Random Access

What do you plan to be doing on your 85th birthday?
I was thinking, maybe, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, etc. etc.
Someone we know, who celebrated her 85th yesterday, flew half-way around the world to India, held a series of meetings with business officials on behalf of the delegation of the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance she is leading, and then "danced and clapped late into the evening," according to a Toronto Star report.
And, I'll bet she ate at least a small piece of the five birthday cakes she was presented with, just to be polite.
When you work at The Mississauga News, you have to account for the Hazel factor at just about every event you attend.
If you arrive to cover a story in which our mayor is involved, people immediately start to gush. The official greeting to the mayor is "Welcome Madame Mayor" but the official greeting to the hangers-on from the fourth estate is: "Isn't she amazing?"
With practice, you can learn not to roll your eyes in these circumstances, although I have personally seen from the shocked look on the faces of event hosts, that I may not have entirely mastered this art.
Reporters like to see themselves as hard-bitten, jaundiced, slightly aloof figures who tread their way through reams of public relations puffery to weed out the truth that will change lives.
In fact, they are usually recording secretaries who regurgitate the press releases they are handed, but that doesn't stop them from trying to pretend to be Cary Grant in The Front Page.
No self-respecting reporter wants to be caught writing anything that could be construed as cheering a little old lady who is two decades past retirement age. Especially when they know some headline writer with limited imagination is going to call her "Mississauga's Valentine."
Nevertheless, a good reporter must eventually face the facts.
And, the fact is, Hazel is amazing.
The very thought of flying half-way around the world stymies me. The idea that I could so something other than snore for the first few hours after I arrived is out of the question.
You can bet that Hazel spent the flight working on a pile of files that her staff prepared for her. Then she got off the plane and went to a series of meetings.
From talking to her staff over the years, I know that Mayor McCallion's energy and her indominable will, which seem to go hand-in-hand, amaze them, too. She wears them out. They can't keep up. She is her own Energizer Bunny.
Just by coincidence, today's thought du jour in The Globe and Mail is a quote from Mark Twain that goes like this: "The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy, without the chance. The last half consists of the chance without the capacity."
And then there's Hazel.