Transferred to Timmins, Ontario
By Robert LaFrance
I was surprised – no, astonished – to learn that the Perfessor got a moose licence this year. He was the inspiration of the original expression “he wouldn’t hurt a fly”. It didn’t take long for me to learn that I needn’t have been surprised – or astonished.
“That’s one moose that will live another year,” he told me last evening as we were driving to Plaster Rock for the beautiful scenery and people. I only get up that way about once a month these days but always enjoy it.
Enough pandering and back to the Perfessor’s moose licence: “It makes no sense anyway,” he said as we drove by Linton Corner on our way to Goodine Corner. “All the information (as if a government would hand out information!) refers to a ‘moose licence’ but what are we licensing a moose to do? Get shot that’s what.
“It cost me a lot of money to get my so-called moose licence but maybe somewhere around Riley Brook or Wapske or Victoria Corner or Lerwick a moose will still be walking around come October.”
“Unless he walks in front of a logging truck,” I commented. To which he mumbled “barbarian”.
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Speaking of hunting, I have been getting some compliments lately. Last spring my wife bought me a vivid Hunter’s Orange jacket, one that is so bright it hurts the eyes. I was in the grocery store when Meyer Lansky of Portage said to me: “No question, you are certainly bright in spite of what everyone says.”
As to my everyday activities, I have been watching a lot of YouTube, even though much of the content is about Donald Trump, and am enjoying some of the old dance numbers from the 1930s and 1940s. I wasn’t even born until 1948!
Fred Astaire is the one on the screen more than anyone (for good reason), and I am sure people think of Ginger Rogers as his best and favourite dance partner, but I have been surprised to learn that he said in at least three major interviews that his favourite was Rita Hayworth. I didn’t know until this past spring that she had been a dancer since age three, and not just an actress. She was Mexican, not American, in spite of the fact that her movie studios tried to say the opposite.
(Note: One dance critic said that female dancers have to be much more skilful than male ones because they have to dance backward and in high heels.)
I recommend that you check out some of the dance numbers that Miss Hayworth and Mr. Astaire perform. Search for “Shorty George” and “Sway With Me”. Fabulous.
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Lazy as I am, I have been putting in some time converting the root cellar I built in the late 1980s to an equipment shed for garden tools and a safe place for mice, rats, porcupines, ground hogs and squirrels. It’s been going well, if you look at it from their point of view.
I went out there early one recent morning (about 11:00 o’clock) and apparently roused them all from a sound sleep or their breakfast, because it was like Toronto’s Union Station as they rushed out in a mob and headed for the woods.
The only thing I can figure out is that some of those rodents and small mammals must have long memories and were still remembering the 1990s when I kept apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots and other foodstuffs in there. Surely there’s nothing edible in there now unless the gas companies have been putting actual corn in their ethanol.
Besides the constant turmoil in the U.S.A. because of their distorted leadership – if it can be called that – there are street demonstrations in many countries, most of which I can neither pronounce or spell. I can spell Hong Kong though, and I can pronounce Azerbayzan. All the street marching and rioting – often instigated by the police – reminds me of some words by the great essayist E. B. White in a piece called Unity: “Marching is futile unless there is a destination”.
This was written in the 1950s, during the Cold War when everywhere in the world people were hitting the streets with no particular goal in mind except getting rid of the present government and replacing it with a worse one. He referred to those places generally as being ‘At sixes and sevens’, meaning confused or in chaotic disarray.
My third cousin Glenna Hilroy recently took her driver’s test and was successful. By that I mean SHE was successful and can now legally drive her 2100-pound Gremlin. Which means that it’s time for the rest of us to watch out because Glenna is probably the worst driver ever to (sort of) get behind the wheel of a car.
When I say ‘sort of’ I mean she doesn’t technically get behind the wheel because she is four foot six tall, with ‘tall’ being a wildly inaccurate adjective. She has two choices – sit on her car’s seat so she reach the brake pedal, or sit on half a dozen cushions and be unable to reach the foot controls. It’s quite a sight when one meets her on the road, either way. When she sits on cushions she will be speeding and without her cushions she can’t be seen. A driverless car. Get away!
I won’t say how I happened to do this, but last evening I was hard up for reading material and found a 2017 hiring manual for federal government civil servants. As one who spent a few years working for the federal government, I was surprised (but not astonished, see above) to find several of my suspicions being proven accurate.
Chapter one, page 23, subsection 12: “As an office manager, if you see someone doing something good, make a regulation against it and apply severe discipline to the ‘worker’ involved. Drop his or her pay grade and send him to Timmins, Ontario, for at least six months. Then he’s off to Nain, Labrador, but only for a week in the summer (flies) because it’s a pretty spot.”
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