With the closing of the old Morrissy Bridge, people are wondering how to ease the extra traffic on the new bridge.

            When the new bridge was being built, property owners along Mitchell Street got letters from the provincial government. We were warned that our properties might be subject to expropriation for a new road from the new bridge to Uptown Miramichi. As you come off the new bridge to the north side you can easily spot where the road was to begin.

            It would have come along Mitchell Street and past the wharf buildings. At the time, I think, a factor was to provide a good access route from the highways to the wharf.

            Miramichiers’ idea of a traffic problem may differ significantly from those of city folk elsewhere. The loss of the Morrissy Bridge will not cause significant traffic jams. Still, if City of Miramichi can negotiate a consolation prize for the loss of the old bridge, a new street from the new bridge along Mitchell Street might be it.

            With regard to the idea of repairing and preserving the Morrissy as a walking bridge, I think it unlikely. It was on death watch from the time the new bridge was contracted. At the time most of us knew that the first time an inspection indicated a need for costly repairs, it would be closed.

            The Morrissy was originally built illegally over navigable water. It has always been a hazard to shipping. Only when the navigable waterway designation of the river up to the UPM property was revoked for the new bridge, did government weld the Morrissy shut. It still threatens any ship that might come up to the wharf.

            There are now several pleasure boats on the river that could get under the new bridge but cannot get under the Morrissy.

            The Morrissy has nearly as many people anxious to see it gone as it does to see it preserved.

            Given local economic conditions, there are probably more appealing places for governments to put our money than into a walking bridge across the Miramichi.

            I may be wrong there. Governments do some weird things in the name of economic stimulation.

                                                            DAC 

Usually I try to accentuate the positive but occasionally I enjoy saving up and venting some pet peeves and observed stupidities.

Here are a few I’ve piled up.

Air Canada sale price ads: The airline runs newspaper ads offering attractive rates from Maritime destinations to various parts of the country and the world.

However, there are little asterisks and footnotes that inform you that the advertised prices do not include taxes, airport fees or fuel surcharges!

In other words, the price is not the price. It is a part of the price.

The number may be interesting to the airline but it is of no use whatsoever to the potential traveler.

There can be only two reasons why the airline persists in running these ads. One is to fool me. The other is to annoy me.

Neither generates a positive view of the company.

Another Air Canada irritant is their survey of people who have flown with them.

The survey delves in detail into the passenger’s experience with the airport staff, the flight attendants and all aspects of the actual flight.

My experience with the airline staff on the ground and in the air has been good although there is an air of sadness about them that did not used to be common.

The airline management irritates and infuriates me. They don’t ask about that.

Why are there no questions about how I feel about the idea of paying for pathetic sandwiches, guessing whether the price will include my luggage and fuel surcharges?

It is not the airline and airport staffs who most often irritate me. It is the management.

And Government

The federal government is going out of its way to irritate me too.

It has announced how its “Do not call” list for telemarketers is going to work.

There will be exemptions.

Charities will be exempt.

Opinion surveyors will be exempt.

Companies with which you have done business in the past 18 months will be exempt.

Newspapers calling to sell subscriptions will be exempt. (???)

Political parties soliciting donations will be exempt. Surprise, surprise!

Frankly, I don’t see why any of these organizations should be exempt.

What is most irritating is that I see no need or reason for it to be up to the government who is exempt.

It would be so easy and so proper to establish these categories and allow each household to tick the categories it wished to allow to call.

How did the right to call me get to be the government’s choice?

And blocked caller ID

Another irritant is callers who block caller ID.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution to that one. We don’t answer if we don’t know who is calling.

People who have a legitimate reason to reach us leave a message. Telemarketers do not.

Smaller peeves

Why is that the pull handles on every plastic garbage pail are on the wrong side? How much field-testing would it have taken to learn that container is at a much more balanced angle if it is on the opposite side to the wheels?

It should not take genius or innovation. Wheelbarrows work on that principle and have been around for quite awhile now.

Why hasn’t any manufacturer realized that yet and modified the design?

I fear I know the answer to my next question about garbage containers.

