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When Graham Kerr cooked on his incredibly popular Galloping Gourmet TV show many years ago, it seemed that his wine glass and its contents were as much a part of his culinary arsenal as his French whisk.
In fact, Kerr's cooking motto could probably be summed up in the motto: "When In Doubt, Add More Wine."
What started out as an entertaining diversion for the at-home audience turned into a life-altering problem for Kerr. He developed a drinking problem.
As someone who really enjoys cooking, and especially enjoys cooking with wine, I asked Kerr how he dealt with that element in his cooking now that he drinks only rarely.
A lot of famous people turn out to be rats when you talk to them in person, but Kerr is the same effervescent, engaging, full-of-life guy you remember from those old shows.
"Actually, I much prefer using cooking wine without any alcohol in it," advised Kerr who has a new cooking series called The Gathering Place.
"When you boil wine to reduce it, you boil off some of the water to concentrate the flavour," he explained. "In the process, you also boil off some of the fragrances, and the esters and the essences of the wine are disturbed. It's rendered less palatable.
"I use the de-alcoholized wine you can buy at any grocery store and then when everything's cooked, I just splash a little bit of wine in the dish and serve it. That way, you get the full benefit of the vintage."
When you cook with wine, the vast percentage of the alcohol evaporates in any event.
Wine, sherry or Port seem to add a richness and depth to many dishes, especially stews.
So, why not have the best of both worlds? Use the de-alcoholized stuff for the pot and save as much of the good stuff as possible for the glass.

Want a sure-fire way to protect your children from obesity?
Join the Mennonites.
No, really. It's not a joke.
Wednesday at the Living Arts Centre, Canada's leading expert on childhood obesity, Dr. Mark Tremblay, gave a scary presentation on the state of our nation's youth.
Tremblay presented a blizzard of charts and graphs to the forum on Child Obesity Prevention sponsored by Peel Health. They all added up to looming disaster for the next generation.
For the first time in our history we have children being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at ages 10 and 12. In China, detox centres are set up to help children so addicted to the Internet that they literally cannot tear themselves away from the screen for days.
"Nature did a good job for a quarter of a million years of keeping us at a healthy weight but we've changed all that in one generation," said the Statistics Canada health advisor.
Lots of people have lots of theories about why things are the way they are: because there aren't enough physical education programs in schools, because there aren't enough rinks and pools, and because those in the lower socio-economic bracket can't afford recreation programs and are prone to buying cheaper, fat-laden foods.
In a couple of minutes, Tremblay put the lie to all of that by talking about the study he and a group of researchers did this year on Old Order Mennonites.
They found that Mennonites are fitter, stronger and leaner than the rest of us, with no organized sport, no diets and a poverty-line-or-below income.
It all comes down to one thing, said Tremblay, Mennonites incorporate a lot more daily activity in their lives. Children aged 7-13 were getting about three hours of activity every day, doing chores, walking to school etc.
Of course, no electricity and an abhorrence of modern conveniences does cut down on distractions such as television and computers.
The point is, that we all know how to make things better. Instead of spending a fortune enrolling your kids in hockey and spending your life ferrying them back and forth to the rink, you're probably better off buying a net and plunking it in your driveway and letting them have at it. You can play goal until you're in shape.
The problem is that the obvious answers to the obesity crisis, eating more fruits, vegetables and whole wheat fibres, exercising more and turning off the TV are just too damn obvious for us.
You don't have to join the Mennonites but you can turn back the clock by heeding the benefits of a simpler life.
Breaking news. This just in: You on the couch there watching that weigh-loss reality show called Big Fat Losers. If you get off your duff and walk around the block with your kids, and make it a daily habit, you can spend hours every week trying to figure out whose fault this obesity thing is.

Amid all the fireworks about the portrait of Hazel McCallion that was pulled out of the window of Byron Osmond's photography shop in Port Credit last week, nobody seemed to notice something important: what a hell of a good piece of art it was.
Forget the slanging match with the Business Improvement Area and the letter demanding that the material deemed "offensive to the community" be removed. Forget professional malcontent Donald Barber plunking himself down in the middle of the controversy to stir the pot.
Just look at the work.
