More than 300 journalists are accredited for the trial of Robert Pickton, accused of murdering many prostitutes. The saturation coverage borders on atrocious pornography. What are we going to find out from it? We are going to find out — or some reporters, editors and readers hope we’re going to find out — exactly how a number of women were sexually killed. Why do we want to know that? What excuse can we have for not averting our gaze?

Not from the fact that they were killed horribly. Nor the question whether some of our laws should be changed to help save others from this fate. And I do not object to news features that give the victims names, histories and the fond recollections of friends and family. But we don’t need to know how they died or where the body parts were found. Nor should we want to.

As this newspaper editorialized Thursday, readers can avoid specific stories. But it should not be indecent to leave the daily paper where children might see it. And journalists can exercise and routinely do exercise moral judgment about how to cover stories for adults.

I do not suggest primly pretending dreadful things don’t happen, at least to people we know. Quite the reverse. We should be acutely aware of life’s horrors, so painfully able to imagine the details that we recoil from wallowing in them. Which I fear is behind this excessive coverage. What else are 300 journalists going to do but rush back with gore and smear it across TV screens and newspaper pages? We’d only need about 10 to tell us when a verdict comes down.

That is one thing we do want to know. Did he do it? The presumption of innocence might seem a translucent legal fiction here, but I still say we need a trial. High-profile cases have been bungled in this country before.

Which raises another thing we need to know. If the evidence is as conclusive as it seems, how can it possibly have taken the prosecution five years to get ready for trial? Such delays make a mockery of justice in every way.

If someone is innocent, years of the emotional and financial stress of a trial constitute unwarranted punishment for which no true restitution is possible.

For the families of victims, too, the lengthy delay is torture. Not just uncertainty as to whether they got, and will manage to convict, the right person. In a case like this, there’s an inevitable violation of privacy, the necessary publication of some lurid details of the last, degrading suffering of a daughter, sister, mother or wife. But family and friends shouldn’t have to sit and dread it every day for years.

It’s not even fair to the jury. That they must weigh appalling evidence is, again, unavoidable. But a year away from their normal lives, and their jobs, for just $18,580 a year, is not reasonable. What about the evidence will take that long to evaluate?

There are other, larger questions about this case we cannot properly ignore. Among them, surely, is the high price we pay for “blue laws” against victimless wrongdoing. I’m no libertine who thinks prostitution is just another career option. I dislike the phrase “sex trade worker” not because I wish to be insulting but because I want to warn people that prostitution is degrading. But laws against it prevent a small number of people from drifting into it at the expense of trapping many others in it, especially if they also have illegal drug habits. It’s a bad trade-off.

If we think prostitution is morally wrong, we should want to help people get out of it. Making it illegal not only traps prostitutes in dismal lifestyles with sinister companions; it puts them at grave risk of being murdered before they can get their lives together. I don’t see enough benefits from such a law to outweigh giving sexual psychopaths a ready supply of victims.

It also seems clear that if many psychoactive drugs were not illegal, those who take them would be less likely to turn to prostitution, legal or not, to fuel their habit. For one thing, they would need less money. For another, they would be less likely to be fired if legitimate employers discovered they were users. And for a third, they would be less likely to be fired because they’d been put in jail. Again, you need not favour the use of crack cocaine to think laws against it do more harm than good.

So there is much to discuss here. But the details of the crimes of which Robert Pickton stands accused, including specific indignities to dead bodies, are not something we need to know. They are not something we should want to know.

They are not something we should cover.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

When I watch governments spend money, I frequently make the sort of naive observation that suggests I just fell off a turnip truck. Such as: To avoid a tax increase, Ottawa council has to stop big programs from getting way more expensive year after year. If they can’t, they should admit it and explain why. It could be tricky. I’ve complained before about the paradox that as western societies grow richer, governments keep taking more and more of our income. With poverty falling and most goods and services being produced more efficiently, you’d expect the reverse. Yet Councillor Clive Doucet reminded readers in Wednesday’s Citizen that when the old city council tried to freeze taxes in 2004, they “ended up slashing everything from yard waste pickup to public health.”