Why is it that the tops are not tethered to the bottoms? How many bottoms are discarded each year because tops have blown away and people have replaced the entire containers?

Being a slow, thick, learner, it took me awhile (several years and lost tops) to figure out a solution.

I drilled a hole through bottom and top where the lip of the top fits over the rim of the bottom. I strung about a meter and a half of rope through the holes and tied a knot in each end.

Now the lids are tethered to the bottoms. Even if both blow away, they don’t get far before they snag on something.

We could call it “The Defiant Ones” solution.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051525/

Would it be cynical of me to suspect the reason such a modification does not come with the containers is that it would reduce annual sales?

Hot under the hat

I will be the first to admit that, as a whale of person, I perspire easily. Nevertheless, I believe many lesser golfers perspire copiously on the hot, humid days. Notice how “whale of a person” and “lesser golfers” are terms ambiguous enough to make it possible I am a great guy and an above average golfer? Deliberate deceit. I’m whale size. The only way golfers are lesser is by being thinner.

Still, why is it that many golf visors have terry sweatbands built in and golf hats do not? Visors are not a good option for those of us whose scalp hair has moved to the suburbs.

How easy and sensible it would be to have a strip of Velcro around the inside of a hat band and a sweatband backed with Velcro to fasten on to it.

The band could be regularly stripped out and tossed in the sock bag in the washing machine. Manufacturers could even sell spare bands.

One might think it would make the hat look ridiculously big. I don’t think so. There are winter hats with turn-down ear lugs so there should be room for a sweat band in a summer hat.

I guess the sporting goods industry spends all its on style and marketing and has none left for practical design or manufacture.

Legere and Bernardo

When Allan Legere went to prison for torturing five and murdering four people while escaped from prison having been already convicted of torture and murder, many Miramichiers felt he someday would get out again.

People who have known him and of him for much of his life and theirs know of events that would not be in his record and know how normal and rational he can appear. I used to get calls from victims who did not dare identify themselves or go to police.

It is unfortunate for Legere as well as his victims and the rest of us that he was a monster. If he could be fixed, we would never believe it enough to ever give him any room to move at all.

It is the same with Paul Bernardo who tortured, raped and killed teenage girls.

What angers me at this stage is the civil rights these two still have.

Laws governing defamation and privacy have changed too much in my time. It used to be that, if you called a man a liar and a thief and proved he was a thief, he could win a defamation case against you for calling him a liar.

The law presumed that, if he was a proven thief, he had no reputation left to damage by calling him a liar

Federal convicts did not have much right to privacy except that their communications with their legal counsel was protected.

During the recent controversy about the possibility of easing the conditions of Legere’s imprisonment, the media were told Corrections Canada could not discuss the matter because of his privacy rights.

At a newspaper seminar in May, one Canada’s leading defamation lawyers told me it is now possible that Paul Bernardo could win a suit for defamation.

We do not have the right to know what the state is doing with Allan Legere? You cannot call Paul Bernardo a thief, if you cannot prove it, because that would damage his reputation?

Oh, and incidentally, did you know that convicts like Legere and Bernardo had the right to vote in federal elections before judges did?

What, us worry? Whatever for!?

DAC

 (Pat Cline’s wonderful recipe) 

Ingredients

2 lb. bag White beans (Thompson’s) or Black Eyed or Navy beans

½ Cup molasses

2 tblspbns brown sugar

¼ cup catsup

1 tsp prepared mustard (wet)

1 tblspn white vinegar

1 whole onion

Preparation

Soak beans overnight – 8 hrs.

Bring to boil, drain and rinse

Add back water to cover beans

Mix all ingredients except beans and onion in bowl

Pour over beans

Tuck onion into centre of beans

Add pork fat or bacon to cover

Bake at 250º Fahrenheit for seven hours

            (Makes Eight)

            Michelle and I discovered wonderful fish burgers in the Magdalene Islands. This is my variation on them based on guesswork and personal taste.

