Vancouver Courier
for March 4, 1998

The trouble with this business of political comment is it's either feast or famine. Either nothing twitches my keyboard or there's plenty for three columns. Today is a three column day - in one of course.

I interviewed the four candidates for parliament in the by election to be held March 30. All decent chaps who each gave a two minute spiel about the great things they were going to accomplish in Ottawa.

Lou Sekora, the colourful and popular mayor of Port Coquitlam, was especially outspoken when I asked him whether, as a potential member of the Liberal caucus, he would be just another lickspittle like the six we have. (The NDP fellow thought that "lickspittle" was too strong and that "toady" would be more appropriate. I suggested that we compromise "with toadying lickspittle".)

Lou's a wonderful guy. But he has the dust in his eyes. He thinks he'll go back to Ottawa (if elected and that's no sure thing) and raise hell. He told of his legendary outspokenness and his passion for issues. And his record in this area is unimpeachable.

But I still vividly recall the interview I did with Hedy Fry in 1993 before she was elected. Same stuff. She'd be outspoken and passionate. Bet on it.

Well we've seen, alas, the good doctor turn from a tigress into a tabby cat with her claws pulled. Not one word of criticism of her government in five years. Why would Lou be any different?

He won't. Nor will any of the other candidates if they win. Preston Manning swings the hatchet of party discipline just as viciously as does Chretien.

When he faces his caucus, the Prime Minister is like a nuclear power up against kids with rubber capped arrows. It's strictly no contest.

P.S. Glen Clark changed his cabinet a couple of weeks ago. In the next two days there were major announcements in Education and Finance.

And who made them? The Minister of Education and the Minister of Finance?

You know the answer - Premier Clark too is a one man nuclear weapon.

***

Last week the top pop physicist of the world, Stephen Hawking, announced that he had the answer. The whole shebang started with an object the size of a pea which then exploded into a universe we've never yet found the limits of. That should put paid to Christianity which alleges that God created the universe.

I am left with a couple of niggling thoughts.

Doesn't that explosion of a pea into a universe wherein earth is but a grain of sand as against the Rocky Mountains sound an awful lot like a miracle?

And who, pray tell, made that pea?

***

There's a hue and cry about buskers on the streets of Vancouver.

We must licence them we're told. They must be controlled and, if necessary, run out of town. Horrifying tales of ghastly noise bloated into an earth shattering cacophony by amplifiers are told our leaders who are urged to act before it's too late. Why there are even tales of singers who only know one song and Harmonica players who can only play, badly, one tune. It makes all other problems - lousy government, lousier economy, AIDS and cocaine and a deteriorating country - pale into insignificance!

What's got into us?

Of course the sound can sometimes be hard on the ears - at least it is on somebody's ears. So, move on. Life and commerce press on. And isn't this, when you think on it, a little like the Parti Quebecois banning Chinese language on a Chinese restaurant? Be normal, dammit! Who wants a feisty, sometimes noisy, always fascinating city?

Singers and players have been with us through the ages. Wandering minstrels in one form or other have been part of civilization since time began. Shakespeare is full of strolling players. Jazz bands made New Orleans. Pipe bands, the best of them all, made just not Scotland, but the rest of the English speaking world famous. A piper led the Scotties ashore in the first wave on D-Day and we would ban his successor from the corner of Georgia and Granville.

London, the greatest city of the world, has buskers all over the place. They're at the bottom of the escalators in the tube stations playing their saxes and guitars right under the sign which says "NO BUSKERS - 125 POUND PENALTY."

Now it's true that no one wants a wandering minstrel stationed on the front lawn and we need to ensure that there is a reasonable sound restriction. But to licence and have a "free area". Can you imagine what a howl would come when dozens of performers on everything from a kazoo to a comb with tissue paper competed for attention in a small licence free area?

Stand back from this one, ladies and gentlemen of the council. Let this wonderful city of ours continue its growth from a sleepy Anglo-Saxon village into a great city unimpeded by stuffed shirts.