aka Smith’s Creek — is one of those things that you see just about every day, but the familiarity of it allows you to just walk on by, or drive on by, without giving it a thought, much less a second one.

My doctor told me to start walking routes that are different from my go-to route, something to do with mixing things up being good for me, especially if, while mixing things up, I incorporate some hills and terrain into my walk.

Never one to dismiss the advice of my doctor, I did just that, mixed it up a bit.

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A NIGHT WITH DEF LEPPARD

I’ve listened to all kinds of music in my time, and my interest crosses multiple boundaries of multiple genres.  But for whatever reason, the head-banging screamer-rock of the late eighties and early nineties sort of escaped me.

I was once a head-banger, in the late seventies, but I had obviously mellowed out a decade later, and preferred to stick to my Phil Collins, Genesis, and Stevie Nicks, among many others.

And then, suddenly, 2019 was upon me, and my music interests were unexpectedly added to with the emergence of one of those same long-haired screamer bands onto my music radar, in the form of a live concert.

You see, Def Leppard was making a cross-Canada tour, and one of the stops was at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.  Normally, something like this would come and go without catching my attention.  I mean, I had heard of Def Leppard and everything, but they’d never been a band that grabbed too much of my entertainment attention or dollars.

This is where my daughter, Avery, enters the story.

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A FIELD TRIP TO BAFN

For something different, I grabbed the camera and tripod, and went to visit the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, or BAFN.

To be completely fair, I had no appointment, but then again, nobody needs an appointment to walk around the exterior. It’s the interior where the mystery lies.

JACKSON RESIGNS POSITION AS TREASURER

It certainly looks like Charlene Jackson is gone as Renfrew’s treasurer.

Earlier today, I was given a heads-up about a job posting on the employment site Indeed, where sure enough, there’s a posting for a position that sure sounds like the one she’s held down until just recently.

That posting appears below.

Budget deliberations were brutal, and there’s no time in a treasurer’s annual calendar where almost every road, every request, and every question lands squarely at your door as it does at budget time.

Also, Renfrew is in the middle of some bad times, especially money-wise, and that’s something that’s not going to change any time in the near future.

So I guess I’m saying that being the treasurer of an entity that teeters on the edge of financial ruin can’t be the easiest job in the world.

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SMALL TOWN RACISM

And then there was Dave.

It’s not his real name, but it’ll have to do for the purposes of telling my story, a story that needs to be shared.  I also don’t want to use his real name because I don’t want to embarrass him, and more to the point, his family.  Because, Dave is no different than a lot of other Dave’s out there, so why single him out, right?

You see, Dave is a racist.  Not even a little bit of one, but rather a racist with a paid-up-in-full membership to AOA, or Assholes of America, a subsidiary of ROA, or Racists of America, a family-oriented group complete with chat lines where you can spend time dumping on those goddamned immigrants you saw at Walmart earlier in the day, when you stopped in after church, the place you pretended to be a Christian for reasons unknown.

Dude, if there’s a God, he already knows you’re a racist, so you might just as well carve an extra hour for yourself on Sunday mornings rather than go to all the work of showing up and be a hypocrite.  But then again, you don’t go to church for God, do you?  For you, it’s mostly about the appearances you put in so that other folks think you’re a great guy.  And after all, it’s not like you’re the only racist sitting in church on a Sunday morning, right?  For heaven’s sake, the place is full of them.  Go ahead.  Tell me it’s not.

It’s like we’re going to need Jesus to come down and throw one of those money-lender freak-outs to reclaim his Father’s house from the imposters who take up space within it.  No doubt I’ll get all caught up in the mayhem, but hey, I went to Confession just a little over a week ago, so how much sin could I have possibly accumulated?

However much sin I’m burdened with, I’m not a racist.

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JOHN EXPLAINS STRONG MAYOR POWERS

To me, John has the appearance of being a very nice man, one with an impressive resume and one who happens to be an “expert” on Strong Mayor Powers.

John appeared via video link at the last meeting of Renfrew Clown Council, where he was tasked with walking everyone through the democratic abomination of small mayor powers as handed over to any municipality with a McDonalds and a set of street lights.  So Renfrew gets included, because we have those traffic lights, and even a Wendy’s, so game on.

One minor, yet annoying thing about John, though, is that neither God nor his parents apparently gave him a last name, which I’m absolutely cool with in theory, it’s just that I thought that practice was limited to Brazilian soccer stars and Indonesian dictators.

But I don’t make the rules.  Small town strong mayors do.  If a guy doesn’t want a last name, then he doesn’t have to have one.  Unless a strong mayor comes along and makes him.

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A KINDER, GENTLER PIERRE?

After sorting through the “carnage” of the last federal election results, Conservatives have been busy trying to figure out what exactly the hell happened.

The party won more seats, grabbed a bigger share of the popular vote, and made in-roads into areas and ridings where Tories once dared not walk.

Oh, and their leader lost his seat.  Badly.  No recounts needed in Carleton.  The boss got bossed right out of town.

Not long ago, snagging over 40% in public opinion surveys and the popular vote would signal a Conservative majority government, something everyone, including myself, was predicting not long ago.  And not just a simple majority, but a massive one.  Yet even with all the gains the party posted, the Liberals got more of all of the above, in seats, vote share, and their leader actually winning his own riding, interestingly the riding next door to the Tory leader’s.

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FLORIDA AND THE FLYING ELBOW

The term “Elbow’s-Up” was made more popular by Canadian comedian Mike Myers as a response to the buffoonery being put forward by the American president, who more and more seems to be an exact representation of the American people at large.

But the Florida Panthers have made it their personal calling card, as they elbow their way through opponents without much in the way of intervention by the Department of Player Safety, also known as Look The Other Way Committee.

How many concussions will need to be meted out by the Panthers before the pointy-heads up at league headquarters make the appropriate connection?

I’m not a Leafs fan, I’m a hockey fan, and if the league and officials continue to do nothing about this kind of thing, from Florida in particular, then the only way to handle this business is to build your own team with flying elbows, and maybe go back in time to the 1970’s.

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TIME TO CHANGE HOW WE VOTE?

Every Canadian voter is familiar with the electoral system called “First Past the Post.”

They know it because they know how it works or they know it because they can see the results of it.  Both of those positions may likely involve maintaining that practice, since it happens to be all Canadians have ever known.  And they’d rather keep the familiarity of a failed system than attempt to do anything about it through change or modification.

First-past-the-post refers to the idea that, in an election, the person getting the most votes wins.  Pretty straight-forward, easy to understand, something accepted for as long as Adam and that freaking snake in the garden.

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