Once again Quebec is favoured over us (July 1)

DIARY

What if the Hartland-PQ situation were reversed?

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            One of the ‘trending’ news stories that have sent New Brunswickers to the cursing pit has been the one about a Hartland company, Craig Manufacturing, losing out to a Quebec company on a bid to supply D.O.T. with half a million dollars worth of snowploughs and other equipment. The difference between the Quebec bid and the Craig bid was $1600. I spill more than that during the average evening at the club.

            We may not have 20-20 vision in all things, but I suspect there has been some dirty work going on, some behind-the-scenes manoeuvring between the Quebec company and the FIFA – er, I mean NB – civil servants. I would be quite interested to know who gave the final okay for that contract to go outside New Brunswick when we are hurting for jobs and bleeding for citizens to stay in our province.

            We wonder, when that final decision was made, about the condition of the brain of the NB politician who finally said: “Yeah, let’s give all that work to a Quebec company.” As we all know, just about any tender offer contains the phrase “Lowest bid not necessarily accepted.”

            Here’s the kicker: Let us try and imagine if the scenario were reversed. Quebec D.O.T. put out a tender for making ploughs, etc. and a New Brunswick company won the bid by $1600 (or by $100,000 for that matter) over a company in, let’s say, Lac St. Jean, PQ.

            Would there be one snowball’s chance in hell that the Quebec government would choose the bid from New Brunswick? Not one. Such is life in our part of the world.

            (Note: Although the province has since cancelled the contract, we can be sure that the Quebec company and Quebeckers in general will not 'prendre position couchée' - take it lying down.)

                        ************************

            Other comments: A gent from Perth-Andover was telling me the other day that people are having a hard time defining the word ‘handyman’ as it appears on his truck. I’m not going to mention his name, but Perry was quite frustrated that people don’t realize that a ‘handyman’ is ready, willing and able to do any kind of (legal) work from lawn mowing to shingling to repair work all over the place.

            I have put in a formal complaint to the province and am considering a court action to stop a sexist practice that male drivers are subjected to all over this province. I refer to the graphic signs picturing moose that are likely to cross the road at any time. The moose drawings invariably have antlers, and there is the sexist part. Know any female moose with antlers?

Going back a day or two, I must say that the only thing I remember from my childhood is that I don’t remember a thing about it. I get a great kick (sometimes literally) when someone tells an involved tale about some event in his or her childhood, and then someone else who grew up with him or her says: “I don’t remember it that way at all.” In other words, we’re all liars when we talk about things we used to do. One fellow I knew – he was about 20 years older than I – used to tell stories constantly and he was always the hero of his own yarn. He led the D-day invasion onto the beach even though he had three broken legs.

Somebody told me last week that he had thrown out two dozens eggs because they were slightly past their expiry date. We’re talking $3 or so per dozen. When I was a kid we threw out an egg when, after we cracked it, the smell would knock a cat off a gut-wagon – and that is nothing to sneeze at. People nowadays are very paranoid about ‘best-before’ dates as if, at midnight on the final date, the food suddenly explodes into a fine mist that will blow off your ear. I call that smell ‘PC fever’. Nothing political; I refer to the day about 1975 when I drove out to Port Colbourne (PC), Ontario, and found that, days earlier, a ship had dropped some toxic chemicals into Lake Ontario at that point and killed all the fish. I was barely able to drive away, it smelled that bad. Just think, if the commercials aren’t lying, today we could merely spray some Lysol into the water and the whole area would be ‘springtime fresh’.

            I find I must end this column with a sad report. A lady in Satret, Inner Mongolia (or Gibraltar, one a them places) has succumbed to a condition called Claditis Syndrome. She clad her foot in size four shoes although her feet were size nine. Apparently all the blood that was supposed to flow through her feet couldn’t get there and returned to her brain, which then exploded. Of course I could be lying, but I am trying to illustrate the Mark Twain comment that women buy shoes for their eyes, not their feet.

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Is it summer or ain't it? (June 24)

DIARY

Observations from my summer notebook

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Here are some observations of life I have written down over the past few months. I must admit, though, that many of them come from my electronic notebook, sometimes called a digital voice recorder, about which I often say: “What did I ever do before I had this?

            This column appears in the Star on June 24, which means it is now officially summer. Every year I wonder at the way we all blindly follow someone else’s rule, meaning that summer starts on June 21st, or sometimes the 20^th when we all know that it’s been summer for weeks. We also know that winter does not start on December 21^st. I have a vague recollection that it started sometime in July last year. My point is: why can’t the official and actual dates of the seasons coincide?

