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Parker’s Pen – February 2025

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Don’t want to put a downer on this new year, but elections always mean an extra expense. In an attempt to back the right horse, many businesses will put money on all of the legitimate candidates for fear of not being recognized by the winner.

One of my last emails of 2024 was reminding me that I could make a donation before the end of the year. Sorry, but the request fell on deaf ears.

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Much ink has been spilled in debating the benefits or negativity of party lines for would-be councillors. We have suffered a two-party system for too long, with the mayor or against the mayor on all decisions affecting the running of this city. Not a healthy situation.

It’s going to be tough for any of our currently-sitting councillors. How do they debate their time spent on re-zoning and ever-increasing roadways converted to bicycle lanes, nevermind important decisions on how many chickens we can keep in our backyard, or if were allowed to use compostable garbage bags at the grocery store?

And talking of politics, if ever you were in doubt as to the state of mind of the – by the time this is printed – new president of the U.S., why on Earth would he want Canada in its present state? Mind you, Trudeau might have thought the name ‘Governor’ would suit him.

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B.C. always referred to time ‘Before Christ’, but it has become the standard acronym for ‘Before COVID’. B.C. there was already an increasing amount of empty space in our downtown office towers, and with staffers told to work at home during the pandemic, many decided they would prefer to put up with kids, barking dogs and a too-close pantry than go back downtown.

We need a busy core, and fortunately the trend seems to be in a reverse mode and A.D. could translate to ‘Anno Downtown’.

Even companies that left for what they thought locations further afield that would be advantageous are returning to the core and beltline district.

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Always hoping for lots of action in our real estate industry, too many empty lots and shop windows need new buildings and tenants.

What I have considered for a long time as a most desirable location for a quality retailer is the home of the former Gainsborough Galleries at the corner of 5th Avenue and 4th Street SW for more than 20 years. Sitting at the traffic lights along Kensington Road NW, I also wonder why the southwest corner lot at 14th Street still lies empty; lots of traffic goes by every day.

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Language fascinates me. As a ‘suit’ for 10 years in an advertising agency, we were expected to use flowering, descriptive words. So, I pay attention to today’s descriptives but wonder if ‘cultivated individually quick-frozen blueberries’ really meant they were fingered one by one.

In a 1935 magazine on book collecting, I read the phrase ‘cloying pettifoggery’ – I’d love to find a way of using it.

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Final words: In filling out an application, where it says: ‘In case of emergency, notify…’, I put ‘a doctor’.

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