The Warming

There are really only two choices in life. One is to do good and the other is to do bad. It's up to each of us to choose. When Christ gave his sermon on the mount he had lots to say. At the end of his talk a young fella was blown away and asked if he could follow. "Sure," Jehovah said, "Just give up everything you have and join the gang. He had lots and walked away.

Exasperated, after many questions about how to attain this or that, Christ said one thing. "Just love one another as I have loved you." What else matters? Money comes and goes and jobs come and go; the difference is what anyone leaves behind. What is your legacy?

Hone, come home. By now you have figured out something I learned some time ago, and that is that politics is best left to hogs at the trough. You have more to offer and there is an absence of leadership here. Hell, we are inundated with former clerks who don't have value or heart and they will spend the heritage that is so little and too late.

We need to invest in our children. Never mind if they can speak the reo or look the same color as you... just look into their hearts and make your choice. Life is just too short.

Ugly facts.

36 or so hours from now I am going into Detox and Rehab. It will take some weeks but this needs doing. I'm a pisshead and intend to give all of nurture, or nature, to exist. My churchmen have allowed me to speak tomorrow so I intend to at least apologise for whom I am. But...I'll never allow myself to be a doormat for anybody, so if they want to go, well let it rest on them. I declare no violence anymore, because I have had a guts full of it. Because in the end it is all about blaming everybody and pointing fingers. I have had a guts full of that too.

kanata

Jacques Cartier came to Canada in 1535, saw some Iroquois and asked them to meet. He asked where they were and they answered, "kanata". This was the Iroquois name for meeting place. Well it became the name for my country, Canada. Of course, the Poms got involved and battle took place on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec. Wolfe took on Montcalm and kicked his ass. The French have never forgotten this and have been bitter ever since. Shoot. They pretty much have their own state within a state, even their own immigration laws.

When WW2 broke out there were riots in the streets of Montreal because the frogs could not understand why they were being asked to fight. The Conscription Riots...never mind the war was in France at the time.

One of the biggest frauds of all time was General Charles DeGaulle. When Dwight proposed he broadcast the secret message to kick off D Day, he balked. This was some bastard living in London with only a servant for company, no damn army and he had the temerity to refuse. He came over to Quebec one year and finished his speech with, "Vivre Le Quebec Libre!" and touched off our Separatist battle that left Pierre Laporte garroted with a crucifix and the British High Commissioner, Cross, found in the trunk of a car at the airport.

The separatists went to Cuba, where they were celebrated for these brave acts. There was an amnesty and these guys all came back to professorships and government appointments. Many now sit in Parliament. How can New Zealand handle the hypocrisy? There is no upper house or supreme court worth a damn. They steal and will continue to steal until someone puts a stop to it. Public Works Act, Foreshore and Seabed.

Here we have a police force of rapists and crims, not all, but too many. With so much of their mana on the line you would figure they might do some good, but no...they go on a terror hunt for Maori. At least in the States you can take it to the Supreme Court, but there is no such place here. There were more casualties in Canada. A soldier jumped off a truck and the bolt on his SMG discharged a round into his chin. The bullet rattled around in his helmet for a bit and settled down. I spoke with the fella who trained him. He wasn't following order and discipline as advised. To me it is a shame that Canada, The United States, Australia and New Zealand declined to sign the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Shame indeed.
Next I want to talk about Shame Jones and his pal Sam.

John

Not my uncle. John was my best friend's dad. He was a senior cop as his brother Tom was. One night, John's eldest daughter was raped in an alleyway. Anyhow, night after night John and Tom cruised the neighbourhood. John had a 32 automatic he took off some mongrel. One night they stopped going out. He was a straight up guy. Lord knows, I kicked the crap out of his trust but he never lost his trust in me.
I was alone in the barracks one day and this fella called Dave decided to give me a hiding. He was half Russian and half Chinese. Anyhow, Dave presented himself and he was a mate of sorts, but felt I needed some comeuppance but just before he struck his first blow his body shook. Standing behind him was Jimmy who thumped him. I dodged a blow or two that day but knew a friend.