Why? If your budget is the same as last year, can’t you pick up as much trash? I’m also puzzled that the people who govern us for a living seem not just bad at it but strangely incurious. Don’t they wonder where the money keeps going?

My most rustic suggestion for tax control is to decide how much money you have to spend, and every time you add a spending item subtract its cost from the available total. When it’s all gone, stop adding things. If there are vital things you missed, take some others off first to make room for them.

Instead, Ottawa city council responded to this year’s budget crunch by assuring a swarm of special-interest groups their funding was safe. Say, fellers, maybe you’re going about this backward. To see why the budget is out of control, stop promising to spend and look for large spending areas that consistently grow faster than the tax base.

No, don’t change the subject to complain about too little revenue. I know Ottawa, like all municipalities, claims to be cash-starved. And yes, our cities are too reliant on property taxes. The provinces should give them other taxing powers, because as much government as possible should be provided at the lowest level possible in the name of accountability. And when one government raises money that another spends there’s too much room for buck-passing in a crisis (as between the feds and provinces on health care).

Still, for the city to cry poverty is a stretch. The total 2006 Ottawa budget was around $3.17 billion ($1.917 billion operating, $197 million police services and $1.183 billion capital, but $127 million of that comes from the operating budget). But $729 million of the capital budget was for light rail, leaving $2.4 billion. That’s over $2,800 for each of the 865,000 or so residents.

The federal government’s $210 billion for 32.8 million citizens is over twice as much, around $6,400 per person, but must cover defence, transfers to provinces for health and education, elderly benefits and so on. The province of Ontario spends about $84 billion a year on 12.5 million people, about $6,700 each, but, again, must cover health (over $32 billion), education ($15 billion or so), etc. Really $2,800 per city resident is quite a bit. The question is, where does it go? They can’t spend it all plowing big wet sticky heaps of snow across my driveway.

Since I’m not a city councilor I don’t have the details at my fingertips. So as an experiment I started researching this question at 11:00 on Wednesday. By 11:10 I’d managed to download the budgets from 2002 on and by 11:30 I think I’d figured out that from 2002 to 2006 the operating budget rose 23 per cent from $1.7 to $2.1 billion (counting police), with “Compensation” up 18 per cent, “Purchased Services, Material & Supplies” 25 per cent and “Transfers/ Grants” just seven per cent. In the alternative breakdown of the operating budget by function the biggest villain isn’t “Corporate, HR, Development Services, City Manager,” up 28 per cent, but “Transportation, Utilities, Public Works” at 40 per cent.

With light rail included, the capital budget would be big trouble, doubling in four years. But take out light rail’s $729 million and it’s down from $520 million to $371 million. That bothers me a lot because I’m an infrastructure hawk. An engineering rule of thumb says repair costs at least five times as much as maintenance, and replacement five times as much as repair. So it’s insane to delay infrastructure work. But if we truly cannot afford needed capital spending without hiking taxes just tell us. And cancel any fancy new spending projects (goodbye, light rail) while you fix the existing sewers, OK?

City staff can dig out details. But in principle, the problem is simple.

In a few major areas, spending keeps growing faster than revenue. Make it stop or you won’t be able to hold our taxes down.

Say, did I just drop a turnip?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Tuesday, Nov. 28As the Western Standard’s eyes at the Liberal convention, I actually visit candidates’ websites. Gerard Kennedy stands for “Real. Liberal. Change.” I stand for “Real. Complete. Sentences.” I feel Left. Out. Rae’s site says, “Call me Bob, Let’s talk about the future.” Now I want to be left out. Ignatieff’s site offers Warhol graphics plus “vrai” “real” “leadership.” Is “leadership” a French word? And who’s offering the fake stuff? Dion’s site offers “Stéphane in depth.” With some candidates, this would be comical. With him it’s just uninviting.

