Random Access

What if they gave an election and nobody cared?
Yes, the federal election is crucial to our collective futures, as every election is. But I still can’t help getting that Yogi Berra feeling that this is deja vu all over again with the same content, the same players and the same core lethargy at play.
Part of the problem, of course, is that there is so much to vote against and so little to vote for. (Don't you hate it when sentences end with prepositions?)
Once upon a time my vote could be bought for a balloon. When I was a child, former Ontario Premier John Robarts knocked on our front door and gave me a balloon. I solemnly told my mother after he left that she should vote for him.
If only it were still so easy.
You used to be able to identify parties by their general location on the political spectrum. No more.
Some elections were fought more or less on a single life or death issue, or so it seemed at the time.
Pierre Trudeau denounced wage and price controls and then implemented them. Jean Chretien was going to abolish the GST. And those promises came from the party we keep electing over and over and over again.
Why? Because there doesn’t appear to most Canadians to be another reasonable choice.
Voting based on policy, unless you simply want to make the rich pay, as the Marxist-Leninists do, is step-dancing on quicksand. In Ontario we elected Bob Rae and he turned out to be David Peterson, not Tommy Douglas.
So, we jumped from the frying pan into the fire and hired Mike (“get those f....ing Indians out of the park”) Harris because he at least seemed to stand for something. It turned out he stood for dismantling the public service so we’re a little gun-shy in this province about embracing change for change's sake. Stephen Harper's biggest problem in Ontario isn’t Paul Martin, it’s still Mike Harris.
Unless the Toronto-born Harper can convince us that his party isn’t the Reform-Alliance-Common Sense Regurgitation in disguise, he’s going nowhere in the nation’s swing province.
This is a critical election for the NDP. They have a chance to reclaim many votes that were parked with the Liberals last time round by people who were very nervous about Harper.
Having seen Mr. Dithers in inaction for lo these many months and seen the Liberals mired in the sponsorship scandal, a lot of votes may slip away back to the NDP from people who are looking at Harper and Martin and thinking, “none of the above.”
That could make life a little bit more interesting in places like Mississauga, where the NDP has to run stronger if the Tories ever hope to return to their one-time glory.

The report was called Portraits of Peel: Facing the Facts. It was presented a couple of weeks ago to regional council by a coalition of community groups and staff.
It painted a sobering picture of the invisible underbelly of Peel's remarkable growth; the many, many people who have been left behind.
Statistics are one thing but seeing the reality is another.
You don't have to tell Mississauga's Sandy Wonnell about the face of poverty in Peel. She sees it every day. The 12.7 per cent of people who live below the poverty line in Mississauga aren’t just a disembodied number to Wonnell, who is one of four nurses at the Peel Children’s Aid Society (CAS) who deal with high-risk infants.
At the launch of the CAS Foundation's Holiday Wishes program Thursday, Wonnell provided prima facie evidence of the need out there.
Almost exactly a year ago, someone called CAS concerned about the children who lived next door. The kids were running around in diapers and undershirts in December.
That’s often the way Wonnell’s cases open, a call from a neighbour, relative or doctor who is worried about children.
What she saw when she made a home visit shocked her: a young child and a baby in urine-soaked diapers, the baby sleeping in a laundry basket, their mother depressed and unable to buy more food or diapers until her next social assistance cheque arrived. The household fridge featured only a bag of carrots, half a loaf of bread and a pot of old, cold spaghetti.
Although she was able to get help for this family (the single mom is now working and the kids are in child care), there are lots of other stories that don't have such happy endings.
“It’s a lot more typical scenario than you would ever imagine,” Wonnell said later. “You could drive down many of the roads in Mississauga and never know these families existed.”
When you walk in a home and see an infant sleeping in the same room with guns and knives, where the mother has an obvious drug problem and can’t look after her baby, it gives you pause for thought, said Wonnell, a Streetsville mother of three boys.
No, she doesn’t get depressed by what she sees, said the nurse, answering a question she’s asked often. A vulnerable baby is a vulnerable baby.
“Most of these families just need someone to intervene and help,” she said.
The nurse keeps in touch with families she’s assisted and the reunions inevitably start with big hugs all around. That’s the kind of thanks you don’t get in a lot of jobs.
Wonnell, who worked previously at both local hospitals and the Victorian Order of Nurses, still remembers what it was like when she started this job.
“The first year I would go home and think about what I’d seen, like seeing a baby whose only toys were a channel changer and a toothless comb. It makes you look at life and realize how much most of us take for granted. It's very eye-opening. Poverty is a huge, huge issue.”

