Tribute to Stompin' Tom (March 20)

Stompin’ and kickin’ and gougin' - plywood

 

                                  by Robert LaFrance

 

            After the recent death of Stompin’ Tom Connors, many of us mourned him as a truly great Canadian. Whatever you may think of the way he played ‘G’ chord, broke time in just about every song he sang, ruined lumber from Nanaimo to St. John’s, he WAS a Canadian, and very proud – even pigheaded – about it.

            How the man lasted 77 years although smoking 3,455 cigarettes a day is a mystery that medical science will be looking into for some years to come, but the real reason, as we know, is that he was tough as old shoe leather.

            I wish I had some story about Tom to relate. I could invent one, but the fact is, I only saw him in person once, and that was only for about ten minutes, at the famous Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. Since I was at the back of the tavern and only had one glass of lemonade before I had to catch the streetcar for Downsview, I am guessing he didn’t notice me. I just wanted to see the Legend of Skinner’s Pond. I wasn’t disappointed, but I was disappointed to find out the next day that he had moved on to Timmins.

            That was the place he got his start, the Maple Leaf Hotel tavern in Timmins. He was drifting around one day – I can identify with that – and found himself in Timmins with not quite enough money to buy himself a glass of beer. Unlike me, Tom drank beer and not lemonade. The bartender asked him if there was a musical instrument in that case he was carrying, or was that just a guitar-shaped suitcase? Within a short time Tom Connors, as he was then, was singing and playing for his beer and lodging.

            By the late 1970s he had won many awards, but in 1978 he did what we Tilleyikers call ‘throwing a spell’ and gave them all back as a protest against most of the awards being given to Canadians who had left Canada. He stayed, and never wanted to go anywhere else.

            People like Stompin’ Tom, Gordon Lightfoot, Wayne & Shuster, Gordon Pinsett, Anne Murray, and dozens of others chose to keep their homes in Canada rather than move to the U.S.A. to further their careers, or to just have careers. We can’t blame them. They had found they couldn’t make a living in Canada, and so they went to L.A. where assault rifles are much cheaper and the people are always right.

            The thing is, once you pull up stakes and move to the U.S., you are pretty much an American and the only time you drift back home is to pick up an award or to host a Canadian show once your own career is on the skids. An exception: The best comedians on the planet are Canadians, and they spend a lot of their time in Canada, because we have wonderful comedy festivals all across the country and the Americans are so obsessed with politics and invading other countries that they have lost their senses of humour.

            Many comedians have moved from the U.S. to Canada, a fact about which Stompin’ Tom would be very happy. One former U.S. citizen’s routine includes the story about going to an ATM machine in Saskatoon at 3:00 am and being terrified of being robbed. Rushing away from the ATM, he dropped some bills, and a guy walking by said: “Hey, buddy! You dropped some money!” In the U.S., he said, I would have been shot before I could get back to my car. You can only get cash from an ATM at noon hour and with four bodyguards – if they could be trusted.

            He also said that watching the Olympics on Canadian TV was quite a revelation. “Up here,” he said, “I learned there actually were other teams competing.”

            So was Stompin’ Tom right to be such a hard-rock about loving Canada and wanting to stay here? Absolutely. I cannot imagine him in any other country in the world. The only knock I have against him is that six or eight year tantrum when he refused to perform. Think of the songs he could have written! As it was, he wrote hundreds about Canada and in every one we can see and hear Canadians going about our business. Tillsonburg? My back still aches when I hear that word.

            Last word to J. P. Cormier: “May losing this man, the greatest intellect and patriot I have ever known, force all Canadians everywhere to unite in pride and love and conviction and lift up our artists, our culture and our values like a burning flame for the world to see.”

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I are not a media (March 13)

I declare that I am a large medium 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            Although I don’t have much of a sense of humour, I was struck by an online comment made by a blogger named Cecil Adams. He writes opinion columns on a website called The Straight Dope. He also bills himself as the world’s smartest human being, so let’s not get carried away with all his opinions. Unlike myself, he probably makes mistakes.

            The comment to which I refer is one he made about Google and its predecessors: “Libraries were the Google of the 20th century.” And then, the world’s smartest human being (he may well be) went on to say that “talking to actual human beings was the precursor to Facebook.”

            I think I would expand on that a bit. The concept of speaking to each other face to face took its biggest hit in the 1950s and 1960s when television (as it was called before the acronym TV took over) became the staple entertainment of the home. People stopped visiting each other – unless to watch television and not talk – and entire evenings might be spent sitting speechless in front of the electronic cube.

In Tilley where I was born and allegedly grew up, our neighbours Rose and Fraser bought a television about 1959 and every Saturday evening our whole family – and others living nearby – would bundle into their small living room to watch the latest offerings of small-screen entertainment. B-52s from nearby Loring Air Force Base (whose lights we could see from our house) went roaring overhead and we didn’t care. “Gunsmoke” was on.