Wednesday, Nov. 29 Arrive at ghastly Palais des Congrès. Convention opens late, with strange cymbal-laden “O Canada,” almost all in French. No delegates join in. Don’t they know the “porter l’épée/porter la croix” lyrics? Or is the original French too crusadey? Canadian patriotism is complicated, so Liberals avoid it. Delegates quickly pass a motion with the unspoken but clear purpose of letting an awkward “Quebec nation” resolution vanish. Turning to policy, half the crowd leaves. The party seems keener to talk about renewal than to renew. Delegates think Canada needs more women in politics, but fewer than three per cent support Martha Hall Findlay. Surely Rae can’t be the answer for a party branded as arrogant. Ignatieff’s 2000 claim to be Martian seems plausible, every photo bearing an “Earthlings make friendly faces like this” quality. Can Kennedy bore his way to power? Is Dion cool with that?

The “rah rah” warm-up acts are revealing. This may be the first Liberal leadership convention in Montreal, but their heart is here: Anglos proudly deluded that “Je swee uhn Kebekwah.” So podium shouts about a western resurgence are unaccompanied by any way to achieve it.

Tonight’s keynote speech by American politico Howard Dean doesn’t start until 9:45. Organizers deny trying to keep Dean off prime-time TV, to avoid looking stupid if he’s shrill, or dumb. Dean is both, and mangles his French. He tells a thrilled audience they share dominant American values and should run a U.S.-style “permanent campaign.”

If the Tories did this, the Liberals and media would howl.

Thursday, Nov. 30 Aha, innovative paraphernalia: cookies with the Pink Book logo. First saw policy cookies at the 2000 Democratic primary in New York City; finally they reach Canada. Delegates make significant decisions on party structure; the press doesn’t talk about it. There are 1,100 journalists here, and only one story: “It’s Mike or Bob, unless it’s not.” The crucial decision, to keep on selecting leaders at delegate conventions instead of by “one member, one vote,” is sensibly anti-populist: democracy benefits if party members periodically rub elbows. Tomorrow’s top story: “It’s Bob or Mike, unless it’s not.”

Friday, Dec. 1 On Ottawa morning radio, I cautiously predict a Dion victory. First, the Liberals last won a majority with an Anglo leader in 1945, and Dion’s the only francophone. Second, the Liberals alternate francophone winners and anglophone chumps (Trudeau, Turner, Chrétien, Martin), and Dion’s the only francophone. Third, Liberals last chose a leader without federal cabinet experience in 1880--Edward Blake, their only leader never to be prime minister--and Dion’s the only former minister.

Today’s lowlight: speeches of appalling banality. Evidently Adscam never happened. The party seeks renewal, but not from any bad thing. Bob Rae just called John Turner “a great prime minister.” The CBC analyzes whether Ignatieff hit the right notes, aided by Belinda Stronach, who finds the energy in the hall “awesome.” So deep. Peter Mansbridge sees bright electoral future for Liberals. Grouchy Western Standard commentator sees partisan public broadcaster.

Today’s highlight: buttons like, “Who needs Ontario anyway? Vote Bob.” He’d be electorally appalling; but Ignatieff and Dion are also arrogant and central Canadian. No one thinks Dion’s French citizenship is an issue, but in other, non-postmodern parts of Canada, loyalty is not comical. Kennedy may be the best choice, too dull to be offensive or scary.

Saturday, Dec. 2 Ignatieff tastes dust on first ballot, failing to break 30 per cent. Delegates realize his “manor-born” style is a serious handicap. The hall goes green: Dion people held back their green T-shirts until this morning. Contrived? Successful. Rae, shocked, dropped from the ballot on placing third, can’t bring himself to go to Ignatieff. Ungracious but unimportant; his delegates wouldn’t have followed. I tell radio listeners Dion has it, then fight for an exit. Dion wins. Forget his “unpopularity” in the belle province; though disliked in the tribe, he’s preferred to outsiders. I fear for his party and my country, contemplating his impact on the West and rural Ontario. Glad party members enjoyed the convention. Suspect no one will enjoy the aftermath.