Robin

What the hell can I say about her. I met her during Caribana. We looked at each other and it was all locked in. I was married at the time to someone else whom divorced me. Unfortunately, the papers were served when Robin was there.
She thought we ought to go out one night. But when we got there everyone I knew was present. She bought the rings, signed the marriage certificate and arranged for my best man. Darn. The next day we were married, it is all kind of a blur.
One day she picked me up from work where I was making oak stairs for 9 bucks an hour. She was attending a local college, completing a diploma in Paralegal. Well, she got in the car. I got in the car. And she placed this big Glad Bag full of money beside me. There was $5,000 dollars of mixed denominations there. That's when I found out what she was really doing.
Well, that wasn't my life and I left. I was tutored by a couple of missionary sisters and it filled a huge hole in my life. Three months later my wife called me to say she had obtained a higher understanding...the same church. So, I went up there and about four weeks into the process she was arrested. The cop was a guy in a fur hat and he asked me if I knew anything about my wife. It turned out I knew nothing.

Months later, angry, but still going to church... in a different city, she dropped in and gave this arrousing testimony to my greatness. I bought it. She enticed me to come with her to a hotel room in the middle of nowhere. When I got there something was not right. There was a can of coke on the sideboard and a chocholate bar wrapper. Not things she would normally consume. "This is the wrong room", I said. I went home.

At six thirty that same night two homicide detectives dropped by, I was alone because it was a fireside and I didn't go. After lots of questions about who I knew and didn't know I said to them, "what has she done now?" Well, it turned out she had met this fella who liked to kill people. They assured me they were aware of everything and that I was being watched. So, my wife set me up for a hit... the boyfriend was in the bathroom of the motel room. Two people died. One was a landlady and the other a prospector; both shot in the head.
Gosh.

Docus

The best times I had were when we would do a Docus. It was a weekend away from wives and stuff. It was great because Terry would always do the math. He figured to the penny what it would cost and everyone would anty up and have a blast. I had just met this woman named Robin who robbed me of my cash. But offered to lend it to me to go away for the Docus thingy. Odd, I suppose, but more about her later.
Well we got there for two days of fishing and three nights of drinking. Rick...The Captain, had strict rules about things. We could drink our brains out but when we were on the water we had to be straight. Rick took charge of the first boat, a sixteen footer with 12 or so horsepower. Warren had my boat but managed to hammer half a dozen boats getting out of harbour. Rick said, "Warren, you're fired. Dougie you're driving." Well okay. We set off for the far reaches across the lake to get a fish. Warren caught one, a pike, about twelve pounds we let it go and headed back.
A little more about Warren.
One Christmas Eve there was a knock on his door. One of the kids opened it and some guy with a sawed-off semi automatic 22 walked in. He had just shot two cabbies, one dead, the other almost. He was being chased and hit Warren's house, completely by chance. Warren was a gun collector. He had everything downstairs, but kept a cool head. He kept the guy occupied while his wife got the kids to the basement. There was a cop at the window and he got them out.
At some point, the guy, holding a rifle to Warren's head got him out of the house and into his brand new Chevy Malibu. The snow and ice was thick on the window and the guy decided if he shot a round through the window the stuff would fall off. He was wrong. The safety glass collapsed and the plans changed to bring him back inside. On the passenger side Warren saw a cop creeping up the side of the car. When the mongrel got out of his side the cop got up and pumped a 38 caliber round into his forehead. At his retirement celebration, the guy turned out to be a chief or some such thing, he gave Warren the gun he shot the guy with. True.
On the way back from our fishing expedition we hit some bad weather. The swells were at least four feet of black, cold water, with a sixteen foot boat with little motor. It was touch and go. One wrong move and we would have been swamped, but we made it back and I will never forget the fear I had about my ability to get Warren home. Warren couldn't swim.

Uncle John

My mom's eldest brother was John. He joined the Black Watch and served throughout the war. He achieved some distinction in winning the Military Medal... a couple of steps down from a VC. He was in Europe somewhere and there were a bunch of Generals on a hill looking at the battlefield through their binnoculars when they came under fire. Uncle John grabbed a Tommy Gun and gutted the Germans and won his medal.