Every Saturday morning after we’ve had breakfast, we retire to the living room for the ritual of poring over the papers, or more accurately, reading as much as we can before unfinished chores start tugging at our conscience.
One of the constant highlights is Warren Clements’ Challenge contest, which is always opposite the cryptic crossword at the back of the Globe and Mail’s book section. (Thank goodness one of those still survives).
He sets a word task every week for entrants. Many of the responses are clever and often hilarious, in a particularly punny sort of way. We’ve often thought about entering, but never seemed to get around to it.
Until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when the test was to choose a well-known author and, by changing a word or two, match them up with a well-known movie.
The winner, published Saturday, was Noel Coward: Stagecouch.
Other entries, and there are always several that deserve to win, included Leo Tolstoy: Tsar Wars, Charles Darwin: Shipping Newts and Jane Goodall: Primates Of The Caribbean.
Here, in no particular order, are the titles we came up with:
William Golding: Silence Of The Hams
John J. Audubon: Close Encounters Of The Bird Kind
Julia Child: East Of Eatin’
Bram Stoker: Planet Of The Napes
Casey Stengal: Great Expectorations
Marquis de Sade: Citizen Pain
Mr. Blackwell: The World According To Garb
Helen Fielding: Panties’ Inferno
Marie Curie: One Half-Life To Live
P. Diddy: Lord Of The Blings
Lech Walesa: Shall We Gdansk?
I’m proud to say that one of our entries, Helen Fielding: Mopey Chick was actually published among the honourable mentions.
If you drive by my house in Erin Mills on a Saturday evening this winter and wonder why the driveway's still piled high with snow, you’ll know what we've been doing.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember ... baseball.
It's been so long in Toronto since the off-season mattered that I’m out of practice in following the rumours any more.
It used to be that all the speculation about decent players coming to the Jays turned out to be just that, pure speculation. So, you stop paying attention because there’s so seldom a payoff.
That's changed since Ted Rogers started dropping manna from heaven into J.P. Ricciardi’s toy box.
Not only have the Blue Jays landed B.J. Ryan, who is clearly the real deal at closer, but they’ve also signed everybody's favourite bobble of late, A.J. Burnett.
He sounds like a lot more of a reach. Let’s hope that the initials of this guy, who sports jewelled nipple rings (now that would distract a batter), don’t stand for Adolescent Jerk. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, suspending judgment until at least the middle of May.
It’s weird to see the Jays thinking about trading home-brew Corey Koskie already, or Shea Hillenbrand who was, day-in and day-out probably their best hitter last year. You win championships with guys like that, guys who keep grinding all the time. Last year, for the first time in many seasons, you didn’t want to turn the set off if they were down by three or four because they seemed to have the will to win, if not the horses to do so.
How weird is it to see the Jays shopping for a first baseman, with the latest speculation on Milwaukee’s Lyle Overbay?
Say, it seems to me that there was somebody around here not too long ago who could have done that job. A character guy, loads of power, Latino name I believe.
If only Mr. Rogers had come to his spending senses earlier and kept Carlos Delgado in the neighbourhood, life as a Blue Jay fan would be really, really good this coming year.

