CKNW Editorial
for July 29, 1999

At last count, three Cubans have defected to Canada at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg. We will, I assume, hear from Mr John Reynolds, MP, the senior justice critic for the Reform Party that these people are all criminals and should be immediately sent home. The I’m-not-a-bigot-but crowd will no doubt be bringing great pressure on the government to put these people - who took advantage of the hospitality of the Cuban government in paying their way to Canada and then, uninvited decided to stay – on the next banana boat to Havana. I presume we will hear from the daily papers that these are “bogus” refugees. Or is it different when it’s 3 not 123 … and when it’s from a Caribbean Communist repression not an Asian one … and when the people involved are sort of white … well, maybe not completely white but whit-er. Just thought I’d ask.

 It has been suggested that the capital of Canada be moved from Ottawa to Winnipeg and I ask, why not?

When Ottawa was chosen as the capital of the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada it made a lot of sense. It was, after all, on the border of the two provinces and would obviously become a bilingual place which looked and sounded like a happy combination of the two. This is no longer the case. It would be hard to find a city in Canada less representative of the nation. Itis still bilingual where the rest of the country is not so in practice. It's location has meant that a disproportionate number of Central Canadians run the country - it is a city where people spend their waking hours drinking their own bath water and where the national press spends most of its time schmoozing with the high and the mighty lapping up martinis and canapes to dull whatever reportorial skills they once possessed.

Winnipeg now offers what Ottawa did to the United Provinces. It is in the geographic center of the country and though not bilingual, nearby St Boniface is. The winter, though dreadful, is no worse than Ottawa's – come to think about it, their summers are no worse than Ottawa's either. It would give people in the outer regions of Canada the feeling that the country was no longer being run by a small clique run out of exclusive restaurants in Hull Quebec. In fact, moving the capital, just because of the enormous headaches it would cause, would keep bureaucrats so busy sorting themselves and their departments out that they would have little time to meddle in ordinary Canadians' affairs. A hell of a good idea.

But while we're at it, let's move the capital of B.C. out of Victoria.

Victoria, a lovely place physically, is where the province gets its enema in all other respects. There can scarcely be a city less typical of British Columbia than Victoria where people who have never been in England in their lives speak with an English accent, patiently waiting for the season when the Americans arrive to be fleeced. Behind the tweed curtain in Oak Bay the gentle folk are still squawking that their vote was taken away because they wouldn't give up their Britishness long enough to become Canadian citizens. The place, like Ottawa, is prohibitively expensive to get to and dull as dishwater when you do. It's a place where length of time lived in Victoria counts for nothing unless your family has been there at least three generations.

Where to go?

Kamloops of course, the most broadly representative of all British Columbia cities. There is every imaginable culture and there is a good mix of the urban and the rural. Here is a city which since party politics came to BC in 1908 has always returned a government member.

The climate is perfect. Hot and dry in the summer, it's winters, while cold and sharp, only last three months. Kamloops is central and as cheap to reach by plane as Victoria. Moreover you can drive there in three hours which is no longer than it takes to get to Victoria by car - assuming no ferry waits in which case Kamloops is much quicker to get to. Moreover, Kanloops was around long before Victoria was. Kamloops people, being the tough, independent sort they are, would be impossible to convert into the sort of snots that habituate most capitals and would stay the stouthearted independent folks that they are for generations to come. In fact I think they're bureaucrat proof. The kind ofatmosphere Kamloops provides makes it almost impossible to stay anally retentive too long, the natural condition of the bureaucracy. Most important of all, you can still get decent fly fishing within a few minutes of the city center.

So I say let's move the capital from a place no one can get at and is more like a colonial outpost in the days of the British Raj to a place where the people are typical British Columbians and where both the population and the climate are civilized. Kamloops for capital I say, and the sooner the better.