Osmond used an old photo of the mayor, which he blew up and overlaid with chalk and watercolours, to create a portrait that is obviously intended to be unflattering.
In an accompanying poster in his store window, he states that "I didn't know that my first painted portrait was going to be political."
He's being disingenuous, of course.
If you give Hazel purple hair, cover her with red footprints (which Osmond's four-year-old child supplied) and assign the Orwellian label "1984" to her makeover, you can't really pretend to be surprised when the result is deemed political.
The work is truly striking and, surprisingly, I don't find it necessarily unflattering.
The strange colours on the periphery accentuate McCallion's piercing stare and the taut slash of her mouth in concentration, something a lot of Mississaugans have learned to recognize and/or fear.
It is the eyes that make the piece: cool, inquisitive and full of wary intelligence.
It may not have been intended as such but the work is clearly a reflection, and a tribute of sorts, to the woman's strength.
It may have been intended to diss McCallion but, ironically, it will just add to the legend.
The mayor has seen it all before and greeted the whole controversy with the diffidence it deserved. You won't find her throwing gasoline on the fire by taking offence.
"I believe it's a big joke," she said. I consider it to be (comparable to) a cartoon."
If she'd been up to date on the entire background of the issue, the mayor would probably have expressed her gratitude at not being the winner in another photo competition that Osmond held at his store: the Best Bums contest.
The disgruntled photo shop owner, who says he's leaving town because of the lack of support for his business, is obviously awarding that dubious title for the board members of the BIA.

“The instructors inspire the kids to be active and to try new sports. They inspire us to be excellent in our own way. We all recognize excellence.”
The speaker is Silken Laumann who is perched rather precariously on a kid-sized chair in the child centre attached to Plum Tree Park Public School, ruminating on why things work so well at the Peel Lunch and After-School Program (PLASP).
Yes, we all recognize excellence whether it comes in the form of a mature athlete whose will to win can overcome the trauma of a severe injury just three weeks before the Barcelona Olympics, or in the form of a community agency that has become indispensable to the social fabric of Peel by providing quality services to working parents.
When PLASP, as it is universally known, set up shop in 1975 in three schools (Floradale and Lakeview Beach in Mississauga and Hanover in Brampton) no one could have envisioned the success story it has become.
It has moved from providing pre-school, lunch and after-school activities for 75 elementary students to a network of 184 locations, including 17 early learning and child care centres, and 8,000 children.
"We want to remain on the leading edge of child development," says Silvia Leal, the dynamo who is executive director of PLASP and has helped guide it for 27 of those years.
As we’ve learned more and more about early childhood development, PLASP's basic recipe of providing stimulating fun, wholesome treats, tons of books and lots of respect for kids has turned into a mantra in the child care business.
“Children want to be where they are cared for, respected and understood,” says Leal, whose penchant for training for her staff is legendary.
When Laumann asked instructors about what kinds of games they play with the kids, and was referred to a two-inch thick manual of choices, she smiled with delight.
Silken was the guest speaker at PLASP's annual meeting Monday night. That event always features a celebrity speaker and tons of valuable information for parents. The Olympic bronze-medal winning rower was at Plum Tree Park to do her due diligence before the annual meeting by seeing some PLASP programs in action.
All you need to know about PLASP and its quest to do the right thing for its clients is evident in the following story about its annual customer survey of parents.
Leal and the organization were concerned that the 99.6 per cent annual satisfaction rate they were getting with the program was being distorted by the fact that the survey was being done at the end of the year, when any problems have usually been worked out.
So, they moved the survey period to December. Their positive response rate went up to 99.7 per cent.
Don’t you hate it when you try to reduce your satisfaction rating and the clients see right through you?
We’re not good in our community, in our society or in our culture (yes, starting with the media) about celebrating what we do right.
PLASP is doing a critical job very, very well. We’re lucky to have them in our midst.

I'm sure it wasn't any revelation to most people who navigate the streets of Mississauga to find out that the worst driver in Canada lives here.
If you're like me, you probably think you've been behind him a few times this week already.
Complaining about bad driving is like complaining about the weather: it doesn't change anything but it gives us a common denominator with which to begin to unburden our many complaints against the ways of the world.
