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An investigation into nothing

By G.D. Maxwell At first, I thought my pocket was being picked. The Remembrance Day crowd around the Cenotaph had been like crowds at so many Whistler gatherings.

By G.D. Maxwell

At first, I thought my pocket was being picked.

The Remembrance Day crowd around the Cenotaph had been like crowds at so many Whistler gatherings. There were the Usual Suspects, faces familiar from town meetings, public hearings, fundraisers, volunteer efforts. It’s dangerous to call them activists in an age when ownership of a word so broad has been co-opted by a group with interests so narrow but activists they are; they make this town work and work better.

The Politicians were there, mostly, some officially, others for the same solemn reasons the rest of us turned out. Children were there, spurred on by parents and teachers who believe well-rounded necessarily includes connections to great sacrifices made in the distant past and hopeful lessons for a more peaceful future. The Wreath Layers, Singers, Mounties and Organizers were there, balancing their own personal thoughts of remembrance with their programmed duties. The Strangers, some in town for meetings, some for holidays, some drawn by a crowd, added an element of shared unknown to the celebration.

In such a crowd, even a reverential crowd, being jostled is just part of the experience, especially as the formal event ended and people milled, not wanting to dart back to whatever it was they were doing before stopping to remember. Old friends unseen for months needed greeting, dogs and children had to tap off energy built up through inactivity. But this wasn’t an inattentive bump, someone’s hand was in my pocket.

I grabbed a wrist and spun around. "What the…."

"Just seein’ if you had a smoke in there, Dude."

J.J! Carumba.

"You know I don’t smoke, J.J. And I can assure you there ain’t no beer in there either."

Generally, encounters with J.J. Geddyup only involved a metaphorical hand in the pocket. The cost of bumping into J.J. is always a couple of beers and not infrequently breakfast, lunch or dinner, depending on when he pops up, or, heaven forbid, more than one meal if I’m too addled to come up with a good excuse to shake him.

Whistler’s only private eye for years and, as he’s unnecessarily proud of pointing out, the only one in town who fits the seedy picture movies paint of the profession, J.J. belongs to the genus Fringe Character. His Re-Use-It, Descente coach’s overcoat, tattered and frayed, seems to stick out more than it used to when Whistler was still a town where hard-core skiers’ gear was held together with duct tape and ty-raps. He still puffs furiously on Gauloise Blues or whatever he can bum, infecting those around him with repeated, rasping coughs. And his voice still sounds like cement and gravel grinding in a mixer, awaiting water to calm things down. J.J. might just be, as hard as it is to believe, the perfect person to bump into after a Remembrance Day ceremony.

Resigned to fate, we headed for the Brew House, my treat.

"So," I asked, "You PIin’ any these days?"

"Matter of fact, yes I am," he answered, lighting another Blue with a flick of a worn, brass Zippo emblazoned with a paratroop crest.

"You can’t smoke in here," a passing waitress admonished.

"Nazi," J.J. muttered, stubbing the unfiltered cigarette on his lighter and returning it to the crumpled pack.

"Watcha sleuthing," I asked.

"Nothin’," he replied, after a long draught of beer, swapping one oral fixation for another.

"Nothing? I thought you said you were working."

"I am. I’m on the trail of nothing," he said emphatically, wanting me to dig the information out of him.

"Okay, I’ll bite. What is this? Seinfeld. How can you be on the trail of nothing? Sounds more like something I’d be doing."

"Well, someone who shall remain nameless but has, how shall we say, firm convictions, has me chasing down a few ideas on why nothing seems to be getting done around here. Guess he… or she, believes this town has a bad case of constipation and needs a major laxative."

"That’s an unpleasant analogy when you’ve got a mouthful of beer," I said. "I’m not sure you’re right; seems like there’s an awful lot of scaffolding in the village for nothing to be getting done. Lots of highway work, a tsunami of Olympic nonsense about to break over us, the long awaited and grossly over budget CSP about to reveal the future. Hardly nothing."

"All indisputably true, Jefe. But all firmly anchored in the past. With one year to go before elections, even the Elected Ones are finally sensing they haven’t actually accomplished nearly enough. Look at the talk finally happening about housing. Don’cha even read the letters in your own paper?"

"Hey, my heart goes out to all the former party animals who want a house, kids, dogs and cats and a nice garage for a workshop. Why not toss in some working capital and a big contribution to their RRSPs too? Housing will happen eventually, or all at once when we’re left with a monstrously big Olympic village. It’s all in the plan, isn’t it?" resignation creeping into my voice.

"Don’t kid yourself. We’re stuck in Planning Land. The gatekeepers are planners and unfortunately, fall into that interesting category of people who confuse planning with doing. I mean, we started this CSP process right after we’d "envisioned" the future, planned for transportation, conducted housing studies, and revisited limits to growth. Planning has become a way of life, an end unto itself, an illusion of accomplishment with no real output other than paper. At some point, people are going to wake up to the fact we have the best planned, least accomplished town in North America," he said furiously, spitting the words out.

"Wow, what a stump speech."

"I’m barely getting warmed up. While you’re preoccupied with niggling concerns like the Olympics and housing, the Philistines are lining up on the borders for an all-out assault. As this town finally approaches what’s euphemistically referred to as buildout, the subdivisions of the future are being staked out north and south of town. Astonishingly, there’s no talk about the future, about how this town becomes the only town in the world to successfully limit growth. There’s only one thing for certain, and you’re just starting to see it with the development proposal north of town. The only unstoppable force in the world is a developer with a chance to make some money doing what he knows how to do, packaging a proposal into an offer a town council can’t refuse."

"I don’t know, J.J. I can always hope this place might be the first, might be unique. The only thing I can be certain of though is our glasses are empty. You might be sleuthing nothing, but not even you can drink nothing."

"Amen."