            In a city that shall be nameless, a few months ago I had a gourmet meal; here we have to stop and define ‘gourmet’ and that definition is ‘scant’. Any self-respecting rabbit would scoff at the salad the waiter brought as not being worth the bother of dashing from his warren to the garden. The soup was made of materials I would have put in my compost pile; and then came the main dish – served on a plate roughly the size of a 1960 Chevy Impala hubcap. It took some scanning, but I finally detected a piece of roast pork on there, and a quarter of a potato. I think the green stuff was parsley. A tiny piece of half-cooked carrot adorned the last acre. They call that (half) cooking method ‘al dente’ which is Italian for ‘to the tooth’. No kidding. Don’t get me wrong; it was all delicious, but I’m from Tilley. When I eat, I EAT. Just look at me.

            Like the seasons, official election campaigns have little to do with actual election campaigns. The federal election set for mid-October has been going on for some time but it doesn’t OFFICIALLY start until early September. The NDP have the momentum, and the Liberals have the advantage of that stupid commercial the Conservatives are running. You know, the one that says Justin Trudeau isn’t ready yet (to be prime minister). The problem for the Tories is that, the ad has been running for so long that by election time he WILL be ready. The party in power at the moment can’t seem to realize that people get sick and tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. (People often tell me that about this column.)

            I am not kidding about this; you could look it up: Looking over the companies listed on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, I noted one called Consolidated Dominion Securities or something like that. Its name as it actually appears on the stock market reports is CONDOM. I kid you not; I’m not that type.

            For those who are far too interested in political and other polls and you’re surfing the Interweb some time, try http://www.threehundredeight.com/. It will tell you far more than you want or need to know. I haven’t believed a poll since the early 1970s when, just prior to an election, polls put the NDP and Ed Broadbent at 43% of the decided voters. I think they won 16 of 208 seats. The same thing happened at recent B.C. and Alberta provincial elections; the polls were wildly inaccurate, and yet the pollsters continued their predictions and journalists continued to report this foolishness. Our late Prime Minister John Diefenbaker often said that polls were worthless, except to a certain animal. “Only a dog knows what to do with a poll,” he said.

            When I bought my fishing licence this spring, and earlier my car registration, I was thrilled to see that, instead of a small card or small piece of paper that fits nicely in the wallet, they are now the size of bed sheets. All these years our information was easily carried around on one small card and now we need...a paper bedsheet. Wasn’t it great that the Computer Revolution made us a paperless society?

               For a reason unknown to me, the husband usually drives when he and the wife go for a spin. However, there are exceptions and you want to know how I can tell, don’t you, even if I don’t see them actually out driving? If the woman’s left forearm (but not her right one) is tan or sunburned, you know right away that she does most of the driving. Another clue is the smirk on his face because he has come up with a way to sit back and relax while she drives. Otherwise, there’s a smirk on her face because she doesn’t drive unless she has to; when she takes over the wheel she speeds, tailgates, drives too close to the edge, etc. and he diplomatically says: “Pull over and let me drive, for %$#*&% sake!”

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A lesson in grocery pricing (June 17, Watergate anniversary)

DIARY

No job finished until the paperwork is done

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Hey, how about that recent G7 ‘summit’ that was held in Germany? Let’s give them a great big hand because they really accomplished something, or we might think so, listening to the news reports.

            The main item was that these leaders signed a paper saying they agreed to (almost) phase out fossil fuel use by the year 2100. The TV news people were quite thrilled that Prime Minister Harper had signed it. Excuse me, but Harper would send his grandmother to a concentration camp if it meant he would get re-elected.

            Excuse me again, but…2100? Are we impressed?

            The only other ‘major’ announcement was that they wouldn’t drop the sanctions on Russia. Boy, that approach has really kept that Hitler wannabee Putin out of Ukraine (and Crimea) hasn’t it?

            Like the Canadian Senate, it’s time to stop this G7, G8, and G20 foolishness. It’s only a chance for these turkeys to eat some good grub, get on TV and it costs a fortune for no reason. I read on one news report that a total of 22,000 extra German police officers were on hand to guard the ‘dignitaries’ in case someone spilled champagne on them.

            As to cost, AKA waste, the usual estimate is $250 million or so. Although Germany allegedly paid for it, we can be sure that we Canadians paid millions for all Harper’s travel and security when he should have been home watching the Mike Duffy trial. The one we hosted in Toronto and area cost us $858 million. Anybody remember what that accomplished other than beating up demonstrators?

                        *************************

            My grandfather Muff LaFrance had many sayings, and most of them made sense.

            One day when I was in my late teens and visiting him, who lived next door, I heard a shout coming from his outhouse, a building I’ve mentioned three times in this column in just the last month. “What is it, Grampy?” I said, thinking the worst (He was 93.); perhaps he had dropped his brandy bottle down the toilet hole and expected me to fish it out.