Remember the good old days when people only ran yellow lights, not reds?
The deterioration of our driving habits is truly frightening, especially among the many young people I see flying around our streets. Apparently, signalling your intentions to turn or change lanes is passé and actually coming to a full stop at one of those bothersome red octagonal objects is an inconvenient sop to bourgeois convention.
Oh, did I just cut you off again? Don't fret. Think of it as your chance to see my collection of off-colour Italian hand gestures.
The most alarming trend on the roads recently is the epidemic of U-turns. I see them everywhere.
When you travel south on Mississauga Rd. in the morning and prepare to turn east at Dundas St., you are often faced with a long line of cars. Some drivers solve this problem by turning right off Mississauga Rd. onto Dundas and then pulling a U-ey just beyond the concrete median. Or, if there's too much traffic on Dundas, they zip along to the Sherwood Forrest Shopping Mall, turn in there, make a U-turn and turn right onto Dundas so they're heading east again.
Of course, the people who specialize in such nefarious manoeuvres will rush to point out that U-turns are not illegal in many places in our city. No they're not illegal, they're just dangerous as can be.
Is it really that tough to sit through a couple of traffic lights before you make a turn?
It obviously is for an increasing number of people. I hope they make really good use of those two extra minutes they get to enjoy at work.

A few political notes today.
The speculation about which "star candidate" might be parachuted into Carolyn Parrish's Mississauga-Erindale riding is gaining momentum.
In an interesting column in The Globe and Mail today, Jeffrey Simpson (who spoke recently in Mississauga on the Unholy Alliance of Politicians and the Press) speculates about the chances of expatriate, intellectual, Trudeau-style, potential Grit superstar Michael Ignatieff being dropped into the seat.
The names of both Ignatieff and former Premier Bob Rae have already been bandied about in the post-Parrish sweepstakes.
Finding desirable GTA seats will be a problem, notes Simpson, because there aren't many unoccupied. They are a precious commodity for the locals when they do become available.
Having been outside Canada for 30 years teaching in England and at Harvard, writing books on numerous subjects and articles and reviews for the New York Times and serving on the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty makes for a hell of a CV, but how does that play in Erindale Village? Does Ignatieff who Tommy Adamson was?
Perhaps the most telling deficiency Simpson points out is that Ignatieff's support for the war in Iraq wouldn't fly in a riding where Parrish recruited big membership in the Muslim community (flip-flopping on same sex marriage in the process) to beat back Steve Mahoney and keep the nomination last time around.
Ignatieff's latest book is titled The Lesser Evil: Political Ethnics in an Age of Terror. Maybe he does have some insight into Mississauga politics. Sounds like he might have attended a couple of previous Liberal nomination fiascos.
* * *
Brad Butt, who has become Mississauga's resident political expert for Rogers Television, is still considering the possibility of taking another shot at a municipal council seat.
Those chances dropped, of course, when Parrish all but announced that she's going to run in ward 6.
Butt is much more likely to be a candidate for the Conservative Party in the provincial election in Mississauga South next time around, taking on Tim Peterson.
He's run several times before for the Tories, and managed to pick the wrong round to sit out in 1995. A big John Tory fan, Butt will be running provincially in his home riding for the first time, although he's run there federally before.
* * *
Mississauga East MPP Peter Fonseca promised a while ago to try to get a gym put in the basement of Queen's Park so MPPs can work out and set an example to corporations and the public about the value of exercise.
It's not going to happen. Building too old, process too complicated, he told me this week.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Health Promotion Minister is a fitness freak and isn't giving up. The former top Canadian marathoner, who finished 21st at the Atlantic Olympics, is doing the next best thing. He's organizing a running club for MPPs and staff that will take off from Queen's Park one day and one evening a week. One question: Is the press invited or are they in-camera runs?
By the way, Fonseca and his wife Christina, who is seven months' pregnant with twins, got an up-close and personal look at the health care system yesterday when they did the pre-checkup ultrasound thing. Wonder if the athletic or the political genes will be stronger?

There's nothing like being there. Or, if you're a student learning about Remembrance Day, there's nothing like hearing it from someone who was there.
