DIARY
When
New Brunswickers have power outages…
by
Robert LaFrance
A few years ago, maybe as many as ten (the time goes so
fast!), the power here went off one windy August day and didn’t come back on
until 54 hours later. That was not fun, but I can’t even imagine, and don’t
want to, going two weeks without power as some households on the North Shore
did.
I blame Donald Trump.
There is no reason in the world for blaming Donald Trump
for an ice storm in eastern New Brunswick, but I’m finding that everybody else
blames him for everything bad that happens.
A pothole in Cabano, PQ, bends the wheel and rim of a
1988 Gremlin. Blame Donald Trump. A Baptist minister in Ernfold, Saskatchewan
left his car headlights on all night and ran down his battery. Blame Donald
Trump. I think it’s great. Before he came along I would have blamed myself for
leaving my show shovel where a car could run over it, but now…? Blame Donald
Trump. He must have distracted me.
*************************
As I write this important column, schools all over the
province are closed because we had a whack of snow, freezing rain, ice pellets,
tornadoes, monsoons, etc. and they sure needed to be closed. However, not
everyone thinks so.
“Them kids need to learn, the same as I had oughtoo learn
when I went to school,” said Flug’s cousin Clyde when he heard that the school
buses (or busses if you prefer) wouldn’t be running today. “Youse can’t make a
difference in society if youse don’t go to school.”
I have a son and a daughter in the NB education system
and I’ll tell you what: When I turned
on the radio at 6:00 this morning and heard that school was cancelled, I
rejoiced. While it is possible that they could be injured or worse in their own
driveways, it’s not as likely as it would be if they were fighting ice pellets
etc. on the Trans Canada Highway. Good work, whoever in the school district
made that call.
In this world, the spectrum of brain power that
individuals possess comes somewhere between moron and genius and I don’t know
where on that spectrum Clyde is perched. And…duh…don’t even bother wondering
about me. I – and Donald Trump – were the ones who left the snow shovel where
someone could run over it.
************************
I don’t often comment in these pages about current
political issues, but I must criticize Prime Minister Trudeau for not doing
more about alternate voting systems. After all, world powers like Burundi,
Guyana and Kosovo use the proportional representation system, so why can’t we?
Joking aside, I can’t figure out why the federal
government didn’t make more of an effort to find – or at least study – other
systems that may work here. The thing would have gone to a referendum anyway,
right?
*************************
I hate cross-country skiing, absolutely despise it. And
if I ever tried it I would probably hate it even more.
Were I to get up in the morning and say: “What a nice
day! I think I’ll strap some boards into my shoes and go out into the field to
frolic!” would that really sound like me?
I’m kidding you a bit. Back in the 1980s, I used to
cross-country ski with Gary Smith who was at that time a resident of Birch
Ridge where I owned an estate – fifty acres of land and a pretty solid
one-and-a-half storey house. Maggie of Maggie’s Falls fame lived there at one
time.
One day Gary came over to my estate and suggested we go
cross-country skiing. Since Donald Trump wasn’t there to protect me from my own
folly, I agreed to go on this mad journey – after we had drowned a couple of
bottle each of lemonade.
It wasn’t too bad – in fact it was quite fun – for a
while until we came to the top of a hill. There was a ski trail and although it
was quite steep, I knew I could negotiate (as hockey announcers say) it without
too much trouble.
Boy, was I wrong! Halfway down I was yearning for some
kind of braking system. The firs and maples were zooming by and I soon realized
I was going to cross over to another world if I didn’t do something drastic.
Gary was waiting for me at the bottom but I didn’t get there. I dove into the
snow and rolled over a few times, my skis flying into the woods.
Eventually I did get to the bottom and pointed down the
trail. “How do we get home?” To my dismay though, that trail ended there.
“We’re doomed!” I cried. He pointed to the hill we had just ‘negotiated’. That
was the only way back home. I think it was Thursday morning by the time we
returned.
-end-
I hate Gary Smith.
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