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The February of my discontent

By G.D Maxwell To most of the northern hemisphere, February is what the doldrums are to ocean sailing, an infuriating calm. A listless, motionless break in routine you know isn’t going to last but seems nonetheless endless in its banality.

By G.D Maxwell

To most of the northern hemisphere, February is what the doldrums are to ocean sailing, an infuriating calm. A listless, motionless break in routine you know isn’t going to last but seems nonetheless endless in its banality.

February is at least one reason I believe living in a ski resort makes more sense than living somewhere else. Most Februarys – the immediate edition excluded – are simply the best month of the year for hopelessly addicted ski bums. You can generally count on the best snow of the season from the beginning to the end of the month, relatively uncrowded slopes and, since cumulative stress fractures usually don’t put you on crutches until March, an overall vigour in both body and soul.

The only problem with February in paradise is it’s so damn short.

So why is this February so… so… so blah? Maybe it’s just me or maybe it’s just everyone I seem to run in to, but there seems to be an epidemic of malaise that’s settled in and, like that mutant cold/flu thing being passed around, just won’t go away.

Wednesday mornings, this malaise most notably manifests itself in struggling to find something, anything to fill this space. For the first time in nine years, it seems like a struggle. My mind wanders from one possible topic to another to another. None spark bright enough to catch fire.

There was, for example, a wonderful incident in Alberta last week. An Edmonton school bus driver, driven past the edge of distraction, kicked a 10-year-old boy off her school bus. The kid, hyper, spoiled and sorely in need of discipline apparently completely lacking at home, was bouncing off the walls, sticking his head out the windows and generally being a monstrous pain in the ass.

Fed up, the driver booted him and the kid ended up walking to his aunt’s house, some 40 blocks away. No harm; no foul. No bogeymen waiting in the bushes, no frozen bodies found in a snow pile. Just a long walk on a winter’s day and a rare chance for the little miscreant to reflect on that philosophical, chicken and egg conundrum of cause and effect.

So what happened? Did the kid learn a lesson? Having reflected on his behaviour, did he come to appreciate the concept of a time and place for everything and conclude riding the school bus was a time for pretty much just sitting in his seat?

Don’t be silly. The school bus driver got disciplined, moved to another route, black mark entered in permanent record. The kid? No doubt he learned, again, what a special, special person he is. How the world revolves around his immediate needs. How generally accepted rules of social discourse don’t really apply to special people like him. And how it’s okay for him to do whatever he wants whenever it pops into his tiny, self-centred brain.

The incident reminded me of one I was involved with a few seasons back. I noticed a little boy, also around 10, standing by one of the stone pillars of the building where I work at Whistler Creek. He’d assumed a position every male is immediately familiar with – he was peeing against the pillar… right in front of the doors leading in and out.

I approached calmly. A 10-year-old kid with his dick in his hand in full void is not someone you want to startle.

"Whatcha doin’?" I asked.

"What’s it look like?" he replied.

"Well," I said in the calmest, lowest but most threatening voice I could muster, "it looks like you’re peeing against my building. And if you don’t stop now, or if you ever do it again, I’m going to cut your wiener off."

He froze. Hurriedly putting things back where they belonged, he ran away… past the well-marked restroom 30 feet away and towards the other restroom just over the pedestrian bridge.

I spent the remaining two hours that afternoon waiting for his outraged parents to appear, demand my head on a platter, berate me for having the audacity to threaten their child and generally give the little monster a good lesson in how to act like a perfect ass. Alas, they never materialized… and the kid, though I see him from time to time, has never peed on the pillar again.

Try as I might though, I just can’t get too worked up about that story.

Or the noise General Rick Hillier’s been making. Rick’s Canada’s new chief of defence staff, which is one of the weirder titles any country’s top soldier lugs around. Rick’s new to the job and he brought his own broom with him. Rick wants Canada to beef up its military. Wow. There’s a shocking headline: Top Soldier Wants Stronger Military.

Rick wants Canada to be able to "fight and win" in combat situations. Most of the people in this country want the Canadian military to be capable of acting out the role of peacekeeper in lands devoid of peace. Other than that, most Canadians would be happy with a military strong enough to muster a good show in a Canada Day parade but not much else. Most people would also be really glad if the military, and their political puppetmasters, would stop pouring money down bottomless ratholes on things like leaky, second-hand submarines and combat aircraft.

Canadian military power is very nearly an oxymoron. But is that something to be ashamed of or proud of? Realistically, what exactly are the threats Canada faces – and is likely to face in the foreseeable future – that it would have a snowball’s chance of fending off militarily even if the country’s military power were three or four or 10 times stronger?

Canada’s sovereignty depends more on the good graces of its neighbour to the south and multilateral bodies like the UN than it ever will its military might. So maybe General Rick’s review of defence policy should boldly go where no country has gone before. Pare the military down to the level necessary to meet the country’s commitment to its mutual defence treaties and cast our fate onto the world stage.

Let’s be honest. The greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty isn’t foreign subs popping up through the Arctic ice. The greatest threat to the continuing existence of the country is Little Pauly Martin and his headlong rush to embrace asymmetrical federalism, placate every provincial premier’s crackpot dreams of glory and his total lack of a vision of what Canada is and what he ought to do now that he’s got the job he always dreamed of and, obviously, never planned for.

But it’s really hard to get worked up about that either.

Maybe just one more, okay, two more powder days this February. Please, Ullr.