            “Bobby! Would you get me the Eaton’s catalogue from the kitchen table?” I thought it was an odd time to read, but then connected the two terms: outhouse, and Eaton’s catalogue.

            After that operation was down and dusted, he emerged from the outhouse as spry as ever. “Good thing you came along,” he said, “because I dropped the toilet paper roll down hole number two of the 2-holer. No job is finished until the paperwork’s done.”

                        *************************

            The next item concerns a lecture I recently received on the economics of grocery sales. I was at a store far, far away and noticed that medium hamburger – or ‘ground beef’ as they say – was on sale for $7.89 a kilogram. Good price as things go nowadays. I thought: “If MEDIUM hamburger is selling for that, then regular hamburger must be $7.00 or so.” It turned out that logic like that has no business in a grocery store.

            When I arrived at the meat cooling area, I noticed that regular hamburger was priced at $12.89 a kilogram. I shook my alleged head in shock and dismay. The meat manager must have gone over the edge. I tracked him down. “Do you realize that regular hamburger is priced $5 a kilogram more than medium hamburger?

            “It’s because the medium is on sale, and you’re an idiot, Bob,” he said kindly.

“Be that as it may,” I spluttered, “how can ‘regular’ be priced much higher than medium? Don’t you find this strange?” He said he only found one thing strange in the area, and it wasn’t hamburger, and went back to sorting the beef roasts and the pork roasts. I could see I was never going to make him see the light, so I went to the back of the store and bought $25 worth of the medium hamburger. “That’ll show them,” I said to the door as I departed the Store of No Logic.

                        ************************

            Continuing with important matters, I want to say that one of the hardest things to throw away is a key.

            Do you agree? I won’t ask you to phone or email me with your observations because I’m already swamped with paperwork (see above) because of the usual reaction to my columns. This subject came about because when I got up Saturday morning I decided to do something useful – get rid of keys that had no use.

Two hours later I was still agonizing. Finally I hung them all back in the closet. If I threw away one key, it would be to something vital. I threw away a freezer key in 1991 and we almost starved.

                                         -end-

FIFA bribery - where's mine? (June 10)

DIARY

Hookers can fish, play rugby, or otherwise

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            There are those who think wild animals are stupid. Them as does that, they can’t be too bright theirselves.

            A case in point, as the saying goes: This morning about 5:00 I was awakened by the clattering of a woodpecker’s beak against the tin roof of the outhouse across the road. (Did I get enough prepositions in that sentence?) After a few curses, I turned over and tried to go back to sleep and then I realized something.

            That woodpecker, who was letting all the girls know he was available, was signalling in Morse Code!

            It had been many a year since I used Morse Code. I learned it in 1973 and 1974, first in a government classroom in Ottawa, and then working in the radio room at Alert, NWT (now Nunavut) where we weather guys and radio operators had to communicate with jet overflights going to Europe on the Polar Route and with our own Air Force pilots.

            Back to 2015, I knew it was Morse Code and my ancient mind took me back to the days when I was tapping keys at Alert. “H-e-l-l-o,” the woodpecker tapped. “Do you come here often? What’s your sign? Want to come over and see my etchings?”

            From farther down in the woods came tapping from what was clearly a female woodpecker: “Hi there, sailor. Wanna buy a girl a drink?”

            It got a little more personal after that, but let’s suffice to say that they went away somewhere for a while after he tapped: “Your place or mine?” and she said: “Surprise me, big guy. Got any chilled white wine?”

            I know a lot of people are not going to believe that actually happened, but you can trust me. You know you can. I wouldn’t lie to you.

                        *************************

            Speaking of honesty, the organization called FIFA, which is in charge of professional soccer around the world – including Canada – is under attack because its officials are thought to have taken bribes.

            First of all, I disagree with the word ‘bribes’. I prefer ‘remuneration enhancement’. Second, why would anyone think these people are taking bribes or RE?

Some would call it a ‘no-brainer’. The country of Qatar, whose average temperature in June is about 45ºC – the melting point of cellphones – won the bid for the 2022 World Cup. Does anybody in his right mind really believe this could have happened without a vast amount of ‘baksheesh’ (as they say over there) changing hands?

            We’ll say that a soccer team from Iceland gets off the plane in late May 2022 and the players all take a deep breath. Then they would climb (crawl) back up the steps and head back to Reykjavik. Better to fall into a volcano; it would be cooler.

            There is no possible way that bribeless FIFA officials would have voted to have the World Cup in Qatar where they use microwaves to cool down food.

                        ***************************

            One of the many hundreds, probably thousands, of books I have lying all over the house is published by the Rodale Company. It’s called ‘Hints and tips for making things work better’. It’s one of those self-help books that we all read and then discard.

            When I picked up that book that was lying on the floor under my easy chair, I didn’t look at the title. Scanning to see what sort of thing I could find, I opened it up to page 130.

