Summer reading -- "A man of little consequence"

[Peter O'Donnell]

What follows is my satirical account of Canadian politics and life in postmodern times. I plan to drop a new chapter into the thread every couple of days or so. Hope you all enjoy this, any resemblance to actual persons or situations can easily be decoded.

Comments are welcome, but after a day or so, I will open a separate thread for them and from that point onward, the story will be left alone in this thread, while the comments will fester elsewhere.

If you're looking in on the first day, you will find about ten pages uploading in sequence; if you're a very fast reader you may get ahead of me. Keep looking in if you're enjoying the story.


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a man of

little consequence



Tuesday was the cheap day at the Rustic Meadows Golf Course, or as we all called it, "The Mountain," because the owners had wanted to call it Copper Mountain after the oversized hill nearby, but the Copper Mountain Brewery had nixed that choice. In any case, it was rough and ready, no place for golf etiquette on a grand scale, but the sternest test of golf in the country. I had won a hundred bucks playing skins with seven other golfers of various skill levels, all of us foregoing our handicaps to play straight up. For me, it was normally a losing proposition. Known to be a straight if not prodigiously long driver of the golf ball, with a very substandard approach shot repertoire (mainly due to infrequent practice) and a killer short game except for my propensity to jerk all three foot putts wildly off-line, I was much better suited to a golf scramble where these talents and flaws would combine with other, different talents to produce a good result. Hence, it would be considered unusual for me to win a "skin" heads up, no handicap, against the likes of the Wall brothers, former club professionals, or "The Technician" who was my age, had my sort of drive and Jim Furyk's game otherwise.

And the list went on, of course you could count on Barry McDougall to blast the ball about three hundred and twenty yards off every tee, save of course the par threes, and in some cases this feat was accompanied by circumstances in which his golf ball was found within five minutes, and advanced to the green with a birdie putt sure to follow. Then there was old Jake Nevin, who could hit the ball 193 yards with every club in his bag, and had sunk more twelve foot par putts than Tiger Woods.

Indeed, I was known as a "contributor" in these ten dollar skin games that we enjoyed. I viewed the ten bucks as a sort of entertainment cost, because otherwise, I would just play around the course by myself, also quite pleasurable in its own way, since I could retake any shot I didn't like on first glance, and imagine that I had parred a number of holes, especially by awarding myself any tricky four footers.

As Barney Wall told me on one occasion, "Pete, you should be shooting like 82 or 84 around here, and this is one tough track as you know, and not that 97 crap." I was actually quite thrilled to shoot 97 given my 'cap of thirty, which was the Mountain's standard doubling of your index when you played off the blues. Sure, I could go to Lagoon Links and shoot 82 and impress some pensioners who had never played golf with an athlete before, but around the Mountain I was known as "The Scramble King" and treated like a long-lost pal for the weeks before the semi-annual three-man tournaments. To be fair, I was treated that way all year long, and I tried very hard to reciprocate, because in truth, these were my only flesh and blood friends; otherwise, my friends were imaginary characters who lived on the internet.

So there I was, driving home on a Tuesday afternoon in the growing rush hour traffic, back into the city from this delightful pastoral refuge at the base of Copper Mountain. As I followed the winding back road around Aspen Park to avoid the really heavy traffic, I was thinking back to how I had won that hundred, there was only one skin the whole way around the course -- in case you don't know, a skin is won when a player has the lowest score on a hole and is not tied by another player either. You can imagine how seldom this happened for me; at a normal golf club, you could go out and play skins involving your handicap, and this made it more likely that a man of little consequence might cash in. But ours was not a normal golf course. It was on the fifteenth hole that I won my skin.

The fifteenth was a long par four, it ran through a grove of very tall trees that I had first imagined were redwoods when I first saw them through the drenching mist of a March day twelve years ago. They were probably more prosaic western red cedars, but they were all about two hundred feet tall. So you had to stay on the straight and narrow. If your drive was near-perfect, you arrived at a corner hanging on the side of a hill where the green became visible off to a sharp angle left of your walk, and from there you were expected to hit a long iron or a fairway wood to the green. Once there, more than likely in two shots as your first one would be quite sure to bound left into the forest and then off a tree into the side of a hill, or else, it might sail woefully short into the bank of long grass in front of said green, once there as I said, you would have a difficult putt on a very complicated green that had slopes and ridges in great abundance.

The scorecard said the fifteenth was the second hardest hole on the course, as the first was marginally more difficult, but that was probably because you played it without much of a warmup.

So as I recalled it, my satisfactory drive gave me a full view of the target, then my three-wood astounded the partners, as well as the other fivesome looking back from the green, by flying almost all the way to the front edge of said green, albeit still fifty yards from the pin at the far end. "Par wins," yelled Terry Luckaday from the green, to answer the frequently posed but as yet unspoken question, what's going to win this hole after you five got done with it. Somebody must have scored five, and that was sometimes a skin, except when Gavin Zeedorf showed up, a semi-annual curse on our nirvana, because Gavin insisted that "in a real skins game, a bogey cannot win a skin. I don't care if this is the hardest effing hole in Canada and if Bob Sykes can't hit out of his shadow and fluked an effing five, I am not paying if you give skins for bogeys."