Ingredients

            Three lbs of fresh cod or haddock

            One tblspn lemon juice

            One tblspn Fine Herbs, Herbes de Provence or any combination of herbs you like with seafood.

            Quarter cup of fresh parsley

            Tartar sauce, Wasabi mustard, and, or, a mix of mayonnaise and Dijon mustard for condiment.

            Tabasco sauce

            Lettuce or your choice of green

            Mild onion and tomato if desired

            8 Ciabatta bread rolls or Hamburger buns

Preparation

            Chunk up the fish with a knife or with a quick shot in the blender.

            Fold in herbs, spices, and lemon juice and a couple of shots of Tabasco sauce.

            Mold into 8 patties.

            Fry or barbecue. There isn’t much point in barbecuing since there is no fat to smoke up for flavour.

            Toast the burger buns or Ciabatta rolls.

            Assemble the burgers with lettuce and, if you like, very thin slices of mild onion and tomato.

            Flavour with the tartar sauce, Wasabi mustard or Dijon-mayonnaise and a dot or two of Tabasco sauce to taste.

            Although it happened back in March, I just learned that Miramichi has lost one of its stars.

            Armand Comeau was a Bobby Orr of excavator operators. He died of cancer at the age of 55.

            He worked for Ed Hitchman at Hitchman Construction Ltd. I first became aware of his skill when he moved a 20 foot by 30 foot shed with no floor from one corner of my property to another positioning it precisely on a concrete pad. At one stage, he was operating his machine with one hand and directing the operator of another machine with his other hand to tuck the shed into a corner.

            Later, Eddy took on the job of moving a two-car garage with no floor to my neighbours’ property across the street.

            “They’ll never get that in there,” I thought as the float arrived with its flimsy load. Before the end of the day, it was in place and aligned perfectly with the new house.

            I also had a front-row seat for the removal of the old Cunard-Loggie, building from Water Street across the river. Armand was the equipment operator on that job too. He got it down without punching holes in the buildings on either side. Having a half interest in one of them at the time, I especially appreciated his delicacy.

            Most recently, concerned about erosion, I had Eddy rock my shoreline. Armand swept and tamped over 300 feet in a little more than half a day. I couldn’t believe how he could sweep large rocks into a smooth and even path across the edge of the property, pat them a couple of times with the back of the shovel and move so swiftly on.

            I hope Armand knew how much I admired his skill and speed. I certainly told Eddy and his right hand man, Melvyn Innes often enough. I used to say I was sure he could thread a needle with his excavator. I thought you could sell tickets to watch him work.

            I didn’t know him personally but I am told he was full of life and a joy around the office. He and his wife had five grown children. He worked at Hitchman Construction Ltd. for 23 years.

            He was one of those guys whose passing doesn’t make the provincial news pages but who is as much a star as the athletes, politicians and community leaders who do.

            Salt of the earth is, I guess, the term we apply.

Weed war

          A pernicious plant is trying to take over my shoreline. Thanks to the internet, I was able to identify it and find a plan of attack.

            It grows fast, spreads quickly and has a hollow stem like bamboo. In fact, a couple of its nicknames are Japanese bamboo and Mexican bamboo.

            Its proper name is Japanese Knotweed.

            http://landscaping.about.com/cs/weedsdiseases/a/knotweed_3.htm

            It can grow to 10 feet high and choke out the shoreline grasses, wild roses and Irises I like so much. It spreads underground, sending out roots.

            Apparently applying Roundup or 2-4-D when it is flowering and sending nutrients to the root system is a beginning. Covering the patch with a tarpaulin also helps.

            As is so often the case with war, this battle apparently can not be won in one year. I will have to be vigilant and aggressive for several years.

            The purpose of this is to shorten, perhaps, your war if it turns up on your property. It was on mine for at least two years before I realized what a problem it was going to be.

Copying outrage

            The recording industry has been successful in conning the Canadian government into implementing tough new copying and sharing bans with hefty fines.

            In my opinion, the new law turns an industry problem into a taxpayer problem. The industry cannot create a digital product we cannot copy.

            How did that get to be our problem and expense rather than theirs?