[First published in Western Standard]

MP Wajid Khan may not have been wise to switch from the Liberals to the Tories. But he was perfectly within his rights to do it. Parliament in Canada is not a subordinate appendage of political parties. It is the locus of self-government, and the independence of MPs is a precious, hard-won safeguard of our freedom. As Andrew Coyne wrote last summer: “We’ve got to get over this idea that any time MPs use their brain cells unchaperoned it is some sort of constitutional crisis.” Certainly we shouldn’t grumble endlessly about partisanship then, when an MP bucks a party, grumble that there oughta be a law against it

Literally. Jeffrey Simpson in Tuesday’s Globe and Mail said “If the Conservatives were genuinely committed to democracy and accountability, they would have put Mr. Khan’s decision on hold and introduced legislation requiring MPs to seek their electorate’s approval of switching parties.”

I don’t even see how you’d do such a thing. There’s no point forcing MPs to keep sitting with their former colleagues while letting them vote with the other guys. But if the proposal is for MPs to be told how to vote, who’s meant to do it? Surely not the party leader, since Mr. Simpson’s 2001 book The Friendly Dictatorship, said party leaders already have too much power. Alas, he gave no answer.

In Wednesday’s Citizen Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch did. But it was way too weird. He started by calling Mr. Khan’s defection (you knew it was coming) a violation of the Charter, specifically its provision that “every citizen has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly.” Mr. Conacher says “this right has no meaning if candidates can be dishonest” during elections, or “if the members elected can do whatever they want” afterward.

Bosh. Rights have no meaning when we don’t exercise them with due diligence. So we should try harder to elect honest people. But apparently Mr. Conacher’s new and improved form of democracy doesn’t trust the public. Instead, “politicians must be required to resign and run in byelections if they want to switch parties between elections; party leaders must be required to pay very large fines if they break election promises; and all politicians and government officials must be required to pay very large fines if they lie to voters at any time.” Required by whom? Why, “the ethics enforcement officers in all governments.”

So we should let an unelected official control how elected officials vote. Though presumably politicians will appoint this person. Or rather, the majority will. OK, the prime minister. So letting the PM’s lackey tell opposition MPs how they must vote enhances democracy. And some people think I’m strange.

I don’t know what Jean Chrétien’s hand-picked ethics officer would have done about the GST or NAFTA. But I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have let Paul Martin’s supporters threaten a non-confidence vote in the House. And I can’t imagine Stephen Harper’s appointee forcing John Baird not to endorse Kyoto, even though the Tories clearly didn’t campaign on it.

Mr. Conacher concedes that MPs should be allowed to switch “if a ruling party broke all of its election promises.” But an ethics czar isn’t likely to let a PM break all his promises, then turn around and let his caucus defect over it. I could also ridicule Mr. Conacher’s further admission that “promise-breaking should be allowed if an unforeseeable situation arises.”

Given what our politicians already can’t foresee, I’m in no hurry to give them legal reasons to become still more obtuse. But these are details.

The key point is that the right of those we elect to speak, act and vote as they think best is the primary safeguard of our democratic freedom, and any proposal to legislate it away is an attack on self-government. That it is ignorant rather than malicious is a poor excuse. Especially coming from people who think for a living.

Democracy is by no means perfect. Humans are flawed and power corrupts, so it is very hard to create a government strong enough to protect you but not so strong as to oppress you. Over a thousand years our parliamentary system made the legislature a check on the executive and made voters a check on the legislature. It works pretty well.

If we don’t do the hard work required of citizens the system rapidly descends through farce into tragedy. But fixing it by outlawing human frailty, and bypassing voters while you’re at it, isn’t political philosophy. It’s foolishness.

I cannot say how Mr. Khan will get along as a Tory. But so far, as an MP, he’s doing just fine.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

You thought I was kidding. On Sept. 6, 2003, when this newspaper endorsed homosexual marriage, I wrote a column ending “Beware: Those who call for nonsense will find that it comes.” And now a court says a child can have three parents … and counting. The decision strikes me as revolutionary. For starters, it makes polygamy all but inevitable. For if marriage, as two people of opposite sex, can be dissolved by any court and reconstituted as two people of any sex, and if parenthood, as up to two people, can be dissolved and reconstituted as three (or more), how long before a judge says all a child’s parents can be married to each other, especially if they all live together?

Perhaps we want polygamy and perhaps we don’t. But (pardon me while I blow centuries-old dust off the page) I think we should involve the representatives of the people in the discussion, not just judges. I mean, isn’t abolishing self-government also a bit revolutionary?