And because Gavin Zeedorf had friends in the RCMP and nobody wanted to test the limits of their tolerance of various matters better left unspoken, his word was law on the two days that he bothered to show up for our festivities. He was a man of his word -- he refused to take a considerable sum one day when his bogey on the first would have taken a third of the pot. I remembered that, because I had a bogey on fourteen that day, and would have taken another third.

Anyway, I presume you may find this account tedious, but I needed to establish why I had a hundred dollars in my pocket -- it was because I chipped the ball exquisitely to three inches from the cup, and was given the putt by a fellow known only as "Prime" -- I never learned his real name. He was the only man left standing at that point, the other three in our group were sitting five or six already, having made an extensive tour of the enchanted forest. Prime had gunned his second shot into the grassy knoll, chipped somewhat without conviction to about twelve feet, and now needed to drain a sideways breaker to cut off my skin.

He failed by a narrow margin to accomplish that feat, and not because I ripped my velcro glove loudly just behind him as Patrick Dempsey often did when I was standing over a putt of any consequence. It was also Dumpsey who liked to yell "shot" which was short for good shot, about a half second before anyone made contact with their golf ball, thus ensuring a nasty flinch at or just after the point of contact. Sometimes it had a bad effect, and sometimes it just threw you off for a later shot, when you might be wondering when he would unleash the cry.

I was on my way to the annual meeting of the Sleeping Lake Riding Association, and the hundred in my pocket made me feel like a player.

Thus it was that I arrived at the Touch of Class Restaurant on Moral Victory Avenue ready to mix it up with persons entirely unknown to me, except for my brief study of their leading lights on a website evidently last maintained when Joe Clark was leader of the worse half of the party.

[Peter O'Donnell]

The annual meeting of the Sleeping Lakes CPC Riding Association was in the Neville Wallace Room of the Touch of Class Motel, adjacent to the Touch of Class Restaurant. There, a buffet had been set up, and forty chairs laid out in the hopeful expectation that many of them would be filled with persons anxious to hear remarks from the riding executive, and to plan a nomination meeting, because an election was said to be "around the corner."

A somewhat less than pleasing aroma of mismatched foods greeted me as I entered, hoping that the effects of my two (or was it three?) Kokanees consumed in the clubhouse (mostly) was by now only obvious to me and not the group in general. However, this mild uncertainty was quickly made irrelevant by the rather evident stench of hard liquor drifting in from the nearby Tall Tales Lounge, which had been hosting many of the leading figures of this Riding Association for the past hour. Indeed, some of these worthies had arrived, were engaged in loud and apparently important conversations, and this only extended the reach of the intoxicating scents.

I had arrived at the very moment most likely to be the real calling to order time, namely, twelve minutes late. This was because I despised small talk with anyone other than golfers or chosen companions, and yet equally hated to draw attention to my person by arriving really late to anything. Just like you, right?

Well perhaps not. I had been there about fifteen seconds before a rather friendly looking man of about half my age came up and introduced himself as the Riding Association membership co-ordinator.

"I don't believe I've seen you here before, I'm Rick Shaw, the SLRA membership guy."

"But you're not Chinese," I said, affecting what I imagined to be a wistful look.

"Well, of course, this is not the Liberal Party," he replied, obviously having heard this lame joke many times. I wondered how many, and what a bad impression I had already made, hoping it was considerable, because I had better things to do than join an executive committee. I just wanted to find out more about what went on behind the scenes and gain some information that might prove useful in my other passion (besides golf), namely, conservative politics. Well, there was a third one too.

"That's our riding president, Bob Savage," Rick said in a stage whisper, as our attention was drawn to an impsing rather chubby fellow who was obviously some sort of construction executive. I had delivered to a hundred such men in the last month in my job as a courier, ideal for a man of little consequence such as myself, because it opened every door in the city to me, and nobody saw me walk in or out. Of course, one or two thieves had taken up that profession for the same reason, but with me, it was the love of variety, moving about, mild exercise sometimes becoming quite strenuous, and seeing what went on everywhere. Yes, everywhere, the control tower of the airport, the boardroom of the biggest corporation in the city, a gay sauna, an escort agency office, the home of the premier, a lumber company employing only Neanderthals, half a dozen beauty queens who liked to flirt with old men for some unknown reason, and of course, the offices of many construction companies, so that it was actually rather surprising that I had not met Bob Savage before, unbeknown to him of course.

Bob Savage was telling a group of about nineteen men and women that the glory days of the CPC were indeed just around the corner. "As you know, Sleeping Lakes is a town, I always want to say are a town, known across the country for being a typical Canadian community. And yet we routinely send a couple of New Democrats to Ottawa. I think it's because our party, and the Liberals, have a death wish here. We nominate candidates who cannot win."

At this point I was thinking that said un-electable candidates must not be in attendance today, or else they were very tolerant of abuse.