Well, the election gun has sounded and they’re off.
No, not in the federal election, in the municipal election.
Carolyn Parrish has all but announced her intentions to run for the empty Ward 6 council seat, but the retiring MP (it’s just a manner of speech) won't be cake-walking into City Hall.
Ron Starr, a stalwart of the local development and building industry, Enersource Mississauga board member, frequent campaign fundraiser, and former Ward 7 councillor has also (nearly) decided to run.
“I’m pretty well there,” Starr said this morning. “I don’t want to do anything before the federal election is over.”
He conceded that he could be described as leaning heavily towards it. Of course, the scads of e-mails and calls from Parrish’s non-fans are helping him make up his mind.
“I’m hoping it’s not just an anti-Parrish thing,” said the 60-year-old, who was on the first city council led by Hazel McCallion in 1978 before Dave Cook beat him in 1980.
A rumour that Starr would be joined in the fray by ex-MP Steve Mahoney who would take on Parrish campaign manager-advisor-friend and current Ward 6 Councillor George Carlson isn’t true, Mahoney said today.
“I’m not running for council but good old Ringo is and I’ll be working my ass off for him,” the former councillor, MPP and MP said.
He and Parrish staged a venomous nomination battle for the Mississauga-Erindale seat in 2004 that both said was the low point of their careers.
The Ward 6 race will, naturally, be a rematch by proxy of that donnybrook and/or a preview of a mayoralty campaign to come if Her Warship ever decides to weigh anchor from the port of Mississauga.
Nothing’s ever come easily to Parrish, whose pugnacious style and street-fighter attitude (and tongue) are often her downfall.
As she sat in her constituency office yesterday, she seemed resigned to yet another pitched battle and predicted that her long record of representing the ward as school trustee and MP would prevail.
“Mr. Starr is an upstanding citizen who has greatly contributed to out growth,” said the newer, kinder Carolyn, who’s trying to curb her tart tongue. “Good for him.”
When the doors of City Hall open Jan. 3, the first day you can register to be a candidate in the Nov. 13 election, at least one familiar candidate will be on the doorstep.
Long-time self-appointed City Hall watchdog Roy Willis is running for mayor.
“If my name’s not on the ballot in Mississauga, it’s not a real election,” said Willis, whose announcement will be greeted with wide yawns all around the council horseshoe.
Does losing seven council races in Ward 5 qualify you to run for mayor? Willis says he just wants to push McCallion into thinking about retirement.
Roy could be the hip-hop generation candidate, at 68 years of age, 16 years the junior of you-know-who. Of course, the hip in this case refers to certain replacement surgery that sometimes has to be done as we get older.
Willis knows he can’t win. If he keeps the usual gaggle of nuisance candidates from wasting our time, however, we shouldn’t complain.
Meanwhile, political everyman Brad Butt has announced he’s running for the Conservative nomination in Mississauga South in the Oct. 4, 2007 provincial election. See www.bradbutt.ca.
Wonder if anything’s happening in the federal campaign?

Yesterday, election signs for Bob Dechert, the Conservative candidate in Mississauga-Erindale, started popping up on lawns on our street after a couple of his workers canvassed.
This morning, the lawns looked more like ski hills, the signs that you could still see were already drooping noticeably and if you didn't already know the candidate's name, you'd have a hard time making it out.
Signs are one of the dilemmas of this winter campaign for candidates. For most they are considered a necessary evil at the best of times because it takes a lot of time, energy and manpower to put them up and keep them up.
Although no one ever admits to it, except under oath, there are the inevitable shenanigans of tearing down the other candidates' work. It's one of the many reasons that on-street politics reminds one so much of raging hormones and high school pep rallies.
Paul Szabo, the Liberal in Mississauga South who seems to be trying to start his own "family" party, has decided not to put any signs up before Christmas. In part it's so families can enjoy Christmas, he said.
"I don't want to see Paul Szabo beside Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I might even wait until after New Year's. We can still run a good sign campaign after that."
Phil Green, the Conservative candidate in the same riding who is an avid environmentalist says, "If people want them, we'll give put them up. It's always a dilemma from an environmental standpoint."
His signs, like most, are now made of coroplast (short for corrugated plastic) which is a polypropylene copolymer if anyone asks you. It's recyclable and can be folded up and put in your blue box after the campaign.
"It's hard enough to get your message out at the best of times," said Green who feels it's important to show your colours to keep morale up for your side and to impress the other guys. More high school thinking.
I guess we should just be thankful that political parties they don't have their own fight songs, like soccer and football teams.
The fact is that election signs are now, and always have been, a horrific stain on the landscape. They're ugly under any circumstances and in those municipalities which don't have the sense to ban them from public property, they're dangerous when placed at corners where they block sight lines.
Does anyone ever change their vote because they see their neighbour with a sign? If so, would you want such a person as a supporter?
The Green Party deserves major kudos for refusing to use election signs in this campaign.
Maybe, some day, some brave candidate in a main-line party in Mississauga will have the gumption to do what they know is right, too.