On Friday, students at Fairwind Public School in Mississauga got that chance when three veterans capped off a moving Remembrance ceremony by talking about their roles in World War II.
I talked to several veterans this year for Remembrance Day and I asked some of them a question that they don't really want to think about: Will those ceremonies have the same impact a decade or two from now if there is no one to relate their first-hand experiences?
It's one thing to see a video about World War II, but it's quite another to see 87-year-old former RAF Sergeant Dorothy Jamieson walk, with the aid of a cane, to the front of the school and instantly command the attention and respect of the entire student body. Never one to mince words, Jamieson delivers a telling message in a few curt words: "Freedom is not free. Freedom is kept for us by the men and women who put their lives on the line every day so we can live in freedom."
Would that turn of phrase have the same impact coming from a teacher?
A few minutes later, Peter Porter, Honourary Colonel of Canadian Transport Squadron 437, speaks of the chill he felt when, for the first time, he saw from the air the thousands of simple white markers from World War I that signified so many other young lives, never fulfilled.
Later, the 82-year-old Mississaugan, a long-time employee of the Peel District School Board before his retirement, speaks of his experiences flying food and VIPs to the Potsdam conference in 1945 and pulling his plane up beside Air Force One, which had delivered President Harry Truman to the scene to hold discussions with Stalin and Winston Churchill.
Even more vividly sketched in his mind are the memories of transporting those who had been in the Bergen-Belsen POW camps in Germany to Brussels.
"Most of them didn't weigh more than 40-50 pounds," said Porter.
When we lose the generation that fought the Second World War we will lose a connection that cannot be replaced.
CFRB Radio host John Moore, who came to Fairwind's program this year after Jamieson described it on his show this year, was one of the platform guests Friday.
He told students he felt uncomfortably out of place on the same stage with those who had really experienced the war.
The old newsreel footage that was shown as part of the ceremonies, black-and-white and badly faded, gives an impression of lives that are almost other-worldly and ancient, said Moore.
But don't be fooled, he said.
"They were just as real as you are today."
When students could listen to Jamieson's speech and then walk out into the lobby and see the vivacious young woman she used to be pictured on the front of a British newspaper as she hauled her gear through a train station as she headed off to war, Moore's point was hard to miss.

The magnificent 150-acre woodland along the east bank of the Credit River north of Burnhamthorpe Rd. W. that's come to be known as the Mississauga Garden Park at Riverwood is going to be owned by the public if Dave Taylor gets his way.
Of course, the property which was once home to the Bird, MacEwan, Zaichuk and Chappell families is already owned by the public in the sense that it was purchased by the Credit Valley Conservation and the City many years ago.
But Taylor, director of the education program at the site, wants to make sure that the real public out there embraces the splendid asset in its midst.
"Our main problem is that nobody knows we're here," said Taylor, who taught 31 years with the Peel Board of Education, including two years in the outdoor education program that was available only too briefly at the Britannia Farm.
"We really want to reach out to involve the public in the science and the natural history of this property," Taylor said this morning in the converted MacEwan house, which will act as the park's field studies centre.
To that end, there will be a series of trails through the park, about two-thirds of which is to be retained in its natural state. The City is turning the other third into a series of themed gardens.
Taylor and teacher Rita Schulze, who work for the Mississauga Garden Council which delivers the education program, will be taking students along the wild bird trail where sharp-eyed juvenile orthnithologists might see Great Horned and Great Grey Owls, sharp-shinned hawks and pileated woodpeckers if the numerous white-tailed deer don't block the view.
Riverwood is definitely a breeding site for the colourful magnolia warbler, which I've seen myself at the University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM). The warblers nest in a grove of spruce trees that's right along one of the trails already cut through the bush.
Students and the public may also be helping out UTM Professor Monika Havelka in her research on the white-footed mouse. Students visiting the site earlier this week on the first day of class tours saw one mouse scuttle out of a nesting box.
Taylor wants students and the public to do more than just visit, though. The data they collect on water samples from the Credit or on the movements of the mice can be used for research and monitoring.