As for nonsense, what does it even mean when a court says you can now have three parents? Did no child have three parents until Tuesday? Or have people always had groups of dads and we never noticed? At bottom what is law? Does it create facts, or merely recognize them?

As I wrote in the Centre for Cultural Renewal’s Winter 2006 Centrepoints, the natural law tradition “regards fundamental law as like mathematics: that murder or theft should be forbidden is something we discover not something we decide or invent, just as 2+2 equaled 4 before man learned to count (and even if he never did). … The alternative positive law tradition says man invents law for his convenience, and only against this standard can it be measured and found wanting.”

Curiously, in most respects we are nearly all natural-law theorists today. We think everyone has inherent human rights (though we disagree about details) and a legal code is defective, or even illegitimate, to the extent that it fails to recognize and protect them. Yet when it comes to family law, we take a totally different view. I expect if courts redefined a table as a child we would send it to kindergarten.

My view of positive law is well expressed by the possibly apocryphal anecdote about Abraham Lincoln asking if a cow’s tail were a leg how many legs it would have, and dismissing the answer “Five” by saying a politician calling a cow’s tail a leg doesn’t make it one. Clearly we could not do math, build houses or sell eggs if 2+2 could be turned into 5 and perhaps later 28.7 or 4/ 3πr3 depending on our mood. And I very much doubt a social structure will hold up any better than a building if we presume we can make anything into anything else by reciting the appropriate spell. But I also can’t believe people always had extra parents and no one knew.

As for the claim that “reality is changing” in ways the law must reflect, the presence of loving adults besides their parents in many children’s lives certainly isn’t news. Indeed, I expect it used to be more common. But under the old definition these other adults were aunts and uncles, biological or honorary. (Even under old-style polygamy you had only one mom.) The title of “parent” belonged exclusively to the two people who dependably jumped out of a shared bed if they heard barfing sounds at 2 a. m. So unless the definition has changed, or was always wrong, it still does. Our changing habits cannot give Heather three mommies.

Nor can a judge. The old natural law was not obtuse or naive about families. Its adoption and child protection laws allowed the status of “parent” to be transferred from a biological progenitor or step-parent to another caregiver for a variety of reasons. But that status couldn’t be expanded. It had to be relinquished, or forfeited, by one person to go to another. Someone might have fewer than two parents but never more. And no cow ever had five legs.

The problem is not that this ruling gave a child a second “mother.” For better or worse gay marriage did that. The intolerable novelty here is that the court did so without delisting the original father. Allowing parents to multiply raises enormous practical problems of child support, access and so on. But behind them lurks a question of principle: Is it really true that you can have more than two parents at one time?

If so, everyone who ever lived, loved and raised a family misunderstood the word “parent” from the dawn of time until light shone down from the bench on Tuesday. Which is what Canadian law now says.

So beware: Nonsense is not just coming. It’s here.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Hello! Congratulations on your purchase of Robson’s Kith and Kin Kleanser, the exciting New Year’s Eve game for the whole family to make sure there’s no whole family this time next year. Works great on acquaintances, too. Horrible truths can be yours. The rules are simple, and all four fun variants start the same way. Assemble the players in a vicious circle at least 90 minutes before midnight so no goodwill, off-key singing or chanting countdowns can spoil the fun. Write everyone’s name on a slip of paper, fold and place in a cocked hat or other suitable container such as a can of worms or pretty kettle of fish.

Next, everyone draws out one name that’s not their own. Then after a brief pause for people to refresh their drinks, and give their claws a quick sharpen, each participant formulates a New Year’s resolution for whomever they have drawn. It can’t be physically impossible like flap your arms and fly to the moon or financially impossible or ludicrous like buy a Caribbean island or give away everything you own. No. We’re serious, folks. As serious as disinheritance. It has to be something they could and should do but almost certainly won’t and will probably resent. Fun? Wait, we’ve hardly begun.

In Variant 1, “Yes, I mean you,” each player in randomly chosen order names his or her target and reads the resolution. After each turn allow a few minutes for ill-tempered bickering, including the should-have-said gambit in which other players deftly clobber both author and target by scorning a proposed resolution for overlooking other, far more serious, flaws. But to avoid premature destruction of the family unit, players may not bring in targets not yet named.

