Window on Westmount Web
Back to Back to Menu Best to use your Browser's 'BACK' key
March 7, 1996
THE GREAT WHITE BEAR AND THE LITTLE BROWN SLUG
In common with stock market players, I'm not bullish on bears. And that includes polar bears who gain currency. Much has been made lately of the unplanned divisibility of the new $2 coin, with those tales of bears who lost their bear rings. But the real question is: do we want yet another clunky coin in our pocket or purse?
The government will save $12.5 million a year by shredding $2 bills and making metallic bears. That's less than 50c per Canadian. Now, I'm all for saving money, but what about the offsetting inconvenience? I find it irritating enough to carry around the product of the last bit of government cost-cutting when they introduced the loony in 1987. Now I'm going to feel like an ambulatory slot machine. Or Mr Bojangles. I liked the $1 and $2 bills - they were feather-light, they were silent, and they did not alter the drape of my trousers. I think I'd pay a buck a year to get them back.
Or maybe the way to save weight is to make all $2 coins detachable: the inner bear could be worth $1 and the outer ring another $1. People who wrapped them at the bank would be known as holey rollers.
If our government is so hell-bent on saving a mint, why don't they rid us of the tiresome cent? That would save them $20-25 million a year. Inflation is particularly corrosive to copper. It's robbed the cent of any real value. The penny is a relic from the days when it was worth something: in the 40s, it had the purchasing power of today's dime. In the last century, it was the equivalent of today's quarter. Imagine back then if one had suggested minting a coin worth one twenty-fifth of a cent!
So our cents sit there uselessly in jars and boxes across the country. There are more people out there rolling pennies than joints.
Pennies are the silt in our monetary system that never gets sluiced out. Yet we keep on producing them as if they had some value. In fact, it costs more to mint them than they are worth. Britain got rid of the farthing in 1961. Today's cent is worth less than a farthing was worth then.
Last weekend, we went to the cinema. The ticket was $4.99. I purposely left the two cents on the counter to show my contempt for such inane pricing and for the worthlessness of the coin. If we got rid of pennies, we would eliminate such prices, prices that do not even dupe the most rustic yokel. How would it work? Easy. $4.98 would be rounded off to $5.00 and $4.77 to $4.95. No overall gain and no overall loss.
While I'm in this Andy Rooney mode, I would like to know why so many of our coins have animals on them: loons, bears, caribou, beavers. It's a monetary menagerie. I do, however, like the idea of resurrecting such antique names as doubloon for our new coin. But why not call them pieces of eight (as in eight quarters)? I also like the sound of the Canadian crown (half-crown in Newfoundland, of course). Closer to home, we could call it the Quebec sovereign.
BOCHARD: FRONT AND CENTAUR Mar 14
Tyler to the right of them, Bantey to the left of them, Bouchard in front of them Volleyed and thundered; Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to say "good-bye!": Into the Centaur Theatre Went the Four Hundred.M. Bouchard made a theatrical Premier this Monday when he addressed some 400 Anglos at the Centaur. I think he decided to talk to us while it was still possible to find 400 Anglos in Quebec.
Are we quislings, those of us who went to hear him speak? Have we sold our English-speaking souls by openly fraternizing with the enemy, even if it was in an Anglo sanctuary? Well, I don't see things in those terms: Bouchard is not "the enemy". He represents what a good number of Quebecers think. If he were the enemy, so are millions of people we share this province with. I don't agree with them, but I'll talk with them.
I had much more of a problem in establishing a dialogue with Parizeau. For Bouchard, separation is a means to an end; for Parizeau, it was an end in itself. Parizeau's obsession with only a "pure" solution made any discussion with federalists impossible. But I think Bouchard sees the end not to be separation, but the preservation of French language and culture in North America. Separation he sees as a means to that end. Our job is to convince him and his supporters that there are other ways to achieve their goal.
Bouchard, with his saturnine demeanour and portentous phrasing goes down very well with many francophones. He strikes a chord. But most Anglos find his manner somewhat disturbing, even threatening. The other night, while he did not charm nor convince his audience, he did come across as being a little more human.
Most of what passes for political debate in this country is nothing more than posturing. So on Federal budget night we were once again treated to interviews with the opposition who not surprisingly find the whole budget a load of codswallop, and with Bob White ranting about "job cremation".
But here in Quebec the debate between federalist and separatist politicians is not a bunch of empty words. We are playing for keeps. So when the leader of the separatist party wants to open up lines of communication, I didn't get diplomatic flu.
The gauntlet is thrown down. Now will we see the real charge of the Bloke Brigade?
CONCENTRATING FIRE POWER Mar 21
"Who are you?" yelled a women in the crowd on seeing us drive by atop a Westmount fire truck in the Saint Patrick's parade. Decked out in top hat, chain of office, and various green things stuck on my coat, I didn't have any sort of identification about my person. I shouted back to her who I was and was rewarded with a smile - one of thousands of smiles that lit up the faces of people lining the parade route.