Savage went on, "Your executive has noted this fact. Our riding, Sleeping Lakes, as well as the sister riding of Sleeping Lakes - Fantasy Malls - The Inlet, have in fact formed a Joint Committee to study why we keep losing when Giant Pines and Giant Pines Near the Sea always seem to elect Tories."

I winced here, because I had come into the party from the old Alliance, and I did not think of myself as a Tory, even if half the nation did. To me, a Tory was some old warhorse who had delivered pamphlets for Stanfield and Mulroney and Joe Clark, while I was busy earning a living back in Ontario as a computer typesetter, until Bill Gates decreed that nobody should be doing that, because he could rig up a system half as good and one tenth the cost to obtain. Thanks a hell of a lot, Gates, but had that market for services not evaporated between 1992 and 1994, we would have had neither motive nor desire to leave Peterborough, the printing capital of eastern Ontario, or was it central Ontario, nobody ever fully decided that thorny question.

[Peter O'Donnell]

Savage was not done. There was much more to be revealed.

"By joining forces with SLFMTI, we have access to the students and their insights."

I was astonished. There were students in our party? Well, when I said `our party' I was risking exaggeration, I had voted for them off and on since Mulroney had impressed me more than John Turner in 1984. That was hardly crossing the Rubicon, before that, I was a non-partisan libertarian post-ideological individualist anti-communist who fancied starting his own party but only knew of two other Canadians who might join it, as well as the senile aunt of one of them who had a kind spot for eccentrics.

Savage was amazing me here. "The student Tories say that we must stop being so formal and stuffy, and get out there with the placebook and the tweeter," that's what he said, "and show a bit of concern for the earth in these troubling times of global warming."

It was at this point that Anathema Kryzout interjected from her podium seat (it was 14-5 for the nonpodium team at half time) as follows:

"Bob, I respect your opinion, but I have been active in politics since the 1979 election, and I know that the only real road to Conservative success is to appeal to traditional values. Our voters don't go on the internet, most of them are older than us, and don't know how to turn on a computer. I myself know how to e-mail and google, I learned all of that from my daughter," to whom, presumably, she was now beaming a congratula-tory look, and from whom I deduced that rigid formality was an inherited trait in the Kryzout family.

"We have lost the last six elections here, is it six?" she then counted them off in her head while Bob Savage fumbled with his pager, "seven elections, I forgot the Kim Campbell one because that doesn't count," a remark met with muffled laughter, "we have lost the last seven because we keep running the wrong sort of candidate."

Dead silence greeted this remark as people thought back to the last seven elections. 2006, 2004, 2000, 1997, 1993, 1988, 1984 ... so did that mean we once upon a time had a Tory representing us in Ottawa while Trudeau lurched to his personal finish line? Of course, back then, Sleeping Lakes probably had just the one seat for the whole town, okay city whatever, and I had to imagine that the population was considerably, umm, less diverse in those days.

But who were these "wrong candidates" of the past seven tries? Seven different people, probably more like four -- some people just don't know when to quit.

Bob Savage didn't. He was now back to his somewhat prepared remarks.

"Look, I hear you Annie. But this riding has eight Tim Hortons. Eight. That's more than any other riding in Canada except Edmonton Southwest Northeast, and perhaps Ajax-Pickering-Dead Zone. It's wall to wall Tim Hortons through Edmonton, they have nothing else to do there as we all know, since Gretzky left town."

There it was, the obligatory joke at Alberta's expense. I laughed to be a good guy and to convince Rick Shaw that I was still awake.

"Party headquarters tells me that they can predict to within two percent how many votes we should get, just by a formula of Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire and the Bay, minus ten times Starbucks, or something like that. I don't know, they have all those marketing geniuses down there in Ottawa, how else would a bunch of right wingers like us win even one election in a commie country like Canada?" Shaw nodded sagely as Savage let loose this unguarded assessment, and I had to agree, how else indeed?

Well, of course, there was the pleasing development that we now had three Liberal parties as well as the Half-Liberal CPC, diluting the Trudeaupian tide that normally overwhelmed the efforts of clear thinking people such as you and me. There was the further helpful fact that the Liberals had recently been saddled with the leadership of Professor Claude Dijon, a man better suited to defend global warming in the classroom where nobody was allowed to question it.

Now, of course, they had Count Julian de Roncesvalles, a noted public intellect and stone farmhouse sort of fellow who reeked of propriety and might give Prime Minister Stefan Doolittle a run for his money. And there was always the third option, Joe Laydown, the perennial and in some quarters respected leader of the New Democrats, which is what Obama's faction called themselves, and rightly so. If Canadians ever made the connection that the Adored One was much the same as the NDP, then Laydown might be moving uptown. How far uptown, hard to say.

Rick Shaw said, "you seem lost in thought."

I replied, "sorry, it's a habit I will have to shake if I am to be useful here."

"Have you ever run for office?" he asked me, while Savage droned on about our prospects, still interrupted at intervals by the formidable gold-plated A. K., obviously a campaign manager of considerable experience.

