Opinions
lowest turnout ever, 52.8%, in 39 Ontario elections, underlining the need for electoral reform to redress imbalances in representation. Incredibly voters rejected the recommendation of the Ontario Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional Representation System that incorporates features of first-past-the-post for some seats.
The performance of the Ontario Liberals over the past eight years demands more openness and accountability in public affairs, particularly to achieve close and reliable supervision of contracting and consulting activities of ministers, senior bureaucrats and other public servants. A prime need is an arm's-length approach to appointments, especially to senior executive positions in crown corporations, which in successive administrations, whether Tory or liberal, have had unlimited freedom to raid the public purse. We've called attention to the excesses of the health ministry under ex-Minister George Smitherman which are said to have cost the province some $300 million already. This bottomless pit has long existed and directs an increasing share of government expenditures largely to political cronies, as if by entitlement.
In a copycat universe four politicians debate their claim to the provincial Premiership. Incumbent Bilkon M'Guilty fulsomely praised his policies and practices that have enriched many, advancing their status within the hierarchy that had served the Empire so profitably for 400 years. This referred to the hierarchical system styled "The Chain of Being", allegedly initiated by Thomas Aquinas, whereby aristocrats gained excessive returns from national production while commoners earned barely enough to subsist, yet had to pay inflated taxes. M'Guilty claimed to have helped neglected women groups to emerge from behind restrictive veils, children to a free breakfast once weekly and affordable day care. In healthcare he had succeeded in stabilising the frustration of providers and users by making promises, cutting services, increasing wait times and the pay of most senior staff - which they financed by imaginative savings through reducing staff or changing full-time to part-time work, substituting experience and knowledge for inexperience and ambition etc - thus reducing the burden on the finance system; he called this responsible fiscal management.
His nemesis Grimm WhoDat, assured listeners - most were silent party stalwarts - that he was a national with industrious immigrant grandparents, who had diligently elevated themselves without raiding political troughs inaccessible anyway until his generation came along. Thus he would ensure everyone pay their way, reducing Government costs to zero, apart from his party's "personnel" costs which might create a deficit! He chastised Bilkon for proposing to bribe "foreign" professionals and skilled workers - currently driving taxis in the country - into gaining local qualifications and so leaving the transportation industry short-handed, just to get their vote. As such largesse was not available to his grandparents he would ensure that no "foreigner", whether citizen or not, would be allowed to avoid obstacles to join the local economy in their profession. To ensure this he had commanded his troops to avoid speaking to anyone other than himself, except to fulfil the wishes of party power-brokers. His slogan: "low taxes, no jobs!"
The third party leader, a female named Angie Morefaith saw things differently; she would distribute generously among the entire population, barring aristocrats, the fruits of all the labours that they had hitherto handed over to their superiors and thus she would better distribute national wealth previously sequestered by the privileged and wealthy; she would have them do some productive work instead of simply exploiting the poor. She would not interfere with workers' strikes not even when obstructing students' education or children from day care access. She will find work for everyone.
The fourth person present, silent despite his name Mc Screamer, and usually ignored, will convert all undesirable persons in other parties into wind farms and useful hardwood trees particularly the disappearing walnut; he would ensure that the seasons behave themselves and not change roles. He would re-ice glaciers and ensure representation by proportion, for equality's sake, and thus confound both M'Guilty and WhoDat while hoping for a seat to become the tie-breaker in the coming race.
City-boy grows fearful of dark nights
I have lived in the metropolis for too long. I know this when I drive at night a mere few minutes beyond the city limits. I feel foreboding coming on when the street lamps thin out and the lines of trees merge into the solidness of soot just beyond the edge of comforting city lights. A new person emerges, one who is being quietly overtaken with trepidation the way the level of a liquid rises in a vessel that is being slowly filled.
I find it harder each year to leave this structured zone of evenly-spaced and well-lit street lamps. In this world, the trees stand apart at city-defined distances in cultivated beds of
woodchips doled out by the bagful, its roots adorned with well-washed, decorative rocks that are counted, weighed, and machine-smoothened. Smiling pictures on public benches, toothsome advertisements with manicured handshakes under white spotlights are flesh-tone warm and reassuring.
Not so after the last traffic signal changes to green and where the highway narrows to the minimum of two lanes headed into solid darkness. The temptation is to reach for the bright lights; fingers reach clumsily down under the dashboard, into unfamiliar space, to feel for the switch that turns the fog lamps on. Ahead the road leaps out with an unkempt, rural-roughened asphalt surface that is as coarse as sandpaper. As far as the bright beams probe there is nothing discernible beyond a hundred feet of visible, well-lit comfort. Then there is a disconcerting tree-knotted relief of branches, with the blackness of the night beyond as impenetrable as hardened gum.
The pin-point eyes of "jumbies" look out from the dark with unemotional flickers of incandescent yellow before withdrawing into the underworld of the underbrush. There is no sky. The space I occupy as the car ploughs forward is a small bubble of light rising through an ocean of night, its depths unknown, the emptiness growing with nauseous disorientation as if within a vacuum.
Disconcertingly, there is no light in the rearview mirror. What is known ahead is only discernible as far as the headlights touch. One drives forward in such a vast depth of night with faith that the centre of things mechanical would continue to hum and hold.
It is as if a metropolis is a mere pocket of civilised space defined by a boundary as tenuous as a traffic signal changing from red to green. That to venture beyond these lights at night is to accelerate within a minute or so into a blackness that is as complete and encompassing as it is unnerving. Add to this the vulnerability that begins creeping in from the edge of a heightened consciousness that the only way out is to push forward deeper into the night. That the darkness beyond and the dark being left behind are filled with the same foreboding, with a similar fear of what has so rapidly made itself become "the unknown".
Not so when I was growing up back home. When night descended the stars soon made themselves known. Some fought for brilliance, competing like jewels against a backdrop of black velvet. There were nights when we ventured into the raw starlight. There was enough light for a soft, subdued shadow thrown no further than just beyond our feet.
We went hunting. To combat the humidity-laden blanket of night we strung batteries together with bulbs from bicycle lamps. We borrowed silver reflectors - with or without the knowledge - of the owners of the bicycles. Wires ran up our backs from battery packs. We blinded ourselves, our eyes narrow in the dark, with electric bursts of light as coarsely-clipped wires inadvertently touched contacts on the bulbs.
The hiss of escaping acetylene surrounded us as we assembled carbide lamps. We strapped its reflector to foreheads like miners. The carbide containers were attached to our belts.
We set out confidently into the night, tramping like herd animals in the undergrowth, dry twigs breaking underfoot like pistol-shots. We were scratched by thorns and did not fail to lament aloud at the unfairness of it all. We lit up the carbide lamps with a whoosh that filled the night with the crackle of ignition. The crisp, penetrating white light from the reflectors announced our location to all prey for miles around.
We tripped each other unintentionally. We released springy branches into the faces of hunters behind. And then, a shout ahead that grew into a relay of voices chorusing with excitement: "Manicou! Manicou!" While we were not hunting the opossum, an unfortunate late-comer had presented an opportunity. We gave pursuit, not with the inexorable engagement of hounds, but like a stampeding herd of buffalo intent on trampling through numbers.
Our quarry fled, bounding up trees, nimble across branches. Frustrated, we pillaged the first citrus tree in fruit that we stumbled on, crying out each time we reached into the spiny thorns to steal an orange.
Then night had advanced with a risen moon yellow like a cheese. We bathed in moonlight. Sitting on a hill, we ate our stolen fruit with contentment, the stars friendly overhead.