At 9:00 pm Sunday, Ed Sullivan appeared with his latest gaggle of Italian jugglers and comedians and we were there again. Fraser and Rose must have gotten sick and tired of seeing us coming in the driveway, but they didn’t have to suffer forever. In April 1961 my brother Lawrence, who had become rather wealthy from working in the woods at a dollar an hour, bought a GE 21” black and white television. I still stagger when I remember how much it cost – five hundred dollars. He was probably clearing fifty dollars a week plus another five or ten from playing guitar in Maunders’ band. Nowadays two hundred will buy a 32-inch flat screen TV and the average salary is more than two dollars an hour.

So Cecil Adams is right when he says that Google has replaced libraries, and Facebook has replaced “talking to actual human beings”, but television was the original culprit. Before we all bought TVs, it was not uncommon to see George and Elroy sitting on the bench on Lila Goodine’s store’s verandah and talking. Now George would have to dash home and see the hockey game, and Elroy would have to see about buying snacks for a later show.

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As we wind down winter, let us go to a variety of other subjects that are happening around us: My friend Flug came by the other day to have a lemonade from my fridge and while there was reflecting on whether or not he had any friends. “I know you’re my friend, Bob, because you warned me that day that my fly was down before I went up on stage in front of the Harger wedding crowd. A lot of people wouldn’t say a word.” He took a sip of lemonade. “But I’ll tell you, I have developed a way to tell if someone is my friend. If I’m in a restaurant I will deliberately put a food crumb above my upper lip and see if any of my table companions will tell me. If they don’t, I know they’re sitting there and thinking I’m a buffoon. By the way Bob, you have a bread crumb in your beard.” What a friend I have in Flugger.

New subject: On Tuesday evening I walked into the River Valley Civic Centre and someone said: “Why, it’s the media!” I know it was exciting to have a real live celebrity in the same building, but I had to point out that I was only one person, and therefore a medium. If Peter Mansbridge had been walking alongside me, WE would have been ‘the media’ then. Which reminds me, someone on the radio said last week that TV news readers were: “overpaid, over-coiffed media types.”

Just thinking, considering Peter Mansbridge’s salary and influence, maybe he is ‘the media’.          

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Contract out senators' travel expenses (March 6)

Being a senator – bah! Get me a lottery win

 

                                                    by Robert LaFrance

 

            For years I have been nagging the prime minister for a Senate post, but now I’m not so sure I still want it.

            Mike Duffy and several other senators have been ‘under the gun’ for weeks about their official provinces of residence. A show of hands: how many people think this publicity will result in any changes to the way that august body (the Senate) does its business? Will Goldilocks get devoured by the three bears, or will they give her a conditional sentence called life? Will Dr. Wilson and Nurse Tracy finally declare their love and…

            Sorry, I was drifting into the realm of soap opera there.

            Someone said that the Senate of Canada can be compared to bear droppings in the woods of Quebec. Although that province has no use for that fecal material, they would fight to keep it. Same with ‘reform’ of the Senate. Quebec will block every attempt to change it.

            Is there a snowball’s chance that the Senate will ever be reformed in any way? Let me put it this way: any reform would have to be voted on by the Senate. Will we ever learn the details of senators’ expense accounts? Not on your life.

            Wouldn’t it be interesting if some straightforward gentleman (like a biker gang leader) were to be given a ‘mandate’ as they say in government (it means permission) to examine senators’ expense accounts in detail? I can picture the scene: A BIG news conference in The Red Chamber foyer where at the front of the room Hiram (not his real name) would talk to reporters and other Canadians: "When one senator, who lives in Ottawa, puts in travel claims totalling $157,000 for one year, something is wrong.

            “I can see Senator Whoosis’s house from here,” Hiram would say as he looked out the window. “He/she came to nineteen sessions of the Senate last year. That would average out to about – let me see – eight thousand two hundred and sixty-two dollars and sixteen cents, (rounded off) dollars in travel expenses per session. My wine bill didn’t amount to that since 1999. I would be glad to pick him/her up in a rickshaw for half that."

            Hiram would have gone on to mention that retired Saskatchewan Senator Gerry St. Germain claimed $378,292 in expenses in 2012. This is addition to his salary of – what? - $140,000 or so and all the subsidies that the 104 senators receive, like gourmet meals in the Parliamentary restaurant for nine dollars each. It may cost like McDonalds, but the grub is like that of the Dorchester Hotel in London.

            Unwittingly, Hiram, had he really been there, would have come up with the perfect solution. Here it is: We contract out the travel of senators and, instead of paying them a salary, we pay them for the sessions they do attend. Let’s be generous; any senator who attends 90% of the sessions gets his/her full salary.