There's a large salamander population on the property and Taylor hopes to find the endangered Jefferson salamander there. It was first discovered in Mississauga by citizen Don Barber at the Cawthra Bush a few years ago. That could be especially helpful in attracting funding for critical habitat protection.
As Taylor talks about the potential for stewardship partnerships with universities, local schools boards, community groups, Scouts, Guides etc. he foresees the day when the public will be as excited as he is about enhancing the woodland habit, reintroducing Atlantic Salmon to the Credit and perhaps creating conditions that could lead to re-introduction of long-lost species to the site.
Even a miserable drizzly, dank November morning can't put a damper on Taylor's passion to draw the public into one of the hidden gems we don't seem to know we own.

The guitar solo in The Stampeders' Sweet City Woman has to be the most seductive, infectious, just plain delicious thing ever blessed enough to come out of a tinny AM car radio on a sweltering summer day.
It is impossible, and I mean impossible, not to start swaying back and forth in your seat mimicking the notes of the solo and then breaking into full croak when the vocal chorus comes along.
It is the ultimate car radio song and I sometimes listen to the oldies stations just on the off chance I might hear it. They play it a lot, for obvious reasons.
So, it was no surprise to read this morning that the Stampeders' signature tune is one of 26 songs to be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at its gala next Feb. 5 at the Metro Convention Centre (see www.cansong.ca for details.)
But, as quickly as “Sweet, Sweet, Sweet, Sweet City Woman,” started reverberating through the prairies of my mind, came the shock of seeing a second of the nominees: another perennial playlist favourite of the oldies station, the contemptible song, Sugar Sugar.
Not only should this pedestrian, saccharine, inane song get nowhere near any hall of fame, we should officially change Andy Kim's place of birth to Montana to exact revenge for its publication.
Contrary to public belief, Banting and Best made their landmark discovery of insulin in anticipation of the spike in blood sugar levels that would be caused several decades later by Kim's ode to banality.
“You are my candy girl,” and “I find myself wanting,” to kill whoever wrote this....ah...trash.
How could this happen? How do you think Leonard Cohen, who is one of five new inductees being inducted, feels about having his intricately crafted songs Hallelujah, Suzanne, Bird On A Wire, Everybody Knows and Ain't No Cure for Love being honoured along with the drek of Sugar Sugar.
Now that Sugar Sugar has fouled the Hall of Fame waters, what's next?
I certainly hope we're not going to allow a single composition by Paul Anka, who should have been born in Las Vegas where he now lives, not Ottawa. If only his babysitter had been named Svetlana instead of Diana, maybe we would never have been subjected to Paul's ode to self-adoration, I Did It My Way.
If they try to put You're Having My Baby in the Hall of Fame we should send the Stampeders to trample the induction committee.

Well, Michael Ignatieff is definitely interested in running for the Liberals in the chilly election campaign upon which we are about to embark.
But, not in Mississauga-Erindale.
The director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Professor of the Practice of Human Rights at Harvard University was back in Canada this week and spoke at a meeting of the Harvard Club in Toronto.
The acclaimed scholar and author, who's coming back to the University of Toronto to teach in January, told the alumni he is giving serious consideration to a run for the Grits. The young, bright charismatic Ignatieff is already being touted as a potential successor to Paul Martin.
He'll probably have to rely on Martin to appoint him to a seat here if he wants to run.
In a one-line e-mail response to my inquiry about his interest in succeeding Carolyn Parrish in the central Mississauga riding, Ignatieff said, "no truth to these rumours."
While the rumour mill continues to churn out more names, including one from outer space, the local association is waiting impatiently for the party to grant its request for a date for a nomination.
Yes, the name of Canadian Astronaut Marc Garneau has been floating around.
So far, four earth-bound candidates have officially submitted their papers. They include Elias Hazineh, president of the association who works in Parrish's office; Omar Algabrah, an employee of GE Canada; Youssef Harb, a self-employed concert promoter; former Peel school board trustee George Winter; and, Khaled Usman, a Markham city councillor.
Mississauga dentist Dr. Farid Ayad is planning to bring in his papers today.
"I would say we're running out of time for a nomination," said Hazineh. "With 4,000 members, there are a lot of preparations to make."