            When I owned newspapers, should I have expected the police to come around and arrest you if you passed your copy of the paper on to someone else or photocopied an article from it?

            There are, and have been for years, laws to prevent you copying and selling someone else’s intellectual creations. That is fair. The person who invents the space elevator or writes a song is entitled to own the patent or copyright. You should not be able simply to take the results of their work and use it for your profit.

            However, if I sing in my backyard and you can hear me, should I have the right to make the courts collect a royalty from you? If you use a hearing aid to listen, does that make a difference?

            Of course not.

            If I want to be paid for you to listen to me sing, it is up to me to figure out a way to get you to do that.

            If I cannot, that should not become the taxpayers’ problem.

            The same applies to satellite signals. If you put a signal in space and I can decode it, why should the government penalize me, and, more to the point, you?

            If there is any logic in this, merchants should be able to leave their products unattended, day and night, on tables on the street and insist that anyone who picks them up pay for them or be hauled into court.

            Any merchant will tell you that he or she cannot get even the assistance of the police in charging someone who pays with a bad cheque which is obviously fraudulent.

            How is it that a huge industry can make its failure our responsibility?

                                                            DAC

16 Servings

• 4 pounds fresh fiddleheads
• 3 cups chopped onion
• 2 cups vegetable or chicken broth *
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 4 pinches ground black pepper
• 5 cups vegetable or chicken broth*
• 4 cups homogenized milk **
• 2 cups plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• Dollops of sour cream – optional

Directions

• 1. Place fiddleheads and onion in a saucepan with 2 cups of broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer until the vegetables are tender.
• 2. Reserve a few fiddleheads for garnish. Place remaining vegetable mixture in an electric blender and puree until smooth.
• 3. Melt butter in the same pan used to simmer the fiddleheads and onions. Stir while sprinkling flour, salt, and pepper into the butter. Do not let the flour brown. Allow the mixture to cook only 2 minutes. Stir in remaining 4 cups of broth and increase the heat. Continue stirring until the mixture comes to a boil.
• 4. Stir the vegetable puree** into the saucepan. Stir yogurt into the mixture, followed by lemon juice. Stir until heated through, then ladle into bowls. Garnish with reserved fiddleheads.

*   Note that the recipe calls for a total of seven cups of broth. If you do not intend to add milk or cream, you may want to adjust the amount of broth upward a bit. You could wait and try it each way at time of serving.       

** This is when you would add the milk if you plan to serve right away. I don’t add milk, cream or sour cream until I am warming up the soup to serve. That is because I usually make an even larger batch and freeze it in four-portion (two ladles per portion) container. I see no need, to freeze the milk for storage.

            I believe in and support the defamation laws although I am disgusted with some of the evolution that has apparently taken place.

            There was a time when, if you called a man a liar and a thief and proved he was a thief you did not have to prove he was a liar. The law accepted that a thief had no reputation left to damage by calling him a liar.

            At the Atlantic Community Newspapers Association this year, David Coles, a prominent lawyer specializing in such issues, said that things are different now. According to  him, even Paul Bernardo, convicted of kidnapping, confining, torturing, raping and killing two young women and drugging and raping his wife’s young sister who died from side effects of the drugs, can still be defamed.

            What could one possibly say about Paul Bernardo that would lower him in anyone’s opinion?

            I have always been nervous about laws against hate speech. It is not that I don’t find such speech disgusting. I do. It is just that I think the cure is usually worse than the disease or makes the disease worse.

            I think we are better to have faith in free people and free media than the law to deal with such filth. I realize that is evidence of Abraham Maslov’s statement that, if the only tool you have is a hammer, after awhile everything starts to look like a nail. As a lifelong newsman, I believe that free speech and a free press will lead to civilized judgments and opinions by free citizens.

            I believe that hate speech laws often give lunatic fringe martyrs a much larger podium and profile than their nonsense ever did.

            Neither do anti-hate speech laws seem to be working. Internet chain stories and jokes abound with vile defamation of races, religions, political parties and companies.