All of us, wan and winter-weary, look to St Pat's parade as Montreal's rite of spring. And such a non-political event.
But it takes a politician to smell out a trace of politics even in a parade. The trace took the form of the unusual and interminably long line of fire vehicles from the city of Montreal. It was a bit like tanks parading before the Soviet people. This red parade was flexing firefighter muscle.
Let me explain.
Last week, I got a call from Le Journal de Montr‚al, asking what I thought of the idea of the MUC taking over all the fire brigades on the island. I said I didn't need to consult the mayors: it made no sense. With the MUC police finally moving in the other direction by decentralising to get closer to neighbourhoods, who would argue for centralising fire services? Well, Rom‚o No‰l, that's who. He is the director of Montreal's fire department, and he says we suburbs will have no choice but to allow integration of our fire departments in order to get better fire protection and - get this - "save money". Imagine. Montreal telling us that combining with them will save us money! It would save them money, that's for sure.
The troubling thing in all this is that when I confronted the minister for the Montreal region - Serge Menard - with the fact he was cited as being favourable to merging fire departments, he did not deny it.
Centralizing municipal fire services is an idea whose time has gone. Long gone. M. No‰l had to reach back to 1972 to find a report that recommended the MUC take over fire services. Both the Pichette Report on Greater Montreal (1993) and the Golden Report on Greater Toronto (1996) recommend that fire services stay with individual cities.
Bourque, who keeps a tight rein on even his councillors, surprisingly let his chief speak publicly about this subject. City employees should never pronounce on policy yet to be even discussed by their elected officials.
If we centralized fire services under the MUC, we would be half-way to total amalgamation of all the cities on the island, having lost our police forces in 1972. This is assimilation by stages. And we know Quebec is in favour of mergers: the Minister of Municipal Affairs will, in a couple of weeks, reveal a list of MUC cities that they think should be merged.
The last thing we want is to merge anything, let alone merge our fire brigade with the overstaffed Montreal fire department. Besides, I need a nice red Westmount truck to ride on for St Paddy's Parade.
A GUN CONTROL SUCCESS STORY Mar 20
Late last year, the MUC moved out of their digs in Complexe Desjardins - that huge concrete pile pullulating with provincial bureaucrats - to set up shop in Les Cours Mont-Royal. It was a bit of a culture shock. MUC employees now rub shoulders in elevators and restaurants with people who actually work in the private sector, some of whom even speak English!
Not only did this move result in a smaller space and much lower rent, but Vera Danyluk has seen to it that the MUC's new offices are the very model of government restraint. The furnishings (mostly recycled) and decor are subdued, almost severe.
We executive committee members meet in a virtual room; that is, it is part of a multipurpose area delineated by moveable partitions. The boardroom table is ad hoc, being assembled together from a stable of smaller tables. The moveable walls give a sense of impermanency, and, along with the low-ceilinged gyprocked offices, they contrast with the Italianate exterior that was the Mount Royal Hotel. This inside/outside stylistic shock is often found in gutted buildings of this type. Last week, this multipurpose area was used to host a reception for those who helped in getting Bill C-68 passed - the bill on gun control. Allan Rock, the federal minister of Justice, was there. But the real stars were Wendy Cukier and Heidi Rathjen who, unremittingly since 1990, have campaigned for meaningful gun control legislation. Two mothers of victims of the Polytechnique massacre spoke of their gratitude to Wendy and Heidi. When Mrs Edward talked, and her voice faltered for a second, the lump in my throat did not come from scoffing an hors-d'oeuvre.
Of the few dozen in the room, I was the least deserving to be there: all I did for the cause was write a couple of columns in THE EXAMINER, get a Council resolution passed, and send letters to an assortment of senators. That evening, Rock came in for totally deserved praise; Wendy and Heidi thanked him for having the guts to tell a crowd of 12,000 gun owners to their faces that they would have to henceforth register their guns. Rock returned fire. He said he'd rather confront gun-owners than have to go back to Wendy and Heidi and face them. But, you know, what made these two so successful was their quiet confidence, their reliance on carefully-researched facts, and their distaste for ad hominem arguments. And even their Christmas cards were personalized. It all worked. This was not just another cocktail. This was not just another series of speeches. This was a celebration of the fact that, through the selfless efforts and determination of people like Wendy Cukier, Heidi Rathjen, and Allan Rock, there is always a chance of making this place just a little better, or stopping it from getting just a little worse.
These intrepid three have managed to translate the wishes of most Canadians - especially Quebecers - into reality. We owe them a lot.
On Gun control
Previous page
May96 page
david.nicholson's
© 1997 by David T. Nicholson
Please phone (514)934-0023 for a human
or e-mail us your thoughts.