I looked up the word ‘statesman’ during this past election campaign, and found that a statesman is a wise person, skilled, experienced and a respected political leader.
By the time this column is printed it will be all over in Canada, but to my mind neither political party leader came anywhere near to being called a statesman. Lacking experience for the job, and certainly guilty of showing no respect for their opponent, in fact being quite rude.
Where do you find a statesman today? I can remember when politicians were polite to each other. Canadians have sunk to a level where they must employ teams to dig out the smallest trace of dirt that could still be attached to their opponent.
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South of the border of course, it’s so, so much worse. There must be an awful lot of Americans shaking their heads asking, “How did this happen?” and “What can we do?”
I did my little bit. As a book collector I receive sales catalogues. Responding to one from the U.S., I wrote back that although I appreciate receiving catalogues, I would not buy a book from any dealer in the Excited States of America until their president remembered who his friends were and stopped acting like a big bully.
The response was, “I completely understand. We are absolutely horrified/mortified by (and doing whatever small things we can do to fight against) this awful administration.”
Let’s not blame all Americans, although some must have voted for him.
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Our water situation is now well over, but why not continue being stingy in the amount of water we use. We managed no problem, so why waste it? I had the thought that I use more water combing my hair than some people get to drink each day.
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Anyone remember the ‘good old days’ when you parked your car, took out a quarter, put it in the meter slot, turned the handle and were done?
I was excited to find a downtown parking lot space but couldn’t find the pay machine. I did find a board with a QR code on it, but after fumbling with my iPhone to take a photo, digging out my wallet to find my credit card numbers and tapping them in to pay the asked-for $11.10, was annoyed to be told I didn’t have the app, so too bad.
Fortunately, I was able to drive out and find a city parking spot by the Mustard Seed that, for the same time, charged only just over a dollar as parking was free after 6:00 p.m.
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Nice to see that thanks to the tariffs place by our neighbour to the south, our city has decided to purchase more local and Canadian goods and services under changes to procurement practices. Hopefully that will include using local architects with our tax dollars.
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A wonderfully expressive word I’d like to use is ‘daft’ – and that’s the best I can find to comment on the decision by our heritage people who have stalled for so long the renovations to the former Boy Scout Hall because it wanted to save the steps. Never mind the fact that a new entrance had to be built on the east side for its handicapped users – we are talking about a set of concrete steps, not the Spanish Steps.
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Final words: If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
