X Marks the Spot

PHOTO: During my vacation to Vancouver in summer 2006, the nicest surprise was the water taxi. It's cute, it's convenient, and it offers up the best views you can possibly imagine.

That's right, I'm going west, and I'm staying there, at least until after the Olympics in 2010.

My last day at The Mississauga News is on Feb. 21, so if you want to send me gifts or money, you don't have much time. I leave Ontario on Feb. 25. I will then, once landing in Vancouver with a couple of duffel bags, have six days to buy a new car and a bed.

I report to duty at The Surrey Leader and The Peace Arch News on March 3, to begin another leg of this journey through life.

This move marks the end of nearly three years at The Mississauga News and five years with Metroland (two of those with my hometown paper, The Oakville Beaver), the company that owns The News and pretty much every other community newspaper in Southern Ontario.

Most of all, I'll miss Wajid Khan.

PHOTO: Prime Minister Stephen Harper shows Mississauga-Streetsville MP Wajid Khan where he'd like to ship him, and how.

It's Super Tuesday in the States, and the numbers are coming in. What do the numbers mean? I don't have a clue. This is too confusing.

What I do know is that it was a Super Saturday for our old friend Wajid Khan, the Mississauga-Streetsville MP.

After a few months in limbo, Khan was re-admitted to the Conservative Party this past weekend.

He pleaded guilty for overspending during the 2004 election campaign. He was fined $500. Breaking the rules does not disqualify one from being a Conservative MP, though, so Khan was taken back.

Now, back in blue, after being elected twice in the riding as a Liberal, he will take on Liberal candidate Bonnie Crombie.

It is a Liberal riding, as all Mississauga ridings appear to be nowadays, and, unless Harper has an inspired campaign or Dion falls on his face, Mississauga will likely stay red, regardless of who's running.

It's definitely worth noting that most voters vote based on the leaders or out of habit. Some vote based on the issues. And others, a very small percentage, vote based on local candidates.

However, when local candidates get big in the news, more people vote based on the local candidates. This was seen with shocking clarity during the provincial election, when a whole lot of people in Mississauga South voted against Progressive Conservative Tim Peterson because he had crossed the floor.

Peterson wasn't helped by the poor province-wide campaign by John Tory, but one person who helped Peterson door-knock called the canvassing experience "The Walk of Death." Apparently, nearly every single door complained about Tory's faith-based schools funding plan or Peterson's floor-crossing.

You can bet that a whole lot of people in Mississauga-Streetsville will be asking about Khan's floor-crossing and his 2004 over-spending.

I know it's pretty early to make predictions, but I'd guess that Liberal Leader Stephane Dion would have to be convicted of mass murder during the election campaign before the voters in Mississauga-Streetsville would turn away Crombie.

As one source, albeit a Liberal source, said to me, "I think the Conservatives have given up on Mississauga-Streetsville."

Remember back on Dec. 17, when I wrote at length about how snow storms are good for the soul, that they bring together neighbours and make friends of strangers.

I'm not exactly retracting that statement, because on Dec. 17 it was true, but now, on Feb. 7, after three snow storms in a week, my soul is reacting with less excitment.

After scraping my car out of an igloo this morning, I tried to pull out of my parking spot, which, because I'm in Toronto, was on the street. Unfortunately, I had been plowed in on the street side and the sidewalk side, and both ends of my car were stuck in snow banks. When I tried to pull out, my wheels spun, getting no grip whatsoever.

Fortunately, a neighbour was clearing off his car, and he took a break from doing so to push me out. But then he tried to move his car, and it was also stuck. So, after 15 minutes of shovelling and rocking his car back and forth, we finally got it out. It put me about 30 minutes behind schedule, and, unlike the December storm, it made us both nothing but angry.

We were not touched by our neighbourly helpfulness. It is, by storm number 264, expected. Now, we're just angry that there was a storm in the first place.

My flight out of this deep freeze on Feb. 25 cannot come early enough.

Until I board a plane for Vancouver, heading for a new job, and a new life. The day can't arrive soon enough. Starting a new job at a new newspaper will be difficult. Leaving behind everything I've known for the past 24 years will be difficult. But the weather, it won't be difficult at all.

Here, it is -15. There, it is +7. That's a 23-degree difference.

Also, I don't imagine, once I arrive in B.C., that I'll have to start my day as I started today, trapped in my one-way street after a man in a Volvo somehow launched the back end of his car onto a three-foot high snowbank while leaving the nose of his car in the middle of the road, blocking the way for everyone else.

It took four of us about 10 minutes to heave his car back onto the road, and though we all felt good about helping the guy out, we are all sick of having to push cars. I imagine I've pushed about 12 cars out of immobility and onto the road this winter. Twice, I've had to have my own car pushed by friendly neighbours.

This is no way to live. It's difficult to imagine pioneers stopping in what is now the GTA, surviving a winter, and then thinking, 'yeah, it's a good idea to stay here and live.' That was before climate change, too.

Premier Dalton McGuinty is coming to Mississauga tomorrow to fulfill an election promise to pump money into libraries.

He's bringing Education Minister Kathleen Wynne with him, as well as rookie Mississauga South MPP Charles Sousa.

It's bound to be an exciting morning.

PHOTO: Premier Dalton McGuinty stopped by Whiteoaks Public School this morning and stole books from children, pulled them right out of their little, innocent hands. "Video games are the way of the future," he told the children. "Quit wasting your time with this outdated technology." He then muttered, "Paper and ink - this is SO last century."