"Yes, I ran once as a pure ego thing, to get in and see what was really going on, when I was much younger."

"You'll have to tell us about that some time," said Shaw.

"I had almost forgotten. It was a lifetime ago."

[Peter O'Donnell]

I gathered at this point that the discussion was opening up to the general membership, meaning, the fourteen persons present who were not in the five-headed beast that ran this show. Rick Shaw was one of these, but he was down with us plebes, a foot lower than the podium group, which was Savage, Mrs Kryzout (I presumed she was married from the evidence of her daughter), some Chinese fellow who I assumed was the treasurer, and an Indo-Canadian man who frowned a lot.

One of our number stood up and said, "I think the students have a point. I'm on the internet quite a bit, and that's a much cheaper and easier way to meet the voters than the old school ways. Besides, we should save the earth and stop cutting down all those trees, right?"

Another dude interjected this: "Yeah, sure Colin, what about my effin job? I work for a forestry company, ya know."

"You've got a point," conceded Colin. "These questions are all very complex."

"No they're not," muttered the other guy, used to being put in his place by now after a decade away from the real world.

Rick Shaw then rose to announce, "well listen, Peter here has some experience as a candidate. Maybe he has some insight into why we keep losing in a sure-fire riding like this."

I was thinking, "oh brother, do I really have to say why?"

But instead I said this: "I've only lived here for maybe twelve years, and so I don't have any idea about the elections before 1997, but since then, it would be my observation that our candidates have not had the support of the national party. When the leaders have come out here, both before and after the merger, they never set foot in Sleeping Lakes, guess they didn't want to get their feet wet,"

"Or dissolved," said some wag;

"Or dissolved," I agreed, "so it gives the impression that we are just contesting the ridings for show, and nobody ever says the Conservatives are a force in this city, I suppose it's the university, we can pretty much write off the student vote, and they are all over both these ridings."

"Why do you say that?" asked Anathema Kryzout imperiously, as though I had uttered a Prohibited Thought. She was looking at me like I was a cheap cut of meat in her long-practised way of assessing the marketability of a candidate. I had to agree with that, I was probably a couple of years past the expiry date for certain.

"I say that because students in Canada today are brainwashed by socialists. Sorry, I thought that was common knowledge."

"Well, my daughter is here to prove otherwise," she said, shooting her a conspiratorial look that was greeted by a blank stare in return. "She is studying Canadian history at the university, and she knows many students who support this party."

"Oh, I don't doubt it for a moment, there are always one or two in any random crowd of a hundred people who still like to think for themselves."

"I'm not sure if that's a good formula," interjected Bob Savage. "That hasn't been tried in this party since the merger."

I wondered who else saw this as ironic, and ended my chance remarks by saying, "well, the last two candidates, no offence meant, but I wouldn't have voted for them myself, unless it was to shut out the worse alternatives, and then I had to ask myself, realistically, what was the worst of all possible outcomes, and it wasn't the NDP, was it? I mean, this Bergendorf guy is not embarrassing us in Ottawa, any more than a New Democrat would on first principles, in fact, he's got a reputation as a good constituency man. What are you gonna do? The population of this whole area never hear a good word about the party from the media. They all hate Doolittle, and no matter how far into the centre he burrows, they still hate him. The only way you're going to elect somebody here is to run a maverick like Charlie Wyatt, and hope the people want a voice that isn't controlled by the CPC. I'm new here, so I don't know much, are you people willing to take that sort of a risk with your party ambitions?"

"What party ambitions?" asked Bob Savage. "They don't care what we do here, this is like China to the party brass. They concede these ridings before every election, and none of us have any party ambitions, well maybe Annie does, she would make a great national council member as we all know," he said to nobody in particular.

"Okay, tell ya what," I said, the hundred bucks in my pocket calling raise, "I'll throw my name in the mix at the next nomination meeting, when is it anyway ... give those other guys a run for their money." Instantly, I regretted this, recalling that to win a nomination meeting, you had to sign up hundreds of people, or else impress hundreds of others, both of them tasks well beyond my ability, as a man of little consequence.

[Peter O'Donnell]

a month later

Two weeks after that meeting, I had received a phone call from Bob Savage saying, "well are you serious, you've got to put your name in today if you want to be on the ballot?"

I said, "sure, why not, we're gonna lose no matter what, I might as well save those other two fellas the heartache."

"That's the spirit. Don't let Annie hear you talking like that, she'll whip your ass."

"I would want to avoid that," I agreed.

--------------------

The meeting day was a Sunday, timed for one o'clock, some sort of muscle memory of times when a CPC nomination meeting would follow church, I suppose. That might still be the case in some parts of Canada, but this was progressive and trendy greater Vancouver. How much greater was it with Sleeping Lakes added on? Not much, but I wasn't going to say that today. This was politics, and so the truth was left at the door.