            I have only recently become aware that Canada has a federal and several provincial human rights commissions that can haul anyone before them to defend spoken, and in some jurisdictions, published statements without using the traditional justice system.

            Muslim law students laid complaints against Maclean’s magazine in British Columbia, Ontario and Ottawa for a Mark Steyn article and others that they claim fostered hatred of Muslims.

            I don’t much like Mark Steyn. He tends to blame things on liberals that, in my experience, have more often been the habits of conservatives.

            For example he castigates liberals for cozying up to Castro and China and Russian communist totalitarian states. He doesn’t seem to notice or remember that conservatives installed and supported many brutal dictators in this hemisphere and others and did and do business with some of the most horrible people imaginable. The arms trade is not the purview of liberals.           He seems to think liberals are against free speech when, in my experience, it was the rich, powerful, old boys conservative, back room, networks that liked to keep the public and often their own employees in the dark about their own affairs, threats to their health and anything else that might have cost the establishment money.

            Having said that, I read the Steyn articles in Maclean’s and did not see anything that inspired hatred of Muslims in them.

            I disagreed with his assumption that, because Muslims currently have more children than ethnic groups who have been here and in Europe longer that Muslims and Islam will soon have a dominant influence in the western world. Bear in mind that, even if a dominant influence were the wish or objective of Muslims, that is not hateful.

            It seems to me Christians have missionaries with that objective.

            I have faith in Canadian society to attract any group of immigrants to our way of thinking in a generation or two.

            I do think that any preachers who come here and counsel killing enemies from their native lands or citizens of this one ought to be deported.

            Frankly, I like having right wing columnists and writers like Steyn and Barbara Amiel to challenge and test my own thinking and beliefs.

            I watched one of the complaining Muslim law students, Khurrum Awan, defend his complaint on the Business News Network.

            He said Maclean’s would not allow his group to respond to what they saw as a pattern of articles promoting hate.

            I had read in Maclean’s what the Muslim students demanded as the terms of their response. Essentially it was to turn over complete control of editorial space to them. Awan did not mention any terms. He just said the magazine has allowed no response. I have seen many letters disagreeing with the Maclean’s position in Macleans.

            He said the complainants offered evidence of the hatred the articles produced in the form of hate messages posted on blogs and in emails. He said the messages were provoked by the Maclean’s articles.

            Asked the difference between hate messages about Muslims and hate messages by Muslims, he replied that the Muslim bloggers are not a national magazine. Neither are the anti-Muslim bloggers. Awan compared Muslim bloggers to Maclean’s, not to anti-Muslim bloggers.

            Even if Maclean’s were anti-Muslim rather than, as I believe, concerned about the influence of some of the nasty and violent elements that exist within it, I don’t think there should be provision outside the courts to deal with it.

            The magazine has been harsh in its criticism of people within political parties, lawyers, some university administrations, the medical system and the US justice system that imprisoned Conrad Black. Did they inspire hatred of those groups? Did they and other media inspire hatred of Catholics by covering stories about abuse by some priests?

            I certainly have no faith in bureaucrats to sit in judgment of what constitutes free speech. Free speech is free speech.

            As Oliver Wendell Holmes, the renowned US jurist said, “Free speech does not include the right to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre.”

            There are laws every civilized country has to deal with that.

            The thought of government departments hauling citizens before them, causing ridiculous expense to the accused, passing judgments and levying fines, as the BC commission can, makes me feel physically ill.

            Pierre Trudeau famously said that government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.

            I feel just as strongly that it has no place in the court of public opinion.

            Law has a place when people or groups are defamed. Government bureaucracy does not.

            Governments should kill the human rights commissions ability to deal with anything other than access to employment, goods and services.

                                                DAC

             Sometimes people go to live theatre because the show is critically acclaimed and wildly successful. Sometimes we go because we want to encourage and support friends and family. Often we are surprised by the quality of local production.

                     Such was the case when Michelle and I went to the Miramichi Players first effort Saturday night at the MVHS theatre.

            The show consisted of four skits like the bits on Saturday Night Live and a one-act play.