The party is obviously dragging its feet so it can parachute someone in, perhaps even Martha Hall-Findlay, the candidate displaced in Newmarket- Aurora when Belinda Stronach crossed the floor.
An appointment "would fly in the face of what Paul Martin has been saying about the democratic deficit," Hazineh said. "I just wish the party would engage us in the local decision."
Ahh, nice idea in principle, but apparently way old-fashioned when you want to stash today's flavour-of-the-week superstar candidate in a convenient seat.
Meanwhile, Bob Dechert and the Conservatives sit on the sidelines enjoying the squabbling and figuring out how many disaffected votes they can attract from Liberals turned off by the party's latest internal machinations.

I started my vacation last week by attending a concert at Roy Thomson Hall, where a couple of 80-year-olds showed all us younger folks that they aren't just getting older, they're getting better.
Oscar Peterson and Hazel McCallion combined his famous fingers and her famous mug to host a sold-out fundraising concert for World Vision that certainly lived up to expectations.
Although the desire to pry open wallets with sad words and sad pictures must have been overwhelming, organizers kept the proselytizing to a minimum (a nice video by concert promoter Ron Duquette) and the music to a maximum. That was just fine with the jazz crowd that showed up.
Despite what was obviously a long, long walk for Peterson from the wings to the piano bench, he and his crack outfit (Ulf Wakenius on guitar, Alvin Queen on drums and Toronto's own Dave Young on bass) didn't disappoint.
It took a couple of numbers for him to get his famous digits unlimbered, but the wait was worth it.
He gave us a taste of his huge catalogue of music, although we didn't get to hear some of his best-known work such as Wheatland and Hymn To Freedom. When you're at the top of your game for 50 years, the choices get a might tricky.
While he continues to swing with the best of them (as he showed on Kelly's Blues and a song which I believe was called BBQ Blues), the good doctor, who has at least 16 honourary degrees, is showing a growing affinity for ballads in his later years.
When Summer Comes and, especially his heartfelt tribute to the late bassist in his group Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, a song called In The Silence Of The Woods, were moving. Remember when the knock on Peterson was that, while he wowed us all with technical dexterity, he didn't connect with the audience emotionally as well as other keyboard giants?
Some critics even said the same thing, incredibly, about the singing of Peterson's old Jazz At The Philharmonic partner, Ella Fitzgerald.
It was codswallop then and it's still codswallop.
As Peterson edges closer to the pantheon of jazz greats he eulogizes in his ballad called Elegy, his music acquires an added intensity and a bittersweet edge that is unmistakable and riveting.
As several standing ovations attested, it was a pleasure just to share Peterson's musical company again.

Is there such a word as “semi-hijacked?”
If so, it describes rather well what’s happened with the Liberal nomination in Mississauga-Erindale.
When Carolyn Parrish got up on her hind legs Monday afternoon to ask the very last question of the Parliamentary session, it closed the federal chapter of her career and opened the doors to the messy “nomination” process that’s going to determine her successor as Liberal candidate, Thursday night at the Coptic Church.
The garrulous Parrish, who never met a microphone she didn’t love, announced her intentions to resign earlier to try to force her (former) party into holding a proper nomination.
They appeared in no hurry to do so, which convinced a lot of people, including me, that an appointment was in the works.
In the meantime, the local executive, who naturally consist of Parrish supporters, was conducting a search for potential candidates who were then screened by the central party.
Ten people eventually put their names forward.
One of them was not Steve Mahoney, the former councillor-MPP-MP, who lost a bitter nomination battle to Parrish last time around.
Although the search committee went through the motions of approaching both Mahoney and his wife, Ward 8 Councillor Katie Mahoney, “the whole thing is rigged,” the Mississauga consultant fumed yesterday.
“It's not democracy” because the 3,600 existing members who can vote at tomorrow’s meeting were signed up by Parrish for two years during her fight against Mahoney. (Mahoney's members were signed up for a shorter period.)
The party has deigned to approve the credentials of just two candidates, Minister-in-waiting Charles Sousa, a senior manager at the Royal Bank of Canada, and Omar Alghabra, the former president of the Canadian Arab Association.