With the dismissal of his final appeal last week, the story of the magnificent fall from grace of Mississauga Councillor Cliff Gyles comes to its inevitable, and rightful, conclusion.
I remember attending an orientation session for newly-elected school trustees, including Gyles, one Saturday in 1980 at what is now the University of Toronto at Mississauga. The bright shiny new Ward 5 trustee was there and seemed incredibly sure of himself for someone so fresh to the political game.
He had built-in swagger. Impeccably dressed, he also had an abiding confidence in the correctness of his own opinion, and the value of its relative worth. Things haven't changed since.
When he was officially charged with municipal corruption in 2001, Gyles attended the next council meeting and read a statement that was full of bravado and fiery rhetoric about how justice would eventually be served.
In retrospect, his audacity was breathtaking.
“For me, it is like a big boulder in my path and I will surely have it removed,” the Ward 5 councillor and 17-year trustee of the Peel Board of Education vowed. "I have lived in this city for 31 years and for 21 years I have been an elected official. I intend to continue to live here and I intend to stay elected," he said.
With the vigour of his defence and the inevitable machinations of the rumour mill, people were expecting Gyles' defence to be a spectacular indictment of wrongdoings at City Hall, with appropriate finger-pointing at appropriately important people.
Instead, it was a comic-book catastrophe starring Cliff in his own fantasy world as an undercover agent single-handedly trying to catch the bribing bad guy. Unfortunately, the crown attorney pointed out ten thousand inconsistencies with his story, starting with the fact Gyles spent a lot of the money he took and that his voice is caught on tape haggling over details of the bribe, or "apples" and "chickens" as he called them.
The councillor at first denied that the unmistakeable mellifluous tones were his own distinctive voice but eventually, with constant prodding, was convinced that he couldn't say for sure it wasn't him.
Even after his conviction, Gyles fought the reality of his guilt until his final appeal was summarily dismissed last Thursday.
The final ignominy was that he could not even hear the verdict rendered. He had to surrender himself to jail beforehand as part of his bail conditions.
Don't put it past Gyles to run for election again, as he did in November of 2003 when he somehow duped 572 people into voting for him.
Even though he’ll likely be released from jail before the Nov. 13, 2006 election, Gyles can’t run because he failed to file the required statement of contributions and expenses in the last balloting.
But there's still no provision banning those convicted of municipal corruption from seeking office again, as long as they've served their time.
Do not, for a second, think that L. Cliff Gyles is not already planning a political comeback of some sort.
Will Cliff Gyles, convicted felon, ever show any remorse?
Ironically, the only place you might see some regret expressed would be on an election platform.
For public consumption, Gyles would surely have to admit to a mistake even if only to assure voters that it wouldn't happen again.
Either that, or he would have to come up with a new twist on an old campaign theme: chickens AND apples in every pot.

If you’re like me, you hate to throw anything into the garbage that can be recycled.
Which is why it’s bothered me for years to throw away wine bottle corks when I know they are bio-degradable. I’ve tried putting them in the compost but, unless you are prepared to shred them or spend several years waiting, they just come out as the same lumps they where when they went in.
Then one evening a couple of months ago, I wandered into the Wine Studio at the Sherwood Forrest Shopping Centre and saw a Bag-a-Cork display. It explained all about a recycling program that could potentially divert the 100 million corks a year that are used in Ontario (reducing required landfill space by 2,500 cubic metres) and raise much-needed funds for the Girl Guides of Ontario.
What a great idea.
You take a plastic bag hanging on the display and collect the corks you would otherwise toss away. When the bag is full, you return it to one of several participating restaurants, retail outlets, LCBOs, etc. around the city. You dump the bag out and take it home to collect more corks.
Then the Girl Guides sort the material and sell it to Jelinek Corks in Oakville, one of the program’s sponsors. They recycle the cork and sell it for use in everything from shoe soles to buoys to the nose cone of the Space Shuttle.
Warren Porter of Iron Gate Cellarage in Toronto, who developed the program, says Jelinek is now working on a new product that will use the cork in floor tiles by cutting it into little cross-sections to create mini-mosaic tiles.
“That gives us the ability to convert cork into a product right here in Ontario and complete the circle,” said Porter.
Just launched in February, Bag-a-Cork is going well.
“Half of this is the educational process for the girls,” said Porter.
The whole process is described in detail, complete with participating locations, at www.bag-a-cork.org.
Cork is harvested from the bark of cork trees, mostly in Portugal. Only when it is 43 years old and on its third harvest is the bark smooth enough for corks. Each cork tree can be harvested 15-18 times.
“If cork is not used, the value of the cork declines and then the woodlot could be plowed under,” said Porter. “When you use cork, it keeps the forest living.”
Here I was thinking I was improving my health with Chateauneuf-de-Pape and Barbaresco (or more truthfully Cotes-du-Rhone and Chianti) when I was really saving the forests of Europe.
Ain’t that a corker?