            The skits were hilarious and I was genuinely surprised by the skill of the performers. If I had to rank them by talent, I think the rankings would not vary much from their age in years. The younger, the better.

            In “Judgment Call,” three Major Baseball League umpires are warming up for a new season. One is a confident veteran. One is a rookie. One is an aged vet and suffering the angst of having blown a call, changed the outcome of a World Series game and led to the suicide of a player.

            The whole thing is a series of clichés. Clichés, of course, usually become clichés by being said often because they are true.

            Hey, you win some you lose some. It’s only a game.

            Doug Trevors, very convincingly, plays the confident, to the point of arrogance, vet who admits to no purpose in life other than the game. Let’s trust he is a good actor. He can’t really be like that.

            Bill Gunn is the self-doubting, anguished tentative vet.

            Lon Bechervais plays the wildly enthusiastic rookie with all the exuberance of Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh stories. He projects a level of energy that could make him a professional.

Sure Thing

          In “Sure Thing,” Jason Howe joins Cindy Rule at a restaurant table and the two explore dozens of possible reactions to lines in the conversation.

            A bell offstage rings regularly. When it does, the speaker goes back to the beginning of his or her line and starts over with an entirely different approach.

            She is reading a novel. He has read it. He hasn’t read it. He liked it. He didn’t like it. She likes it. She doesn’t like it.

            They will hit it off. They won’t hit it off. He’s on the make. They are soul mates.

            The brilliant thing is that the two of them each switch instantly from one persona to another in keeping with the lines.

            Howe makes a liar out of himself in his program bio where he says he believes everyone can act but disproves it when he does. He lies. He is very good.

            Rule is one of those wraiths who can switch from studious librarian to playful vixen or cynical feminist in mid sentence.

            “Sure Thing” really gives the characters a chance to show what they can do and how quickly they can do it.

            I am an addict to the theatrical magic known as what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief.” It is not often it happens as quickly and changes as often as Howe and Rule did.

Arabian Nights

          In “Arabian Nights,” Doug Trevors plays a businessman making a quick tour of an Arabian bazaar to pick up a souvenir before catching a plane home. An Arab hustler, Doug Howe, takes him in tow leading him to a store and acting as interpreter. Lisa Savage plays the winsome clerk in her father’s shop.

            The beauty of the bit is that, while the characters speak the words they would during a retail transaction, the interpreter relays what the man and the woman are really thinking about each other.

            In line with Cadogan’s law that the only two things going on in the universe are sex and foreplay, customer and clerk have an unspoken, (but clearly translated) imaginary, intense, romance each will remember forever.

            Savage has a serene, almost oblivious, sexiness no man could ignore. Trevors is obviously smitten. Howe weaves the romantic thoughts smoothly and still manages to interject his own motivation to get home for dinner.

            We hear their words and his. The words coming out of their mouths are not nearly so significant as the communication from their faces. His words, not theirs, match their faces.

            Excellent writing. Well executed. It is such fun when theatre brings us in on the joke.

DMV

            In “DMV,” the scene opens with Karen Howe crying the shuddering sobs of the heartbroken at her vehicle licensing desk while Bill Gunn waits to get a new license in a new jurisdiction.

            Howe pulls herself together and begins the information and documentation gathering required to license Gunn.

            Gradually, the process turns into a relationship dance that blooms and crashes leaving Howe again crying brokenheartedly while power woman Cindy Rule waits as Gun did before her.

            Howe pulls herself together and away we go again except that, this time, we immediately know Howe has struck gold and the skit ends.

“The Actor’s Nightmare”

            In the one-act play, Bechervaise plays a person who suddenly finds himself being called upon to step up from understudy to star. The beginning of his problem is that he does not know who he is. He has no idea who anyone else is either or what play the cast is doing.

            He is pushed on stage in a “Hamlet” costume with a pronounced codpiece that concentrates his attention. Another cast member, Karen Howe, is playing Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.” Frank McKibbon is playing various Shakespearian characters and, eventually, the executioner.