The riding president, Elias Hazineh, a prominent player in the Palestinian community, was also originally approved. He was dropped, however, after he made several incendiary remarks about the state of Israel at a Toronto dinner earlier this month.
“Not only could I not win, I could not even be competitive,” said Mahoney, one of several non-candidates upset by the process.
Another is former provincial candidate and school board trustee George Winter who said the party's attitude seems to be, “just dare to run and we’ll show you who runs this place. Until political parties stop this hijacking of the political process, we will continue to have special interest or one-interest candidates. I think the Liberal Party feels that they can get away with this in this particular riding because it will still vote Liberal,” said Winter.
Although about 80 per cent of the membership is Arab or Palestinian Muslims, that doesn’t mean that Alghabra is a shoo-in, said Mahoney, who is busy trying to find out if he still has a vote Thursday night.
Just like in general elections, there is as much voting against candidates as for them.
“I think it will be an upset for Sousa to win,” said the former Cabinet Minister, “but I think he has a chance. It depends on whether the Palestinian Muslims abandon Carolyn or accept her advice.”
Parrish is quite clearly enamoured of Sousa. “Charles is Cabinet material,” she said yesterday.
There's not much doubt that the party would prefer Sousa, a man with an MBA and lots of experience in the banking industry who could help out in the tricky business of bank mergers.
A couple of notes: Parrish is part of an election panel on CBC Radio's The Current. The group includes fellow Mississaugan Buzz Hargrove and former Reformer Deborah Grey. Parrish will be hosting the show for three hours on Dec. 23 and has carte blanche to invite guests. Voodoo doll makers, prepare to be summoned.
Although people may have thought speculation about former Ontario NDP Leader Bob Rae running in Mississauga-Erindale for the Grits was pure fantasy, Mahoney said it was far from it.
“He was seriously considering it but he wanted to finish the Air India issue, so he took a pass. It’s nice to see someone who’s willing to put his principles first,” said Mahoney.
I don't know Steve. Who would want people like that in politics?

Brian McCarry may be a university professor at McMaster University and the head of the chemistry department there, but he doesn't talk like any high-fallutin’ Ph.D.
He talks like a guy who's very frustrated that, when it comes to air pollution, we still don't get it.
The number of smog days we experienced this summer should have scared the daylights out of us, says McCarry, who was in Mississauga yesterday to deliver a talk about air pollution in the fine joint Mississauga Library-University of Toronto at Mississauga community lecture series.
“I guess the problem is that there's no toe tag on anybody saying they died of air pollution,” McCarry said in a telephone interview before his talk.
“For one of every seven smokers who die, one person dies of air quality problems,” said the much-decorated professor.
Yet, visit any street in Mississauga or stand outside any school here and watch how many people sit in their cars with the engine idling. “Idling should be like smoking in a public place is now,” said McCarry. “But it really flies under the health radar.”
What really depresses the 54-year-old is that, despite overwhelming evidence that our lifestyles are killing us, we don’t seem to care and, as a result, neither does our government.
“More people are dying of air pollution than ever died of SARS,” he points out.
“It’s our lifestyle that’s doing this stuff,” said McCarry, whose research centres on identifying emerging toxins in the environment that may cause genetic mutations.
Turning on the television and watching the ads that try to top each other on engine size and power reminds the Hamilton resident of his younger days.
“All the talk about the horsepower they’re putting out takes me back to the time of the muscle cars when I was a kid.”
In Germany, you can drive a five-litre Mercedes but you pay a premium of $800 a year to license it.
“Here, a seven-litre monster is just considered part of the package,” he laments.
Now that the cost of gas has “dropped” back to 85 cents a litre, it's like the air emission issue, which the Ontario Medical Association estimates cost the provincial economy more than $16 billion a year in health costs and lost production time, has evaporated.
“We all view it as somebody else’s problem,” said the chair of Clean Air Hamilton, a respected advisory group to the municipality’s council. “We just think industry is the problem and if they just cleaned things up, we'd all be fine.
“The fact is most responsible companies are moving to best available technology, but we aren't as citizens.”
Before we start carping at political candidates and environmental watchdogs to solve our pollution problems, we'd probably be better off first taking a long, hard look in the mirror.