It’s always refreshing when you ask a political candidate where he grew up and the answer is: “I don't think that’s happened yet.”
But then, Ronnie Amyotte, or Uncle Ronnie as he called himself in the first press release he issued, isn’t your ordinary federal would-be MP.
He’s a man of many hats, who worked in a mine at Elliot Lake when he was 16, has just come back from a three-and-a-half-month business trip to China, owns a local real estate business with his wife of 35 years, was one of the founders of the Block Parent program, is a winner of an award from the International Poetry Society for something he posted on one of the on-line condolence sites after 9/11, formerly ran one of the largest resource recovery plants in Ontario and is an internationally competitive ballroom and Latin dancer. Whew.
Uncle Ronnie is the kind of guy who throws, “I travelled by myself on a raft on the Yangtze River, just for fun” into the conversation and then carries on as if he just said, “Isn’t it a nice day?”
Amyotte’s real passion, it turns out, is inventing and railing at the wrongs of our political system.
His first invention, as a teen, was a rocket-shaped popsicle container.
He travels frequently to promote the many products he sells including the P-Rite toilet seat lifter. That’s a pedal on the floor attached to the seat so you can open and close the lid hygienically. If only we could attach it to political lips, eh?
All of the foregoing may give you the impression that Amyotte isn’t a serious candidate in Mississauga South, where he’s lived for more than two decades.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
“I’m running for a democratic state, which we don’t have today,” he says. “I want to create a voice for the people, so commoners can actually be heard in the House of Commons.”
Amyotte calls it depressing to tell the truth about the state of the nation: “We have an abundance of law, and little order; a lot of crime and little punishment. A convicted child-killer walks our streets. Our children are shot in cross-fire by gangs. If we do not pay for what we do, we continue to do it. It starts at the top.”
So, what are the chances of the guy in the black cowboy hat getting elected? Well, they’re zero, but that's almost beside the point for Amyotte.
He’s running because parties, not the public, run our system. He sees wrong and he wants to make it right.
“I’m telling people, you can fix this,” he said. “The window of opportunity is open. Run as an independent. Encourage others to. Work for them. Vote for them. Be not afraid.”
In the era of strategic voting, it’s nice to be reminded that some people still care so passionately about democracy and want to exercise it directly.
Uncle Ronnie reminds us, once again, that there is no such thing as a wasted vote.

Want to know why the image of the ugly American persists around the world?
Because they do dolt-headed things like preventing Cuba from sending a team to the first year of an international sporting event called the World Baseball Classic that's to be played next March.
The competition, which would be a true World Series unlike the championship of professional American baseball which has that self-aggrandizing title now, is to be held in several different locations over 18 days with 16 teams of pros from around the world.
Cuba, where baseball is a religion, can't attend because an agency of the U.S. government, something called the Office of Friggin' Asses in Control — pardon me, that should be Office of Foreign Assets Control — will not issue a licence to Cuba.
You see, that country stands to make some revenue from the broadcast rights to the tournament, which haven't been awarded yet. That would apparently break the U.S. embargo on trade and relations with Cuba.
Can you say error, U.S.A.?
Haven't we learned our lessons from the boycotted Olympic Games of Moscow and Los Angeles that political boycotts of sporting events are pointless?
Why is it athletes, most of whom have only a passing interest in politics must so often make the sacrifice to prove a point?
You can bet that this is more than a little personal for a certain former owner of the Texas Rangers who tries to manage the White House, and was apparently taught elocution by Casey Stengel.
Stengel, of course, is one of the guys who was famous for mangling the language before Dubya made it a profession.
One of his classics was, "good pitching will always beat good hitting, and vice-versa." My personal favourite is his spring-training advice to, "line up alphabetically according to height."
Maybe Bush should heed another quote from Casey Stengel: "I stayed up last night and watched the Republican Convention all night long. I watched all of them talk and listened to them and seen them and I'm not even interested in politics. If you watch them and listen to them, you can find out why."

All Denzal Sinclaire had to do was mention high school, not even Applewood Heights Secondary School by name, on Friday night and the crowd at the Living Arts centre went wild.
"I must have sung this a million times in high school," Sinclaire said, while he began to play Misty for us.
There was a wave of applause from the capacity crowd and a shout from one of the upper level balconies of, "I was your teacher."
It was old home night for Sinclaire, who lived here for 11 years as a teen and young adult before he headed out to become one of Canada's best male jazz singers.
Although he gave us a couple of blues-based numbers, Sinclaire delivered a lot of what he is best at, which is the sensitive interpretation of the great American songbook.
In his deceptively straightforward delivery of a ballad and his ability to let a song speak for itself, Sinclaire reminds me of no less a singer than Johnny Hartman, the superb American baritone whose genius only seemed to be recognized after he was gone.
Sinclaire has the same ability to be poignant without ever being sentimental and to sell a song on its own merits.
Of course, intelligent choice of material is a key to that kind of approach and on Friday, the Vancouver resident blessed us with well-known Gershwin (I Got Rhythm) lesser known but still stellar Gershwin (For You, For Me, For Evermore), some reinterpreted Johnny Nash (I Can See Clearly Now), Billie Holiday's What's New, and a breathtaking version of Jerome Kern's Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, which he stood to sing. That was appropriate as it became a kind of jazz anthem in his hands.
Sinclaire played several songs from his forthcoming CD including the title number, My One and Only Love. It's being released Jan. 24 on Verve.
Although he's made lots of solid CDs in the past, this one is something special. It's predominantly ballads and it has that quality that makes an album last, the feeling that each of the songs has been fashioned carefully from a thematic whole.
I can't recommend it highly enough.
Sinclaire even takes that old warhorse, Stardust, and makes it live anew.
Pick it up after Christmas as a present to yourself and enjoy. I can assure you it will leave you with more than one melody that haunts your reverie.

