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Time to live the dream...for a little while at least

As loathe as I am to play Canada's favourite game, Blame the Americans, I have to admit I'm feeling that way this week.
opinion_maxedout1

As loathe as I am to play Canada's favourite game, Blame the Americans, I have to admit I'm feeling that way this week. Were it not for a guest from south of the border, I'd be breathing fire and tossin' lightning bolts at the Cavalcade of Insults issuing forth almost daily from the Conservative caucus in Ottawa.

I mean, it's not enough to be labelled a traitorous, radical, terrorist, child pornographer by a government claiming a grasp of basic democratic principles and support for the rule of law. No, now I have to live in a place where, either directly or through their more rabid supporters and/or staffers, the majority (sic) government actively tries to disenfranchise voters they fear may vote for someone else.

The robocall brouhaha — there's two words screaming to be linked — isn't just a refinement of the Conservatives' playlist of dirty tricks. It isn't a big brother, or is that Big Brother, of their strategy of spreading rumours that incumbents from other parties aren't going to run in the next election or calling everyone who disagrees with their plan to mimic the U.S. prison society soft on crime. It's an all-out frontal assault on the democratic process. It's denying the vote to targeted segments of society, disenfranchising citizens, stripping them of the most basic of rights and removing their voice. It's despicable. It's totalitarian. It's unCanadian. And anyone who dismisses it as somehow equivalent to releasing public records regarding Darth Toews' divorce is sadly delusional.

But I'm not going there.

And I'm not going south of the border where politics have eroded to the point that I don't know whether to laugh or simply send my passport back with a nice, "Thanks, but no thanks," letter. Having watched the parade of whackos and dilettantes ascend the race for Republican frontrunner only to be revealed for the clowns and fools they were, the party of Lincoln is left with the Three Stooges, Mitt, Ricky and Newt. One doesn't believe in anything unless polls tells him he should; one believes the world should revert to Old Testament values so severe it makes the ayatollah's of Iran seem like liberal jokesters; one... well, one is just scary as hell.

But I'm not going there either.

I'm not going to scratch my head, wondering how Transport Canada reached the conclusion it "has no regulatory concerns" with the proposed marine operations needed to support Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline's terminus at Kitamaat. Perhaps it came to that conclusion because it based its findings solely on a review of Enbridge's studies and promises, as opposed to doing a review on its own. But I'm wondering, would Enbridge try to show the plan in anything other than an unbiased light? Naw, can't imagine.

Could it be "regulatory concerns" have more to do with adequately processing paperwork than, say, making sure one of the 250 oil tankers that transit the narrow, often storm-tossed channels each year doesn't end up spilling its guts into the fishing grounds it's passing through?

Screw it... for this week.

Fact is, I blame an American for my indifference, apathy and overall sense of wellbeing. Sadly, I don't even know who he is. He popped into where I was working over the weekend. It wasn't his first time in Whistler and probably won't be his last. He lives somewhere in Michigan and the only thing I know about him is he subscribes to Pique. It kinda boggles my mind that someone in Michigan subscribes to Pique, but I'm glad he does. Pique is his umbilical to Whistler, a link to a place he must feel is a home away from home, or at least a darned nice place to vacation.

"Ya know," he said, "I love reading the Pique and I read you all the time. And as much as I enjoy it, I can't believe what you guys think of as problems. We should have such problems."

Okay, point taken. Michigan is a big state; the Upper Peninsula is about as remote a place as you can find east of the Mississippi and west of the northern forests of Maine. But wherever you live in Michigan, you can't escape the feeling you're dancing on the event horizon of the state's black hole — Detroit.

Detroit, once upon a time, was the U.S. poster child for American manufacturing might and the centre of the automobile universe. Detroit today has the highest poverty rate of any big city in the country. Over one-third, 37.6 per cent, of its population live in poverty, more than twice the national rate. The median income in Detroit — half above, half below — is just $28,357. That's only 55 per cent of the median household income for the U.S. as a whole.

Things are tough in Detroit. How tough? The people who run the city sent layoff notices to every teacher in the public school system last year and announced they would close half the schools. Which might make sense in a city with somewhere around 90,000 abandoned or vacant homes. The mayor has a plan to demolish 10,000 of those; opponents refer to it as the tip of the iceberg strategy.

Across the U.S., one in every 611 homes was in foreclosure last year. In Michigan, one in every 417. And they were doing pretty well compared to the foreclosure capital of the country, Nevada, where one out of every 115 homes were under the gavel. Considering foreclosure is just a surrogate metric for crushing debt, unemployment and general misery, coupled with actually living in a place where one of the Three Stooges might be the next president, I had to concede the point.

Somehow the wretched excesses of the Harpocrites, pay parking, the asphalt plant and a sideways housing market having trouble moving multi-million dollar homes just doesn't measure up on the ol' pain-o-meter.

And in a town with waist-deep fresh snow, refreshingly cold temperatures, a couple of days of sunshine here and there, clean air, clean water and an overall Huck Finn lifestyle, I just can't get it up to complain about anything this week.

The Short Skirt Theatre Company just pulled off three sold-out nights at Millennium Place — thank you Whistler — and I finally have my Monday and Wednesday evenings back for the first time in three months. I'm going skiing for most of the rest of the week, pretending I'm a tourist in Whistler and planning on having the time of my life.

Sometimes I just have to push myself back from the groaning board of life's frustrations, put on some blinders, plug some music into my ears, let someone else do the cooking and cleaning up and remind myself how undeniably freakin' lucky I am to be living here, livin' the dream. There's plenty of time next week to tilt at windmills.

And to think it's all some American's fault. Thanks, buddy.