            Lisa Savage and Cindy Rule add to the nightmare as the stage manager offers or withholds cues and Bechervaise desperately offers bits from Shakespeare, Coward and even Dickens’s “Tale of Two Cities.”

            The nightmare builds to a climactic execution to which Bechervaise proceeds knowing he is dreaming and having heard that one cannot dream one’s own death.

            And then the executioner chops his head off and his lifeless, bloody, body lies there while the rest of the cast take their bows and proceed to the lobby to socialize with the audience.

            Yep. That will do for an actor’s nightmare all right. Especially the part about not getting to take a bow or socialize with an admiring audience.

            I was delighted with everything about the production. I liked the program notes which were funny and self-deprecating.

            I liked the background music before the show and at intermission. I very much liked the pieces they chose to do. I am a sucker for good writing and the Miramichi Players made exceptional choices.

            I was impressed and, frankly, surprised at the quality of the performances. If someone now told me (fill in the blank) cast member had been given a role in a professional show, I would be pleased but not really surprised.

            In conclusion, the only disappointment was in the size of the audience. I hope and trust the audience will build as the troop continues.

                                    DAC 

             At the Canadian Newspapers Association convention in Toronto in May, there were strong hints as to where the information business is going.

            It appears the way people will be receiving their news and information in future will be very personal. It seems most likely that the day of the desk computer and home phone are on the way out.

            Partially because of the natural evolution of technology and partially because of the fact that technology loves to play leapfrog, individuals in future will probably wear phones as they do watches now. The phone will also act as a personal digital assistant providing access to addresses, phone numbers email addresses, appointment schedules and alarms and will capture still and video images.

            It may even include a light emitting diode (LED) projector to display computer programs and spread sheets on anything handy.

            It will also be a source of books, music, video, maps, directions and anything else you can think of that you might want to know. The global positioning satellite system (GPS) will also tell others where you are.

            Quite probably very little of this will be stored within the device. In future your personal device will provide access to your personal data stored in your segment of colossal data banks.

            Oh, and yes, it will also tell you the time.

            In my imagining, it curves around your wrist and flips open to reveal a touch-screen keyboard and monitor.

            I do wonder how the companies that produce the content will be paid.

            The leapfrog element of the evolution will come because so much of the world does not have the complex landline infrastructure we have in North America and Europe. China, for example, will skip that stage and go directly to wireless. Because the areas that do not have the landline infrastructure offer such immense growth potential, manufacturers and network developers will concentrate on wireless. Why aim at part of the world market when wireless technology can serve everyone?

            The cost of newsprint, time delays in delivering printed information and the fact that hard copy is not interactive, threaten your newspapers and flyers. Almost as significant is the challenge of finding people to deliver them.

            Even without the challenge of rapidly escalating gasoline costs, fewer people are interested in working for the kind of income door-to-door delivery provides. Imagine what it is like to be a distribution manager in Vancouver or Calgary.

            In the medium term future, any hard copy you do have you probably will print on your own equipment in your own home.

Poignant picture

            While the newspaper convention was taking place, the Toronto Photography Festival was also in various venues around the city. It is a world festival that features images of anything imaginable. One artist talked several couples among her friends into having sex on camera for her presentation.

            One photo was most poignant. Robert Burley captured laid off employees of a Kodak film manufacturing plant watching two buildings where they had worked being imploded. For the festival, the photo was enlarged and painted on an outside wall of a building at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art on Queen Street.

            The ironic factor that made it poignant was the ex-employees were photographing the explosion with digital cameras.

            The MOCCA exhibition triggered the Miramichi connection that so often happens when I travel.

            After taking in the exhibition, I looked for a place to have lunch.  Queen Street West is a very hip neighbourhood now so I just wandered along looking for a likely spot. The Oyster Boy offered oyster po’boy sandwiches and drew me in. A nice young man brought me a menu and a woman was shucking oysters behind the bar.

            I struck up a conversation and quickly established that they had New Brunswick, PEI and British Columbia sources of their oysters. The New Brunswick ones come from Caraquet and Richibucto.

            I naturally immediately launched into praises for Maison Beausoleil oysters from Neguac. When she asked me where that is, I told her just up the coast from Miramichi where I live.