Bob Savage took the podium as a huge throng of about five hundred people milled around the two hundred seats, overflowing the school gym into the gravel soccer field outside. Why kids had to play soccer on gravel, I did not know, thankfully I had played all of mine on grass, and make of that what you want.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me extreme pleasure and a sense of civic pride," (to many guffaws and blank stares from gentlemen with turbans all standing in a row near the exits), "to call this meeting to order and to introduce three men who would like to be your next Member of Parliament for the great riding of Sleeping Lakes."

Boisterous applause greeted this boilerplate statement for no obvious reason.

"First of all, we'll be hearing from our 2004 candidate, Jerry Dawson. As you know, Jerry just competed in a very close race in the provincial election out in Aspen Hills, and for no apparent reason, the good folks out there declined the opportunity to be represented by such a worthy gentleman as himself. He owns his own drainage business, has a lovely wife and family who I see in the front row, and he did a very able job for us all in '04, but you recall the Martin juggernaut that swept through here," (many groans and guffaws), "and it was not meant to be."

"Right after Jerry, we'll have some remarks from a newcomer to politics in this region, but a seasoned political participant," (many looks of confusion and dismay, including from me, as I had not anticipated a fourth contestant), "who is a regular contributor to the popular conservative website Fresh Domination, and a self-employed businessman as well as, I am told by friends, an avid golfer. You're going to enjoy hearing from him, I can tell, he's Peter O'Connell."

I gave a perfunc-tory wave to nobody in particular, catching the encouraging eye of Rick Shaw, who had phoned me a few nights ago to pledge his support, saying in passing, "those other two guys are muppets, they can't debate a doorknob, you should go for it, at least we'll have some fun for a change."

"With Anathema? You're kidding, right?"

"Yes, I guess so. But the old dame knows a lot, she's been around since Stanfield was alive."

"Well so have I, buddy, but a lot of people think I'm younger, I just haven't accumulated stuff like most old people do."

Of course, Bob Savage was droning on about the third party in our monumental meeting of the minds. "Last, and certainly not least, our 2000 and 2006 candidate, we all know what he can do, he's a busy executive and a leader of his community, Jag Dhaliwal."

Applause was fervent for this man, although more fervent from the back row than anywhere else. Beyond the back row, mainly outside the building, were about two hundred other Indo-Canadians who, as rumour had it, were members in good standing of our esteemed party since noon Thursday or thereabouts, and knew two things about our philosophy that appealed to them: we had family values and with Jag Dhaliwal in office, they might stand a chance of getting somwhere with concerns close to their hearts.

In other words, they were here for the same reason as all the longer-standing members.

This was good-good, I said to myself, wondering who the living ___ was going to vote for me, other than Rick Shaw and perhaps half a dozen other people who liked what I might have to say.

And that time was quickly approaching. I half listened to Dawson droning on about law and order, the wonderful work we were doing in Kandahar, and the prime minister's devotion to family values. I knew that he could ride around the room on an elephant and not get the votes of anyone behind my wife, who had arrived to take in this exotic moment wherein I would actually say something in public without typing it out on a keyboard.

Dawson proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was well suited to hide in the back row of parliament and serve out some number of years in Ottawa, for sins not disclosed. He was a masochist, obviously, because that's clearly what he wanted to do. I had the luxury of knowing that I could stand here and deliver the most astonishing political oration since Meighen was in his prime, and still walk out with a bronze medal. This was keeping me loose.

Dawson concluded with the rather feeble appeal to the default voting bloc at his disposal (but not firmly committed, his ethnicity was not going to deliver automatic support, he had to earn it, some relic of the Protestant ethic at play ...) that was as unsubtle as it was unconvincing, "Cabinet member John van der Batzen, this province's most recognizable Tory," (there it was, the T-word), "wanted to be here today to address you on his concerns that Sleeping Lakes should be represented in the government, but he was called away at the last minute to be at the airport to greet the trade delegation from China." This met with a very feeble round of applause and much public chattering.

So, it was my turn. I said that I remembered a day when the members of parliament had some power in our country, when they weren't just directed where to go and what to say by party executives and the ever-present staff of their leaders. I mentioned that I had nothing against the leadership of Stefan Doolittle, but that many things were happening in our country that concerned me, and I wondered if these things concerned him, and more importantly, concerned all of the people present "here today." (gone tomorrow?)

I made particular reference to the decline of free speech in Canada. Perhaps the most obvious example was the lack of real discussion of the fashionable topic of the time, climate change, to give it the cleaned up name that global warming now had. "Please remain seated, if you are seated, but you have before you a man who does not think that today's rainy eight degrees is some sort of cause for alarm, or indeed, that our fellow citizen Doctor Slowski is something less than a demigod."

A ripple of applause grew slowly with these remarks as people seemed to emerge from a long slumber and in some cases, they half connected with my train of thought, and rode it to the next station. The Kryzouts, matriarch, daughter, and evidently patriarch as well as possibly daughter's hippie boyfriend, all scowled and talked amongst themselves rather obviously deflating my balloon. They were big believers in global warming, had been from the very start when it was so warm in 1998. With the El Nino. I still remembered it, legendary stuff, golfed in my shorts at the Mountain on February first, owner of the course made a fortune, greens fees all through the winter. We would be boring our grandchildren with stories of it long after Doctor Slowski had been put into an institution.