If you were handicapping the recent election for chair of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, you would have tabbed veteran Ward 9 Trustee Esther O'Toole as the heavy favourite.
With 14 years of experience on the board, including two terms as vice-chair, it would seem that the Catholic school board might actually have elected, for the first time since its inception in 1969, a female chair.
The odds looked even better when you consider that O’Toole’s opposition was Peter Ferreira, a capable man indeed, but one who was only appointed to the board in May of 2004 to replace Art Steffler. That what was considered a major surprise at the time.
Well, that’s why they hold the vote.
Ferreira won in a secret ballot and, yes, there are some hard feelings on O’Toole’s part.
“All kinds of deals can be made behind closed doors,” she said provocatively.
Asked if gender was a factor, O’Toole responded with, “no comment,” adding that, “Maybe it was my last name.”
That was apparently a reference to the number of Italian-Canadians on the board.
Ouch. That accusation might carry more weight if Ferreira weren’t Portuguese. He’s president of the Portuguese Canadian Cultural Centre and the Portuguese Canadian National Congress.
The immigration consultant, who represented Ward 3 on the board from 1985-’88, has a long-time political interest, having served capably as Dufferin-Peel’s representative on the Mississauga Library Board and eventually becoming chair.
“I would hope it means my peers recognize in me the ability to lead this board,” the new chair said when asked why he thinks he won. “I don’t think gender plays a part. I don’t believe people should vote on gender.”
As for the behind-the-scene deals O’Toole cited, is it possible that Ferreira’s profile is being raised for another run for Ward 3 councillor?
After entering the race with only three weeks left in the campaign in 2003, he polled a remarkable 44.3 per cent of the vote against long-time incumbent Maja Prentice, a number that raised a lot of eyebrows.
“I’ve not made a final decision,” about whether he’ll run for trustee in Ward 6, (where he does not live) or whether he’ll run for council. “I’m not committed to anything at this point.”
As for O’Toole, she’s not tempted to run for council in the new Ward 10 where she lives and where there is no incumbent.
She’ll be seeking re-election to the Dufferin-Peel school board.
“I want to be the first female chair of the board,” she says defiantly. “I think I’ve earned it.”

Does it seem possible that 80 years after the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, we are still reading newspaper accounts of court decisions from the United States about the teaching of evolution in schools?
The latest, described in a wire story as a “major blow to the Christian right,” is a decision following a six-month (!) trial in a Pennsylvania town where the local school board ordered a statement to be introduced in the Grade 9 science curriculum to the effect that Charles Darwin might have it all wrong. His theory of evolution was to be described as non-factual and it was to be pointed out that, surprise, surprise, it doesn't explain everything about everything.
Well, imagine anyone trying to reconstruct the development of a species over billions of years and being slightly off on a few details. Or, as the school board wanted it stated, there are “gaps” in the theory of evolution.
That would explain George W. Bush, I guess.
The school board wanted to introduce the concept of so-called “intelligent design,” the suggestion that only a greater being could have created a system of such incredible complexity that it could not be understood by the current President of the United States.
Mr. Bush did not comment directly on the decision but a spokesman said that he, “believes students ought to be exposed to different theories and ideas so that they can fully understand what the debate is all about.”
While we may cringe at the efforts in the highest places south of the border to rejoin church and state, this story has a couple of very positive sidebars.
The first is that U.S. District Court Judge John Jones, who cited the “breathtaking inanity” of the school board decision, which he termed an “utter waste of monetary and personal resources,” is a conservative who was appointed by Bush.
The second is that after the school board mandated intelligent design in the classroom, the good people of Dover, PA. turfed all but one of the eight incumbents out of office.
The citizens clearly recognized, even if many of their political leaders do not, that religious indoctrination in any of its many guises has no place in the public school classroom.