            “Your waiter is from Miramichi,” she replied.

            The nice young man turned out to be Brad Casey, a young musician and songwriter from the Casey Tire family here. Like so many young musicians, he augments his performance income with a day job.

            He graduated with my daughter, Aaran Guitard and is the younger brother of Colin Casey, a school friend of Nathan’s, a UNB web wizard and the guy who got and keeps me on line.

            On we go!

                                                DAC

            I’ve had a couple of humourous but cutting reminders lately that cool is often cruel.

            Ralph Benmergui, a mid-tier CBC radio and TV personality, presented the Canadian Community Newspapers Association annual Better Newspapers Competitions awards at the national convention.

            He could not, contain his mirth at the idea of things like a third place prize for best Christmas edition or best newspaper promotion ad in three different circulation categories.

            A few weeks later, Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” sent John Oliver to “The Pollies,” an award show for political advertising. There were awards for such things as best lawn sign for a city council campaign.

            In each case, the cool, big-town, entertainer had great fun at the expense of the little people who work in industries less glamourous than national television.

            I am reminded of an entertainer who said you get some idea of how significant Canadian culture is when someone receives a lifetime achievement award at a national awards show and you have never heard of him.

            To be fair, Benmergui and Oliver find the big time ridiculous too. They are, beyond doubt, bright, witty, irreverent and impartial. They zing everyone.

            Certainly you have never heard of any of the winners much less third place winners in the CCNA BNC awards or the Pollies.

            And yet, the Canadian and Atlantic newspapers have made amazing progress in quality over the years. Much of it was made possible by technology but hardware and software do not, and will not, replace writers, photographers, design and layout people.

            Creative awards are always very subjective. Sometimes, in my humble (HAH!) opinion, the best entry does not win. My papers won some awards we did not deserve to win and did not win more we did deserve to win.

            I always said it was not the winning that was important. It was the trying to win and being near the top every year that was. “If you are not trying to be the best,” I asked, “What are you trying to be?”

            “That will do,” is the deadly enemy of excellence.

            Almost every organization has some program to recognize those who exemplify the objectives of the field of endeavour.

            Yes, the efforts of unknowns are small time and insignificant. They certainly are not as glamourous as the efforts of the nominees for the Oscars, Emmies, Grammies, Tobies, Juneaus, Gillers or Bookers.

            In those competitions too, the best effort, in my humble (HAH!) opinion, does not always win.

            Nor do competitions always lead to continuous improvement. I sponsor and judge the George Cadogan Memorial Outstanding Columnist award each year in Canadian Community Newspapers Association competition. This year,  I was out of the country. Rick MacLean did it for me.

            The column rules call for an emphasis on local issues and a little courage. Some editors don’t seem to be able to read rules much less identify good writing. Many of the entries are not local and simply beat the drums for the populist opinion.

            One editor, two years ago, entered his riding MP’s column which, as any editor knows, is written for him by party hacks in Ottawa.

            However, the general quality of entry does seem to be holding its own and, I think, improving. As an example, a few years ago, Mark Critch, now of “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” and “Halifax Comedy Festival,” won the columnist award.

            Is there a point to any of this?

            It has led me back to an idea I have had for many years. It seems to me that the unknowns are the category in which most of the real heroes in society are to be found.

            There is no national awards program for best single mom raising three kids or best lone dad with two daughters or a wife crippled by a stroke.

            And yet, every year, every day, there are people striving in a constant state of exhaustion, financial need and foreign territory to do the very best they can for others.

            It is not the winning. It is not the glamour. It is the trying.

            Oddly enough, occasionally someone who gives away victory becomes better known for it.

            Calgarian, Andrew Brash scaled Mount Everest this year. Two years ago, 200 metres from the summit, he turned back. He stopped to rescue Australian climber, Lincoln Hall, who had been abandoned by his own team to die.

            This year, when Brash did reach the summit, his mother mused that he would be just one of hundreds who have now done that if he had not foregone his first opportunity.

            Cool!

                                                            DAC