[Peter O'Donnell]

"I can tell you a lot more about this free speech concern, and I regret that I would even consider it necessary. How many of you know that right here in British Columbia, a province renowned for its eccentrics and free thinkers, we have what amounts to a neo-Stalinist thought police known rather ironically as the BC Human Rights Tribunal, and that they recently spent a big wad of your tax money hearing arguments as to why Mark Steyn should not be writing what amounts to self-evident truths in the nation's leading magazine."

"But those are provincial matters," announced an apparent rival supporter, "and most people here don't know anything about that stuff. They just want to pay less taxes."

Thunderous applause greeted this ringing declaration of essential Canadian values, and I felt like the guy found holding a Starbucks cup at the annual picnic.

"Well, I just wanted to exercise my freedom of speech for a change, my friend, and speak about some real concerns. Sure, it's nice to have lower taxes. There's no point in paying too much, the whole question is, what do we want government to do, in my view, as little as absolutely necessary, and how much would it cost for them to do it efficiently? Beyond that, our governments tend to do things unsuited to them, we all know that, or we should, otherwise, why have this party at all?"

I wish I could tell you more about what Jag Dhaliwal said, but about half way through his speech, he suddenly fell to the floor. Apparently some deity, who knows which one, had a higher purpose for his existence than to lose another election, which he was almost sure to be chosen to do, because the numbers pointed in that direction.

The ambulance took his lifeless body away, and many of his supporters took the omen as their cue to leave active politics as well.

Thus it was that three hundred voting members in this diverse and fabulously exotic community had the remaining choice of two chunky white guys to push in front of the onrushing socialist juggernaut of destiny, whenever that should be required.

[Peter O'Donnell]

The executive had held a quick and very disorganized meeting behind a room divider, as though anyone present might influence their decision if they could make eye contact.

Savage was on the cell phone to someone presumably Very High Up, who was giving advice. Shortly, he called the meeting back to order.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is indeed almost an unprecedented situation. I've been told that our great friend and colleague, a sure bet as a future Cabinet Minister, Jag Dhaliwal, has passed away. I know it is hard to believe. But the Regional Vice-President tells me that we are the only riding in this province not to have a nominated candidate. And the word is on the street, Count de Roncesvalles wants an election. It is his to decide, we all know that. So we had better confirm our intentions here today," a rather unsubtle way of saying, Dawson is now the go-to man. Forget about this O'Connell guy, he is clearly nothing more than a raconteur. Nice of him to flesh out our thin field of candidates. Thanks for coming, drive safely.

"Before we vote, are there any questions for our candidates?"

To my surprise, I was asked a question by some fellow who looked like a pretend cowboy. These were dime a dozen in this part of the world, none of them had been any closer to a ranch than you could get by driving to Quesnel.

"Mr O'Connell, you don't know me, I'm the owner of Build a Better Patio and an independent voter who only joined the CPC because I'm fed up with our marijuana laws. What would you do to legalize marijuana?"

"Nothing," I replied.

"Nothing? This is British Columbia. You can't say you would do nothing."

"Well, I would be in the Doolittle government, my friend, so doing nothing would not really stick out that much. But I don't want to waste your time. The party you are looking for is any other party."

"What about same-sex marriage? Wouldya repeal it?" cried out some other person, encouraged by this free-for-all of taboo topics.

"Who me?" asked Jerry Dawson. "I believe marriage is between one man and one woman. But we can't repeal it, it's a done deal. All we can do now is live with it."

"You want my opinion, I would try to put it to some sort of referendum, like they should have done in 2003," I said, sensing that this was political suicide in Sleeping Lakes, and realizing that Dawson was such a ponce that I might be in danger of being nominated. Well that was no problem nominated was far from elected, right? I would enjoy being a constant thorn in the side of three liberals and no doubt a travelling freak show of the extreme left to boot.

"Everything that parliament did was more or less illegal from my point of view. Just like the people in it individually, everything they did ..."

Considerable laughter and applause drowned out the rest of my proposed statemernt about the misdemeanours of various individuals such as the formerly esteemed local celebrity MP Soren Waytoohigh.

[Peter O'Donnell]

"Why should we nominate you instead of someone already known to the voters of this riding?" was my favourite question.

I said, "to save him the trouble."

And they did, by a narrow margin, having decided that this might be a good way to get me out of town, and back to Ontario where perhaps I belonged.

--------------------------

Within a few days, the news came without causing much surprise -- Count Julian de Roncesvalles had seen enough of the Doolittle trainwreck, and wanted to move his act from Stornoway to the slightly better insulated 24 Sussex Drive. When his party refused to support the Tax Free Timbits Act, the Conservative government fell, and couldn't get up again.

We had sent in the paperwork, despite a rather nasty campaign by a certain person (initials A.K.) to have me disqualified for independent thought processes and a litany of other unelectable qualities she foresaw, such as a lack of religious belief in global warming, and the presence of religious belief otherwise.