            The title of the first article I looked at was “Making a stripper work harder”. That caught my eye for some reason. I read on, past the title. For crying out loud, they were talking about removing old paint from a chair! I had thought…well, you don’t need to know what I thought.

            A similar thing happened only a few days earlier and, indeed, from the same spot. I was sitting in that favourite chair and dozing while a rugby game was on one of the Sportsnet channels. I perked up when I heard the announcer say: “J. B. McClennan is going to be the hooker today.” I woke up, as much as I ever do, and wondered how such a person as I was thinking of had managed to get onto a rugby field during a game. Then I remembered the old saying: “Boys will be boys”.

            It turned out that a hooker, in rugby, is a forward, and usually wears number 9. It reminded me of that time in Campbell River, BC, when a group of young ladies with numbered jerseys came into a party I was attending on behalf of my church group.

            But…we’ll save that story for another day. Hint: It didn’t end well.

                                               -end- 

The old pod-auger days (June 3)

DIARY

Location, location, location

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            News flash: At 8:29 am on Saturday, May 23, 2015, Victoria Star cub (or old grizzly bear) reporter Robert LaFrance looked out the window of his bedroom and said to himself: “Looks like snow to me.”

            It was snow all right – about three inches of it, or, to use that new metric stuff, it was however many kilograms was the equivalent of three inches of snow.

            My friend Flug woke up in his house, looked out the window, and went back to bed. He was on his 17^th honeymoon and would rather look at Flora (Glenna?) than go out into that returning winter. By the time he did get up the snow was all melted anyway, possibly because of his efforts.

            (There’s a business mantra ‘Location, location, location’ which is all-important. Once again that was proved true. People in Perth-Andover didn’t have snow, or at least not much on May 23^rd.)

            It was quite a shock for a few seconds, but then it was still quite a shock, but after a third shock I was okay. I knew it wouldn’t stay. Or would it? My grandfather told me about the summer when it snowed in late August and stayed on for a month. “That was back in the pod-auger days,” he told me, referring to the times when people with long augers drilled out poles that the people then used for water pipes.

He was two years old and always said that the weird weather was caused by a volcano “in Asia somewhere” spouting ash that went around the world. “Sure, gramps,” I would say, until I found out that Krakatoa volcano of Indonesia occurred in late August 1883, when Grampy was two and a half. He was gone by the time I moved back to Tilley so I couldn’t apologize for doubting him.

Back to the May 23 three-inch snowstorm in Kincardine, I don’t want to talk about it any more. It wasn’t quite in the Krakatoa ball park, was it?

                              *****************************

            I recently heard a story that reminded me of those pod-auger days – although not as far back as 1883 – and how most people around these parts didn’t have a lot of money.

            Covering – for this newspaper – the opening of Liberal MLA Andrew Harvey’s constituency office on the Fort Road in Perth-Andover, I got to talking to Roger Pelkey, now of Carlingford but who grew up in Aroostook. He didn’t mention pod-augers. He started out by saying that he and his brother Rufus were only able to dress up  and go to town on alternate weekends. “Why was that?” I asked.

            “Because we only had one pair of good pants for the two of us,” he said, and that reminded me that people didn’t have a lot of money in those days, like hardly any. My mother-in-law, who had ten kids, scrounged clothes that people had thrown away and sewed into the small hours of the morning to make decent clothes for her kids to wear. My own family was quite wealthy in comparison. Since there were only three of us kids, our hand-me-downs only had to go three hands.

            Kids today have it tough too; I’m not saying they don’t. One young fellow I know has had to make do with an iPhone 3 when all his friends have iPhone5 or later. On the other hand, kids today are under far more pressure than we ever were. Back in my day, when you took a job with CN or in the Fraser Company sawmill, it was thought to be for life. Now they’re lucky if a company lasts an hour before some Toronto bean-counter decides to close things down without ever having been east of Oshawa.

            It has usually been the rural folk, and particularly farmers, who got the short end of the stick, except for one major case I have heard about. During the World Wars there was food rationing, but guess whose milk, meat, eggs and other food staples wasn’t rationed? How could it be? The farmers were the ones producing it all.

                        *************************

            The average reader of this column – and I know you’re all above average – remembers that a few weeks ago I “took the Royal Bank (RBC) to task” for their ridiculous new bank charges that included having to pay a $5 fee for making a payment on your mortgage. This is after reporting record profits in their last quarter.

            Good news. RBC, and I can’t say that it’s through no vault of my own (pun intended), has dropped most if not all those new fees. This just goes to show you the power of a rural New Brunswick weekly newspaper. When I wrote that, RBC was obviously listening, er, reading, and reacted by doing the right thing.

            Now, if I can just persuade Stephen Harper to step down, or at least name me a Senator.

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