In Variant 2, “You know who I mean,” each player reads out the resolution without naming the target, whose identity players try to guess. In addition to entertainingly feeble denials of relevancy by suggested targets, this variant permits the truly cutting ploy in which other players say, for example, “No, the quit-gambling one can’t be for Joe because his womanizing is way more serious.” And what could be more family-oriented than reopening old wounds as fresh resolutions lead to revising earlier target choices? Wheeee!

Variants 3 and 4 work better with a computer and printer than handwriting because the resolutions are deposited back in the hat unsigned, then randomly drawn and read. In Variant 3, “We all know you do it,” the unsigned resolution names its target so the players can squabble not only about relevancy but also over who was most likely to know about or hate the behaviour in question.

In the advanced Variant 4, “Furtive glances all round,” the doubly anonymous resolution combines the guess-the-target fun of Variant 2 with the guess-the-author fun of Variant 3. Targets can deny everything, hit back at the supposed author with “That’s exactly the sort of petty thing you’d say” or, better yet, do both with “That’s exactly the sort of thing you’d imagine I’d do.” Think of the bond-shattering possibilities when both guesses are wrong. Or right. It doesn’t matter. Time flies when you play this variant. Along with insults and possibly plates.

The fun never stops. Among the obvious “I will drink less ... before noon” and “I will adopt the habit of semi-regular bathing” contributions to the evening’s amusement, the occasional “I will stop embezzling” can kill the conversation while everyone stares around to see who’s turning red and fidgeting. Oh the laughs.

A few rounds make starkly clear that our families and supposed friends are painfully aware of the character flaws we thought we’d cleverly concealed by ignoring them. They’ve just been afraid to say anything. In a mellow, Auld-Lang-Syne mood, we might appreciate people who’ve always known us for dishonest inebriated layabouts yet who’ve stuck by us anyway. On the other hand, the less pleasant conclusion, that the only people willing to associate with us are equally repulsive types who lack better options, will at least cut down tremendously on the social obligations next holiday season.

Before you give me my resolution that “I will stop making maliciously amusing but socially destructive suggestions in print,” here’s one final wrinkle. In the solitaire Variant 5 you simply imagine the resolutions that your family and friends might make for you.

And of course you already know. Horrible, isn’t it?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Well, it’s Dec. 22 and I’m dreeeeaming of a white whale. Not, I hasten to add, because I hope for blubber in my stocking Christmas morning. Rather, certain news stories about the fragility of life remind me of a strangely encouraging passage from Moby-Dick. OK, so I won’t need any pretentiousness under the tree. Nor, please, any works of Herman Melville. I love the scene in the musical Wonderful Town where the hostess’s attempts to spark cultured conversation at her party with references to his magnum opus fizzle out with “It’s about this ... whale.” Indeed. And from my youth I dimly recall descriptions of the skin of whales as tedious as they were unreliable. As to the moral of the story, I think it was something to the effect that if ever you are on a ship whose captain is totally insane in ways that are going to get everyone killed, you should, on some dark and stormy night, sneak up behind him, wallop his noggin with a sock full of sand, pitch him over the railing and the next morning feign astonishment that he is nowhere to be seen. But I digress.

Enduring Moby-Dick in some otherwise long-forgotten class, I was powerfully impressed by one passage in which Melville describes how a great length of harpoon rope is laid out in a fragile whaling boat “in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions ...” Yet, he says, “Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat,” even though when the harpoon is thrown and the line begins to run there is an appalling danger of it wrapping itself round an arm or leg and dismembering you or dragging you to a bleak watery death.

The moral is not just that whaling is dangerous as well as wrong. Melville winds up the chapter “But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”

I’ve always remembered this passage. Actually over the years, I seem to have embellished it. For I distinctly recall him going on to note that the mere act of stepping into the street, where one might be run down by a carriage or felled by a dislodged roofing tile, is immensely more perilous than those who routinely do it ever notice. But I find no such text in the book now that I look it up.