At the same time, I was saying on a rather regular basis, look, I may turn THEM down, this vetting process works both ways. After all, it's not me using the name "conservative" as a dodge to get votes.

Against all odds, I passed the candidate review, although to be fair, nobody realized that Peter O'Connell the private citizen could possibly be Peter O'Donnell the blogger and thorn-in-side who had said potentially embarrassing things on the various "big three" blogs and forums, namely, Fresh Domination, Mad Dead Dinosaurs, and Five Feet Under.

If the national executive had realized this, I would have been sent off to re-education camp and told never to mention my opinions to a reporter, because as all Tories know, reporters are out to get them. It is better to let the reporters just make up the news, not to give them some to report.

This is certainly how global warming works. You don't want to confuse people by mentioning that the cold weather might be a sign of, let's say, global cooling. That would be destabilizing -- better to report that Doctor Slowski had reviewed the situation, consulted the oracles, and determined that the cooling was indeed a sign, no, a proof, of global warming.

"Can you suggest a campaign motto?" asked my campaign manager, the ever-friendly Rick Shaw.

"Let Sleeping Lakes lie?" I replied.

"That's childish and silly," intoned the Venerable One, who was the Campaign Manager's Manager, a promotion from all previous elections.

She went on, "you need to follow my advice, it's the only way to win in this riding."

I promised that I would consider it (as irony) and that I was, in any case, confident of victory, because I knew the people wanted to get rid of climate change.

Election day was set for November 10th. It would be a day that would go down in mystery.

[Peter O'Donnell]

ELECTION DAY
_________________

The four week campaign went fairly uneventfully past, all candidates swept up in the national tide that saw Count Julian de Roncesvalles losing ground to the relentless advertising onslaught from my party, portraying him as a cynical opportunist who had only returned from overseas to cash in on this opportunity to become prime minister.

On the national level, there was never even a whisper about the two issues that I held to be most important. No matter how early it snowed, or how cold it got, "climate change" or even the older name for it, "global warming," continued to be discussed in very serious tones as an imminent danger to the future of the nation.

Imagine how silly it was for Canadians to be losing sleep over the possibility, daily disproven in any case, that it might get warmer.

And as for free speech, that was not a concern to anyone but a handful of activists, like Israel Leviathan, the Calgary blogger who still remained loyal to the master's voice, no matter how silent it might be on this topic.

However, my two "pet issues" as the local TV station called them, were causing a minor ripple around Sleeping Lakes and greater Vancouver in general. I gathered that the powers of the regional party executive had heard about these unauthorized diversions, because after one all-candidates' meeting, the regional vice-president, accompanied by the region's most powerful Cabinet minister, took me into a dark corner and made veiled threats about my interests.

"You may be hurting the party with this kind of thing," I was told, "and if you are elected, you are certainly hurting yourself."

"Sounds medieval," I agreed affably. "A lot of people are reacting positively to these awful ideas, in fact, I've heard it more than a few times at the doorstep, that people had lost hope that anyone would dare to criticize the sacred cows of global warming. I might get further with people, if it wasn't so damned cold this week."

The Section 13 issue was not so familiar on the doorstep, but the idea that political correctness was being used to stifle debate in Canada rang a bell with many people, especially parents of university students, I found.

What had gone around, was coming back around from a new direction.

Against all the odds, and mainly because this is a work of fiction, I was elected. And this was just the start of the fun that lay ahead.

[Peter O'Donnell]

IN THE NEW YEAR
_____________________

It was a cold, bright day in January, but that light could not reach the inner sanctum of the PMO in Ottawa.

"Man, that was a close one," said one of the chief advisors to the Prime Minister. "We finally have our majority, but after the recounts, it's looking like just one or two. So it comes down to keeping the herd in the barn."

"Should be easy enough," remarked Stefan Doolittle, "it's not like the bad old days when people thought for themselves. Now, they are more than happy to follow directions, because they are getting them from the right people."

A wave of satisfied acceptance of this gem of wisdom echoed around the room.

However, one advisor, Phineas McGrebe, was in a contrary mood.

"We have at least one loose cannon, sir," he said. "Did you notice that we won Sleeping Lakes?"

"Yeah, never been there, I thought it was NDP country to the end of time, but some guy with a beard won the riding, right? I'll have to remind him that only socialists can have beards in this parliament."

"Well, it's a lot more than a beard. He's not only Peter O'Connell, he's Peter O'Donnell," said McGrebe, drawing out the last surname as though it were Osama bin Laden he was naming.

"So? Nicht ferstehen," said the PM, his attention more on the Cabinet list in front of him, and not seeing any such names there.

"He's that blogger on Fresh Domination," said McGrebe. "Listen to this thing he posted before the election ..."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I guess Worthington hasn't heard about the Section 13 issue, and views global warming as real, otherwise how to explain his assessment that Harper is providing good government?

These flaws are too large for any self-respecting conservative to ignore.