It was a big day for the members of the Women's Auxiliary Airforce (WAAF) serving in the Fighter Command Control Operations Centre during World War II when Prime Minister Winston Churchill came for a tour.
The sergeant who ran the place was Dorothy Jones, who was actually a member of the Royal Air Force but had been on loan to the Royal Canadian Air Force for some time.
Churchill was guided into the bunker some 30 ft. below the Lincolnshire countryside by a squadron leader, an administrator who had been assigned to lead the tour.
Jones, better known to Mississaugans as Dorothy Jamieson, the name she acquired in 1945 when she married Canadian fighter pilot Ronald Jamieson, was introduced to Churchill.
Jamieson, an inveterate chatterer began to brief Churchill about the place.
"Excuse me, sergeant, you are dismissed," the squadron leader said to Jamieson.
Whereupon the Prime Minister interjected, "Excuse me squadron leader, you are dismissed. The sergeant will give me a tour."
Anyone who knows Dorothy Jamieson, a long-time Mississaugan who is now 87 and is as full of fire as ever, will have heard this story. What Sir Winston realized instantly that day in Jamieson was something others have often realized since: she's a woman of heart and mind, as Joni Mitchell might say.
It would take forever to list all of Jamieson's various causes and accomplishments over the years but here's a short list. She was the sergeant sent over to France with the first group of 68 women, "The Ladies in Waiting" who landed after D-Day to take over fighter operation rooms.
She was first female commodore of the Mississauga Canoe Club and first female commodore in North America; founder of the Oakville Canoe Club; first female canoeing official at an Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976; a driving force behind the Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners long-time fight to increase frozen benefits to expatriates (Jamieson gets a pension of about $110 a month for her six years of service);
and a stalwart supporter and lobbyist for the memorial to the women of the Allied Forces which finally became a reality this past summer in London, England. Unfortunately, Jamieson's health didn't allow her to see the culmination of her years of effort.
Undoubtedly her greatest success, however, was in a pitched battle with her former employer, Johns-Manville Corp., which used to have a Port Credit plant.
When the American-based firm went out of business here, Jamieson thought it shorted employees in its pension settlement plan. She organized employees and launched a legal battle.
There was a lengthy hearing in Edmonton. Jamieson managed to get financial support from the government to have every province in Canada separately represented at the hearing. Johns-Manville sent two lawyers form the States. She won the case and the large settlements improved the lives of hundreds of ex-Johns-Manville employees.
She's an institution at Fairwind Public School where she is the guest of honour each Remembrance Day and she's been on CFRB talk shows and Rogers Television forums almost as often as the mayor, whom she nominated for the Order of Canada she recently received.
And, oh yeah, Peter Mansbridge is her nephew and she sometimes calls him up and tells him about stories the CBC should be covering.
Her next crusade will be about recognition for the 480,000 war brides who came to Canada, many of whose husbands have passed on. She's already written to Ottawa to ask for a postage stamp in their honour and she's working on changing pension policy to benefit them.
Quite a woman our Dorothy. Quite a woman.

Sports is the toy department of life, as former Globe and Mail sports columnist Dick Beddoes used to regularly remark.
Inevitably, however, real life intervenes.
It did so cruelly this week when news came that the son of Tony Dungy, the classy coach of the Indianapolis Colts, had died suddenly at age 18.
Dungy is different than most NFL coaches. He doesn’t yell at players or berate them for mistakes. He is stoic on the sidelines, rarely betraying any emotion if his team is doing poorly and rarely celebrating wildly when they do well.
His young sons were often on the sidelines with his team. In truth, he had a team full of sons. The players who play for him obviously respect him greatly as a person, something that’s not easy in the adversarial mire of professional sports.
If the measure of a man is the esteem in which he is held by those who work with him and who know him well, then Tony Dungy is someone special.
Mike Alstott, the veteran fullback who played for Dungy in Tampa Bay where he forged a team that won a Super Bowl, said of James Dungy, “He grew up around here. We loved Coach and his family and everything he did for this organization and this community. I can’t imagine what he’s going through. It’s a tough deal. There’s no words to describe it. I’m a father of three and I can’t imagine getting a phone call or being told that.”
The loss of a child is burden enough, but it appears that James Dungy may have taken his own life.
One can only imagine the torment that the Dungys must be going through, trying to explain the inexplicable.
One’s heart goes out to them, knowing that there can be no comfort.
Despite the tragedy thrust upon him, I know one thing: though his heart is as heavy as it has ever been, Tony Dungy will handle this with the same dignity that characterizes his every other action.
He is a man of strong faith and he will need every ounce of it to carry on.
There are no words to pacify this pain.

