Flashy Coupe De Ville

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By Jim Hagarty
I went for my afternoon coffee and was remarking to myself that I hadn’t randomly seen a classic car all weekend. Then turned the corner and this beautiful 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville was sitting there. This car was of the era when North American automobiles took up a lot of real estate when they pulled into parking lots. In fact, after the invasion of Japanese and then South Korean small cars changed the whole industry, parking lot painters started putting their lines closer together than they had in the past.

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Rhinos Forever!

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By Jim Hagarty

I am following the U.S. presidential election with great interest but the experience has left me with a deep feeling of sadness for the American voter.

Essential, the Republic is a two-party state, newcomers not welcome. That is such a shame as choice is the essence of a great democracy.

In Canada, we have five parties regularly represented in the federal parliament although our presidents (prime ministers) have always only come from the two main groups, as in the U.S.

Nevertheless, we have real choice. Nevertheless it hurts me to know that one of the best parties contesting our elections will probably never get to run the country.

I speak, of course, of the Rhinoceros Party, a party so ahead of its time that its messages are like a series of dog whistles that only the truly advanced human mind can hear and accept.

Fortunately, I have such a mind.

In our national election last year, I voted for the Rhinoceros party, and am proud of my choice. Let me tell you why.

First off, unlike the other parties, they have a 1,000-year plan and I admire people who look ahead. And they have history on their side. They have been around since 1963 when John F. Kennedy was still president. In fact, they have been around almost 30 years longer than former prime minister Stephen Harper’s so-called Conservatives.

Rhinoceronians have smart, sensible ideas. If elected, they will move Canada’s capital from Ottawa to Kapuskasing, Ontario, because it is the geographical centre point of the nation.

They will privatize Canada’s armed forces and nationalize coffee restaurant chain Tim Hortons.

They lean Marxist-Lennonist in their approach (Groucho Marx and John Lennon).

Some members of the party favour the return of capital punishment with one leader saying, “If it was good enough for my grandfather, it’s good enough for me.”

One ambitious plan the party has had was to tow Antarctica to the Arctic Circle. This would give Canada a monopoly on cold and a big advantage if a Cold War ever breaks out again.

During an election campaign in 1984, the party planned to eliminate big businesses and allow only small businesses which employ less than one worker.

Other smart ideas were to repeal the law of gravity, lower the boiling point of water, make Illiteracy the third official language of Canada and tear down the Rocky Mountains so Albertans could see the B.C. sunsets.

They would also abolish the environment because it takes up too much space and is too hard to keep clean.

And they would end crime by abolishing all laws.

Other neat ideas include making the cross-country Trans Canada Highway a one-way road.

And if elected, they would count the Thousand Islands in Ontario to see if the Americans have stolen any.

These are my people.

The Slobber Cure

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A good way to punish a robber
Would be to cover him in dog slobber.
My dog would agree
To slobber for free.
He would turn the thief into a sobber.

The Climb

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By Jim Hagarty
Here’s me warbling away into my little digital recorder, a song made famous by Miley Cyrus and one I have always liked for its musicality and its message. I flailed away on my steel strong acoustic on this song when I recorded it a few years ago. These days I rarely use the steel string, having gone back to my first love, my classical guitar.

A Busy Bee

Taken by photographer and blogger Al Bossence (thebayfieldbunch.com) on Friday near his home in southern Ontario, Canada.

Whatever Works

By Jim Hagarty
2006

The long Victoria Day weekend in Canada is over and it’s back to work to get some rest.

From working.

Raking, sweeping, shovelling, bagging, trimming, cutting lawn, cleaning eavestroughs. Beating back nature in all its forms to maintain our carved-out little space in what used to be dense forest (which it will probably be again some day).

Fun, fun, fun.

Back to work just to read a Toronto Star story entitled, Do we work too much? Asking almost any Canadian that question is like asking whether or not a 12-pound robin is fat. Of course we work too much. A Readers Digest story this month says many of today’s employers, far from having to deal with absenteeism, are having to cope with the rising levels of “presenteeism” in their workforces. They can’t keep us away from our jobs.

The same story reported shocking statistics about how many of us don’t even take all the holidays that are allowed us by law and by our employers. Why is that?

The Star story compared us to European countries where people have a much different, maybe a healthier, attitude to work and vacations. Apparently the average Canadian worked 1,751 hours in 2004, about 300 hours – or 43 seven-hour days – more than the Dutch, Germans, French or Danes. We worked almost nine weeks more that year than they did.

Sweden apparently has the highest ratio of industrial robots in the world and a very high productivity rate as well, which allows for more leisure time. Leisure time spent leisurely.

Europeans have a much more relaxed attitude towards nudity in spas and at beaches and about alcohol and food. In Heidelberg, Germany, men and women relax in a bathhouse (where clothing is not allowed) built a hundred years ago on the ruins of a Roman bath. In Rome itself, at outdoor restaurants, people spend several hours in the evening enjoying seven-course meals and watching the world go by, especially tourists who can’t even slow down on holidays and who eat mainly to survive.

In rural parts of Ireland, whole families including the dog, wander down to the pub almost every night to enjoy the company of their friends, neighbours and relatives. Over here, someone who goes to the pub every night has a drinking problem, we believe. Those who sit in their basement drinking beer and watching hockey, even alone, don’t. The exact opposite is true over there. The ones who drink alone at home are the ones with the problem.

A large German industrial firm in Munich offers new employees six weeks of vacation in their first year. Over here, we can legally expect to get two and would have to stay with a firm almost a lifetime to work our way up to six and if we do deserve six weeks off a year, the company begins to look at us as a liability.

The irony is, all this hard labour, according to economists, doesn’t seem to be making our country any more productive than European states. And certainly doesn’t make us any happier, assuming it ever could, though I recently read a piece by a guy who stuck up for his workaholism and said he’s most alive when he’s working. True, maybe, till he falls over dead from working too hard.

The sad part is, we don’t switch from labour mode to relaxation gear as we pull into our driveways. In fact, that’s often when our hardest work begins. We spend summers yanking out every weed and fixing up the cottage.

The Toronto Star article asks: “Will Canadians or Americans ever start working less? The past 25 years suggest not. Between 1980 and 2000, European countries added, on average, six vacation days or statutory holidays, totalling 36 per year. Meanwhile…Canada actually dropped a day, to 24, while the United States lost two days, to 20 days off.”

Why are we moving in the opposite direction to the Europeans?

Is all this tension helping to create the aggressiveness that is leading us into wars around the world? And before the letters start pouring in, yes, Europe is not perfect. That’s why there are so many former Europeans living in North America.

This column, by the way, was written after everyone at the newspaper had left the office and gone home.

To cut their lawns.

Photographer on the Search

My son Chris in a photo taken a few years ago while he was out being creative with his camera. JH

The Lap Hunter

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

My dog searches all day for laps
On which he can lie for his naps.
But legs sometimes part
And dog, bless his heart,
Goes falling right through the gaps.

Beauty in Flight

By Jim Hagarty
My friend and fellow blogger Al Bossence (thebayfieldbunch.com) took this series of photos of a lone egret in flight at the Hullett Marsh in Huron County not far from his home in Bayfield, southern Ontario, Canada, this morning.