by
Robert LaFrance
Those of us who are wearing hats
should now be taking them off. There. That’s better. It’s not ‘O Canada’ we’re
paying tribute to (Surely we do that every day?) but we are saying goodbye to
the venerable penny. On May 4, Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty pushed a
button at the Royal Canadian Mint in Winnipeg and out came the last penny
Canada will ever make. It will go to a museum – the penny, not the finance
minister, although…no, let’s just leave it at that.
Oh sure, it cost Canada an extra
$150 million a year to keep producing pennies, and the penny can’t even be
called ‘a copper’ any more because it’s 94% steel, but by gar, I will get up
every morning and cry a little bit for that piece of my past that has
disappeared. Of course I cry anyway because the Leafs didn’t win the Stanley
Cup again this year, and I’m not even a Leaf fan.
Are there any leaf fans?
Back to whining about the loss of
the penny, we should be finding out what is going to happen now. When we get to
the cash register of our favourite store and are told we owe $21.47, is that
store cashier going to say: “Let’s make that $21.45?” Let me put it this way:
no. He, she or it is going to say: “Let’s round that off, old chum. You owe me
twenty-one and a half dollars. And while we’re at it, let’s round off the
$21.50 to an even $22.” You see, once you start rounding off, it’s like an
addiction. That cashier may think the $22 should be rounded off to $30, which
sounds a little weird, but remember that the Leafs did win that Stanley Cup in
1967. I know it’s true because I watched it from my bassinet. It was quite a big
bassinet; I had graduated from high school two years before.
When I was a small boy (Watch out,
nostalgia on the way!) I remember going to Lila Goodine’s store in Tilley and
buying a bottle of pop for six cents and a bag of chips for four cents. A postage
stamp was three cents. Today, if you were to buy those three items, you would
have to sell a tooth.
I don’t think the federal government
has thought this through. As of May 4, the Beatles song ‘Penny Lane’ has to be
deleted from everyone’s music collection because it’s obviously subversive; I
can no longer offer ‘my two cents worth’; the Irish and their descendants in
Canada will be banned from playing the pennywhistle; we won’t be able to play
penny ante poker; no one is allowed to say: ‘a penny for your thoughts’; people
three days from their next paycheques won’t be able to say “I don’t have two
cents to rub together”, and penny pinchers (who are usually penny wise and
pound foolish) can’t refuse to buy things just because they “cost a pretty
penny”.
Our society as we know it will
disintegrate, and that’s my 40% of a nickel’s worth (although we know it’s not
worth a red cent).
One would think that a government
that has declared itself against the concept of inflation would think more
carefully before it does things like stopping the production of pennies. I
mentioned ‘penny ante poker’. Now the boys at the club are going to be forced
to play nickel ante poker. So tell me, Mr. Stephen Harper, how can you justify
a 400% increase in the cost of ante-ing up in a poker hand? The price of
lemonade may even increase.
Older carpenters still refer to
‘ten-penny nails’ so what do they do now, Mr. Harper? Buildings won’t get built
so you have just added to the homelessness and the hopelessness in this great
nation. When the carpenter says to his assistant: “Gimme a handful of them
8-penny nails and some 10-pennies willya?” that assistant will be baffled and
no doubt chagrined at the cavalier way his boss has brutalized the language and
will quit. Then what, Mr. Harper? Will you give him a job in the PMO? No, of
course you won’t. You only know how to take things away from us. We will soon
have to have a discussion on Bill C-38. A nickel for your thoughts that were
only worth a penny on May 3.
-end-
No comments:
Post a Comment