            As to those pesky travel expenses, let us ‘ordinary’ people bid on getting the senators to and from Ottawa. For example, if Senator Sam Marchand of Trois Rivieres now puts down $1400 for a trip to and from his home, let’s put it up for bids. Maybe there’s a guy or gal in Trois Rivieres who has a 15-passenger van. He could pick up Sam in Trois Rivieres, then a couple more senators in the Montreal area, then off to Ottawa. Total cost: $276 in gas each way and $199 for meals at truck stops.

            I would bid on the job of travelling the senator who really lives in Ottawa, but charges us $157,000 a year in travel expenses. Dust off my 1961 Falcon, Nellie, the one I used to call Hitler.

            The Senate of Canada is known by many names, including The Upper House, The Red Chamber, and The House of Sober Second Thought. The first two nicknames are quite understandable, but as to the third, has anyone perused the bar bills of Senators Cleroux and Senator Murphy? I could buy a new Cessna every year.

            In conclusion, (as politicians are fond of saying about an hour before they finish their speeches) I will inform you and the world that I am sick and tired of seeing young people weighed down by student loans and the lack of jobs while these parasites – and we must remember that many senators work hard – are sucking in half a million dollars each, every year, for performing a very dubious task.

 

           When they’re there.

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The political end of the horse on plates (Feb. 27)

Awwww...they’re all upset about

eating horse meat

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            The European Union – formerly the European Common Market and the European Economic Community – is in a tizzy these days because some of the ‘beef’ that made its way to Ireland, France, and many other countries was found to be mostly horse meat rather than the hamburger, etc. which it was labelled.

            In a world where people eat cats, dogs, groundhogs (terra-pork?), many other exotic meats – even roadkill – is it that serious a thing that some delicate palettes object to the devouring of Trigger and Northern Dancer when they were expecting Ronald the Bull? Farley Mowat ate mice when he was doing research for the book ‘Never Cry Wolf’, so can horse meat be so bad?

            I have eaten horse meat and it didn’t have any ill effects other than my wanting to leap over guardrails. When I lived in Vancouver in the early 1970s, one restaurant in Burnaby advertised horse meat steak on its menu. Of course I had to try it out. It was surprisingly good, so good that I went back the next week and tried it again. That was it though, because a steak was three dollars or more and I was saving my money for a ticket to Australia.

            Last week the news story hit the airwaves like a meteor exploding over Russia and everyone was outraged that their delicate taste buds may have been subjected to horse meat. One Irish lady, who sounded as if she had just won a Guinness stout drinking contest, said it was “fore and aft the worst beef I ever et. Although my husband Gerald thought it was the cat’s meow.” I hope she made sure the cat was still there in her house before she said that.

            “Fraud on a massive scale” was how the European newspapers described the situation. Several countries supplying the EU meat markets had for many years evidently been selling hamburgers that were as much as 40% horse meat, which is much cheaper. Organized crime has branched out, it seems.

            All this reminds me of a story my grandfather Muff LaFrance (1881-1976), legendary wit of Tilley, used to tell me. He said that once he went to a restaurant and ordered a steak. The waitress asked if he wanted it rare and he said he guessed so. When she brought it, he suggested she ‘take it back and give it another rare’. On the steak’s third trip to his table he chewed, chewed and chewed some more. He summoned the waitress. “I’m not saying this steak is tough, but I was just noticing that the old horse that used to be in that pasture next door is not there any more.”

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            Someday I may write a column entitled: “It seemed like a good idea at the time”.

            There are so many things we deal with today that are of such poor design and so poorly thought out that their inventors or instigators should be sent in a rocket to Syria. Remember when (1985) Coca-Cola, after about a century of selling their main product – coincidentally named Coca-Cola – abruptly changed the formula? That lasted about a month during which Coca-Cola lost about 20% of their sales. Then they went back to the Coke that people loved, but for a time called it Coke Classic. I understand that the executives who authorized the formula changing were drawn and quartered, then horsewhipped and put in a blender turned on ‘high’ for a month. Then the company got tough.

            Another example: In 2011 my first wife and I bought a new car and one of that car’s features was something that prevents it from spinning on slippery or snowy roads. Right off the bat, this sounds like a good idea, but what happens is that when there are a few inches of snow on the road coming up to our estate, the car spins for a second, then the engine goes down to an idle to stop the spinning.

            Contrary to what the designer might have thought, a car trying to make its way up a snowy hill should not go down to an idle. True, the car would normally spin, but it would at least continue going forward. What happens with ours is that it simply slows down and then comes to a stop since it’s not spinning its way forward. Brilliant!

            Remember the treatment given to those Coke executives? This car company’s executives should undergo that treatment – twice. A few days ago I tried to get this car up our driveway and it got two-thirds of the way up, and then I tried it with our 2000 Chrysler Intrepid. It spun its way up to our house without any problem, but if it hadn’t been allowed to spin it wouldn’t have made it either.

            I read somewhere: “There’s a kind a cleverness that cuts its own throat.” Amen.

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