If Dalton could spend his time with only children, he'd be the most liked person in Ontario. That's what I learned this morning when I was at Whiteoaks Public School.

He has an unusual connection to children. It's as if they immediately understand him. They like when he's around. Same with our Mississauga South MPP Charles Sousa. He sat and had a convo with two kids at one of those miniature elementary school tables for about 20 minutes. They just talked and talked and had a grand old time.

But, the photo ops had to be stopped and the props - err, children - sat quietly and listened as their Premier told them they'd get money for new library staff.

Then he made fun of reporters, photographers and cameramen. A French reporter asked McGuinty something in French, and then McGuinty turned to the props and asked if any of them spoke French. None of them appeared to. Then McG said, "What would happen if I didn't speak French? I'd have to work on the other side of the cameras," he said. Yeah, very funny - if he had fewer skills, he wouldn't be able to be Premier, he'd have to settle for the job of a cameraman or reporter. Very funny, indeed, Premier.

***

The highlight (paraphrased):
Reporter - Do you want to wish Hazel McCallion a happy birthday?
McG - (10-second pause, thinking)
Reporter - Is that a no?
(Laughing from reporters and teachers)
McG - (Fearfully) No, no, of course I want to. Does anyone know how old she is?
Reporter - 87.
McG - Of course I want to wish the mayor the best on this remarkable day. I can only, in my wildest dreams, imagine having such political sex, success.
Reporter - (Laughing) Political sex?
McG - (Laughing slightly) Political success. Success.

***

Also, since we were all in a library, I decided to ask what the favourite books of the politicians were.

Kathleen Wynne said Pride and Prejudice, which, I'm told, is a work of genius. When I was forced to read it in high school, I remember it being about a bunch of whiny social climbers who wanted really really badly to get married.

Ruth Thompson, who has been a school board trustee since the big bang, said she liked biographies, westerns, and mysteries.

And Charles Sousa, our likeable rookie MPP (who, I learned after he did an interview with OMNI TV after the event, speaks Portuguese fluently) said he was in the middle of a great book, World Without End by Ken Follett. "It's escapist," Sousa said. "I read all the political ones and the business books; this one allows me to relax."

World Without End is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, and, according to Amazon.com, "This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas--about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race--the Black Death."

People often talk about how poorly our politicians conduct themselves, how Question Period in the House of Commons or the provincial Legislature is embarrassing to watch. What's remarkable is that they don't understand how insanely childish nearly everyone acts in such situations. All one needs to do to understand this is attend an open public meeting held by a politician.

Tonight, it was a showdown between Ward 2 Peel District School Board Trustee Don Stephens and the parents of students at Lorne Park Secondary School and its feeder schools.

Stephens wants to take the extended French program out of Lorne Park and put it in Clarkson Secondary. He wants to do this because enrolment at Clarkson is declining and is expected to continue to do so. Enrolment at Lorne Park is high, and is expected to remain high.

This, apparently, is enough to make men threaten one another in front of children.

Here's the situation. There's a group of people in a room who all agree that moving the program is a bad idea. One woman expresses a dissenting opinion from the group. A man demands, by yelling and aggressively pointing his finger at her, that she stand up and identify herself, even though no one else in the room, other than the trustee and a school board superintendent, had either stood up or identified themselves. Another man, standing close to the dissenting lady, tells the aggressive pointer that there's no need to point or speak to a lady that way. Aggressive Pointer says something inaudible to the lady's defender, then the lady's defender says to Aggressive Pointer, "You shut your mouth."

Wait. It's clear that these are adults, right? Because they are adults, talking about a program that 280 students in the school use.

Here's another priceless moment.

Stephens mentions that most of the people who live in the area, second and third generation Canadians, are not reproducing with much gusto. Some are only having one child. Some aren't having any. And the houses are too expensive for most new immigrants, who tend to have more children and less money, to move into the area. That's why enrolment is decreasing.

Then a lady says, very loudly, loudly enough to drown out all the other loud people speaking at the same time (though I admit I am paraphrasing here), "Are you crazy? I work in social services and new immigrants have four or five children." Then she added, and this is a direct quotation, "Holy schmoly."

That's right, she actually said, "Holy schmoly," which, I think, is the silliest thing one can say.

It was even sillier, of course, because Stephens, as another parent pointed out to the Holy Schmoly Lady, did qualify his statement by mentioning that he was talking about second and third generation Canadians, not new immigrants, which she would have known had she been listening.

Then, of course, there was the parent who worried about Clarkson's test scores, social demographics, and security detail. Because apparently Clarkson Secondary School is the next worse thing to a maximum security prison.

The main problem with this meeting, and with every open public meeting held by a politician, is that there were parents there who had creative and well thought out ideas about the situation, but they were largely forgotten when the next questioner, and many questioners, openly accused Stephens of being in the pockets of the rich folk in the Watercolours development, who would be allowed to send their kids to Lorne Park if his boundary change is passed.

Maybe Stephens is in those well-lined pockets. How am I to know? But to repeatedly accuse him of being so, based, it appeared, on envy and not evidence, was rude and slanderous.

I really just wish there were fewer hot heads at public meetings, that's all I wish. Maybe out west. Just two more work days until I head out west, hoping the PetShopBoys were correct when they sang that "things are peaceful there."

After two-and-a-half year at The Mississauga News (and nearly five years at Metroland Media Group), and after more than 1,200 stories, I am leaving this place for the last time at 6 p.m.

Good bye.