Frankly, I believe Melville missed a great opportunity to edit out some of his more tedious passages about the structure of whale tails and insert my carriage and tile bit. Because he did not, allow me the privilege.

My purpose is not to be discouraging, least of all at this time of year. It is to suggest that because life is fragile we should treat it as more precious than we often do. Because you read the newspapers, you must know that the daughter of hockey hall of famer Bob Gainey, who after a troubled adolescence had found herself in part through sailing on tall ships, was recently fatally plucked from the deck of one by a rogue wave. You just never know.

I make no argument against sailing. Quite the reverse. To me a trip on a tall ship is a dream. I’d even settle for a short ship. What a wonderful way to spend a month or so of the unspecified time allotted to you on this planet. As for the risks, remember Melville’s warning: You are hardly safer in your study or in traffic. And the danger of missing life completely is greater than of having it end early. Including neglecting the companionship of our shipmates.

In theory, we all know we all sit metaphorically amid complex loops of rope that may at any moment drag us to our doom. And in practice, I trust, we look both ways before crossing the street. But let us also find comfort and joy with our fellows here on whatever narrow benches we occupy amid life’s stormy seas. Especially when we periodically notice the coils, silent and menacing, let it remind us to savour each moment we share in the warmth and light.

I shall say no more of whales, especially Melville’s revolting description of stripping the blubber. Christmas desserts are quite alarming enough without giving anyone any ideas. But here we are: Christmas is upon us and we live.

So lean over the coils and hug someone. And Merry Christmas to you all.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

The Canucks in Canuckville liked freedom a lot,But the Grinches who ruled from above them did not. What Canucks called tradition they deemed mere delusion, What Canucks thought was freedom they renamed confusion.

Where buyers and sellers in markets were free, They cried exploitation and not liberty. Where people had lives not controlled by the state, It offended the gaze of the good and the great.

Where ageism, sexism, and lookism reigned, High brows got all furrowed, expressions got pained. Our subjects are merry, chaotic and loud, A huge vulgar mixup. How can we be proud?

With our fancy degrees and our noble intentions, Gender studies and “discourse” and suchlike inventions. We’ll make this into a post modern post nation, We won’t heed their non-PC, base lamentation.

We’ll regulate TV and seat belts and cheese, Street hockey and boating; whatever we please. We’ll tell them what poison to use on a mouse, And how many plugs they must have in their house.

We’ll tell them their mattresses all must have tags, Patronize them with warnings on clear plastic bags. We’ll put green-friendly light bulbs in each Canuck’s hand, But to bike with no helmet will surely be banned.

We’ll make them join unions; we’ll meddle with wages, We’ll subsidize books with Canadian pages We’ll give them a Charter with rights no one knows, With rulings from judges that no voter chose.

We’ll limit Fox News lest it cause them confusion, To hear diverse views in disordered profusion. We’ll drag all their kids to a dull public school, Where we’ll teach them sex ed not some dumb golden rule.

We’ll make them quit smoking and take up a sport, We’ll regulate when where and how they cavort. If they try to get married the time-honoured way, We’ll claim that they hate every person who’s gay.

We’ll promise them health care that’s totally free, And a family doctor who’s easy to see. But we’ll skimp on provision, with this lovely twist, When they’re sick we’ll put them on a long waiting list.

If this were some poem by old Dr. Seuss, You know what would put a stop to their abuse. We’d hold hands and sing, and at us they would look, And see us all happy without what they took.

And when they clued in that we were not just jokin’, We really were joyful, our spirits unbroken. Their hearts would grow larger, three times in one day, And their wish to coerce us would just go away.

But sadly it’s not how things work in this place, A power-mad smirk’s hard to wipe off a face. So we, we ourselves, must climb right up Mount Crumpet, And lug up the whole nanny state, there to dump it.

Remember we’re voters, not cute little Whos, It’s us who elect those strange folks in the news. And remember we’re free, but it comes at a price, Of vigilant principle, strong and yet nice.

We’re still a free people, despite all our woes, And we still make the laws with our yes’s and no’s. Just be firm when you vote and stand up for each right, And I’ll wish you an unregulated good night.

[First published in Fraser Forum]