Well. Some years later I was a Master Cadet, selected to attend the Annual Camp in Banff, Alberta. It was a lot like Outward Bound. I was given the nickname 'Gator'. We had these Belgium mountaineers teaching us to repel and climb. The nights were freezing but when the sun crossed the mountaintops you were sweating. Fortunately, I had fake ID (courtesy of the Army) and we attended a session at the Banff Springs Hotel. Before Texas, it was the largest bar in the world. We're talking about a parking garage in the basement, where beer was delivered by the cartload for 25 cents a pop.

We were running a little low on doe so we decided to buy a couple of boxes and climbed this rather big hill. Unfortunately, we were in plain sight and somebody called the RCMP. Fortunately again, they were rather fat and as they climbed the hill I rallied our defences and used the only weapons at our disposal.... empties. We lobbed them at the cops and more often than not they rolled to the bottom, to our absolute delight. We ran out of ammo and the fellas were not too pleased to be herded into the cop cars. It was nightfall by then.

When we got back to camp the Colonel was standing in the middle of the road in singlet, underwear, and socks and garters... of all things. He was some pissed. But so were we. The next day we were ordered to wear our uniforms for discipline. I said no and put on my civvies.
Each of us was marched into the Colonel's office and he fanned out our plane tickets. "Pick one." he said. We were escorted to the airport, under guard. But to my delight I had chosen the one first class ticket out of the bunch. Which meant of course, unlimited free booze. Every time I got a drink I would look through the curtain to my mates and toast them.

When we got to Toronto various parents were waiting and grabbed their kids by ears, hauling them off to their fate. Uncle John picked me up, and laughed like a loon.

My Uncle Eddie

My grandfather was an Irish dockworker. Every time one of his kids turned 16 he marched into the school and took them out to work at the Northern Electric factory, where they made telephones. In those days people were paid in cash and every payday my grandfather stood in line and put his kid's paypackets in his back pocket and drank it.
To escape this lack of cash my mom used to sing in bars for spare change. There was a guy called, 'The Angel'. He was a quiet mobster who cooled people for a living. He looked after my mom and made sure she got some stosh from the cheapscates. Now for Uncle Eddie. I only met him a few times, but his story has some pinnache. He lied about his age and joined the army and was parachuted into Arnheim during the war. My grandmother read about it in the newspaper and called the Member of Parliament. Eddie was sixteen, so he was sent home.
Eddie was a kind of Robin Hood. He used to steal beer trucks, park them in Verdun, Montreal and invite all and sundry to help themselves. He also stole Eaton's trucks, full of clothes and park them on the street, acting as a sales clerk. He never asked for money. He would just say, "Alice, this is just your fit."
Uncle Eddie served a lot of time in jail for his predispositions, but he always had a smile on his face. The last I heard, he was living in Calgary, married, and happy. A life lived is better than none.

The Gumper

When I was a kid growing up in Beloeil, Quebec we had a neighbour called Gump Worsley who was a professional goaltender for the Habs. His real name was Lorne, but he got the nickname Gump after a comic strip character and it stuck. His son Dean was the same age as me and we hung out. He won two Vezina trophies and a number of Stanley Cups and whenever we went over to Dean's they were generally used as candy dishes and ashtrays. In those days professional hockey players were paid the same as salesmen, hence the need for off-season work as an alcohol rep for Seagrams.
The Gumper only wore a mask for the last seven games of his career of some 700 or so games. I remember watching a game at Dean's and out of the blue play stopped because his dad lay on the ice, unconscious. It turned out someone threw a boiled egg at him and knocked him cold. The Gumper played until he was 44 and gave up the game because of his fear of flying. His last season was with the Minnesota North Stars. He was traded for cash.

Where from here?

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation. - Oscar Wilde

Well, five sleeps from today I will be locked up with a dozen or so addicts of various afflictions. Being the coward I am, I have whittled away what I can in the meantime, in preparation. This column of mine will be silent for a while. Seven days of detox and six months of rehab. I am an alcoholic. But modern medicine has porcupined me with a plethora of anti-depressants as well. But no blame on them, I was looking for a quick fix and jumped in with both feet.

What comes out at the other end will be interesting.