Donor fatigue? What donor fatigue?
After a year of unmitigated disasters from tsunamis to earthquakes to hurricanes, we've been hearing an awful lot about how people are fed up with giving to charitable causes.
What people are fed up with is being interrupted constantly at home at all hours by telephone calls from long-winded telemarketers who prey on our feelings of guilt. Don't confuse that with a drop in people's concern for others.
Like everything else, there's a right way and a wrong way to solicit donations.
World Vision, Canada's largest private relief agency, has found one great method of combining conscience and Christmas. Their gift catalogue, which allows you to buy a rooster and two hens to feed a family or to buy a deep well that can supply clean water to a village, is a cornucopia of potential gifts for those in your life who are tough to buy for or who would appreciate being reminded of the caring message of Christmas.
The catalogue started slowly but has been gaining momentum quickly, according to Emmanuel Isch, the Erin Mills resident who is director of emergency response and disaster mitigation for the Mississauga-based charity.
"Last year we were at about $6 million in gifts and it looks like we're up about 30 per cent," Isch said this morning. "I think we're going to go past the $7 million figure. Before Christmas I was told we were getting up to 2,000 calls a day, so people are becoming more conscious of it."
He attributes the increase to several factors: the ability of people to see coverage of a calamity in the media and respond instantly online, increased media coverage of the catalogue itself and a general growth in disposable income among North Americans.
When he was in Niger last summer, Isch was struck by the number of villages that now have clinics and personnel but no medical supplies. For $100, in the name of a friend or a loved one, you can supply a clinic or immunize a whole community of children.
More than one parent has used the World Vision catalogue as an object lesson to explain the intent of the season.
"I feel very positive about what's happening," said Isch. "Let's hope it's a trend that's here to stay."
Christmas may be over but the gifts would work just as well as birthday presents all through the year.

Twenty years doesn’t seem like a long time in the life of a village that’s nearly 170 years old.
But, if it’s the last 20 years and you’re talking about historic Meadowvale Village, the past two decades have seen a transformation that is truly staggering.
That was evident Wednesday morning when Craig Wilson, who spent his youth in what is now the heritage district of Meadowvale Village, popped the lid on a plexiglass time capsule that was buried on a sunny June day in 1986 on the occasion of the village’s 150th birthday celebration.
The time capsule was originally supposed to come out of its resting place under a large rock near the community hall for the 200th anniversary of the village's founding.
Wilson, an avid photographer who took most of the slides and photos that were buried in the time capsule, knew that the home-made version that was used wasn’t likely to last until its designated unearthing.
In the basement of the Anchorage, where the capsule was opened with the assistance of Mississauga Museums Collections and Exhibitors’ Co-ordinator Stephanie Meeuwse, Wilson’s concerns were immediately confirmed by the obvious odour that emanated from the box. There was mould on the secondary plan for Meadowvale Village and the heritage district conservation plan, among other items, and the seal had been broken and a little water was standing in one corner of the box.
Later, in the upstairs tea room of the Anchorage, Wilson and Gord Handley, who grew up together in the village, pored over the contents of the box. Handley is a professional photographer who took shots of the time capsule opening.
Wilson had documented the ownership of every single lot in the village in 1986 and taken a photo of each.
“That’s the blacksmith shop,” he said leafing slowly through the photo album.
“We used to go down on our bikes and the blacksmith would weld things up for nothing for us,” recalled the Mississauga firefighter.
“Remember this little cottage. The guy would come out every morning with two buckets and walk down to the Credit River and fill them up.”
Handley recalled that, “it was a community where everyone knew everyone else. Christmas carollers would come to your house and sing songs. It was right out of the movies.”
The items that stopped Wilson and Handley dead in their tracks were two aerial photos of the village. There it sits, in splendid isolation, a string of homes that stretches one lot deep along Derry Rd. and Second Line West, with a few more offshoot streets north of Derry.
Surrounding it is....nothing, just woodlots, the river and open fields.
“Look at that," said Wilson in amazement. “That was just 20 years ago.”
Now the heritage district is ringed with colourless “lifestyle communities” that have encroached right up to its edges.
Wilson would like to redocument today’s Meadowvale Village and include the appropriate material from the 1986 box and perhaps create a new, archivally-correct time capsule to be opened in 2036, when he will be 73 years old.
Mississauga has lost so many of its villages: Palestine, Sheridan, Summerville, Frogmore, Hanlan etc. etc. that Meadowvale now stands as a metaphor for all of them.
Anything we can do to celebrate and document its survival is to be cherished.