And this explains the real reason for the fear of Ignatieff. Four years ago, evidently, the Do-littlers decided to govern as good Liberals, in other words, centrists but without patronage corruption on the usual Liberal scale.

Now they face an actual good Liberal, and they reason (probably quite correctly) that their soft support will shift to the new guy because he's more credible as a centrist and certainly as a Liberal.

So the strategy only worked against Dijon, basically.

And any strategy would have worked against Dijon.

So we have lost our conservative political freedom of expression, all for nothing. The moment the Liberals did some internal review and went back to basics, the Doolittle strategy was reduced to shrill name-calling that is giving the CPC a self-inflicted black eye. It may charge up the political junkies in the party, but more detached observers find it both childish and offensive. As usual with this PMO. "

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Well, he was wrong about that, then, wasn't he?" said Doolittle.

"But listen, start a file on the guy, just in case."

"Just in case what?"

"Just in case he gets to Ottawa and doesn't have the usual out-of-body experience, and lose all recollection of his past thoughts as his brain slowly freezes."

"Like the rest of us," added the PM in case anyone present didn't remember.

[Dogpatch]

Sorry, I couldn't get past the first para

[Peter O'Donnell]

Life as an MP in Stefan Doolittle's world

I was the back-bencher to end all back-benchers, if I sat any further back I would be in Dogpatch's back yard.

But the Conservative Party, which had recently renamed itself the Actually Quite Liberal Party, needed my vote, because the Liberals no longer had any incentive to support them.

Nevertheless, Stefan Doolittle wanted to make sure I couldn't cause him any trouble with my wild, certainly radical, ideas about freedom of speech (should have some) and freedom from climate fraud (should have unlimited amounts).

Thus it came to pass at a rather boring reception for the Prime Minister of Youbetwestan, the PM was chatting to his chief of staff, Gavin McNastier.

"Got a file on that guy?" he asked, nodding obscurely in my direction, as I shared a few laughs with Count Julian de Roncesvalles.

"Yeah, we've dug up some dirt."

"Like what?" asked the PM, his narrow eyes narrower than usual.

"He's a conservative," offered McNastier.

"Good, that's a start."

"He's a lousy golfer."

"Could come in handy."

"Dogpatch doesn't think much of him."

"Who's Dogpatch?"

"Umm, no idea. But it could resonate with a certain demographic."

"Oh, I like that sort of thing. Remember Brian and Betty Fishcake, or John and Jane Sixpack, those voters who were supposed to be turned on by various things?"

"Vaguely."

"Well, that's the whole fun of politics for me, is to get to divide people up into demographics. Saves me the bother of getting to know them."

"I hear you, by the way, I've got an even better thing in the file. Reichard Rottweiler is about to launch a massive lawsuit against O'Connell. Says he's a white supremacist Jew-hating neo-Nazi."

"Really? Is he?"

"No, but he said Rottweiler was a neo-Stalinist thug. Very politically incorrect. Just the sort of thing we don't need now that we have this truce with the media."

"This is a truce with the media? They still say I am a dangerous right winger."

"Yeah, I know, but they would say anyone was a dangerous right winger if they hadn't received instructions from You Know Who."

"Yeah, unfortunately, I do know who."

"Say, isn't that Rottweiler there, with Montague Killpecker?"

"Montague Killpecker as in the advisor to Count Julian?"

"Yep, him, he's a close buddy of Rottweiler. They do law together."

"No doubt, but who are those skinheads with them?"

"Umm, if I had to guess, anti-rational activists. They like to protest common sense and that sort of thing."

"Well, it looks like Peter O'Connell is about to get a pie in the face. They like to do that sort of thing, I've had my security guys tell me all about it."

"Oh my God (OMG if you're under forty), you're right, they are going straight for him and ..."

At that very moment, a press photographer took a candid shot of Count Julian talking to me and some other MP who must have been a Bloc member because he seemed to have a personality ... the flash of light startled me and I dropped a folder, bent over to pick it up, and some knob in a black shirt and dark glasses fell over me and let loose a cream pie that hit squarely on the patrician features of Count Julian de Roncesvalles.

"That's not going to end well," observed McNastier to the Prime Minister.

I got up with my papers to discover Count Julian standing in utter disbelief, cream pie dripping on the floor, accepting the consolations of his aide-de-camp Killpecker, the enormous frame of Rottweiler draped around them, and several skinheads running at top speed for the exits, where security guards were attempting to tackle them.

"So," I addressed Killpecker and Rottweiler, "how are they hangin?"

[Peter O'Donnell]

"You just wait," snarled Rottweiler, "the Canadian people will find out just who you are. You don't belong in a place like this."

"You've got that right. You must be hungry, help yourselves to some pie."

Count Julian was by now spluttering away, "This is not the way things should work. This is not the Liberal way. Besides, I hate coconut cream pie."

"I hate having my freedom of speech taken away, so we've all got our issues."

By now the PM had wandered over, and was saying, "I'm so sorry, Julian, this is why we are trying to keep extremists out of our party," fixing me with the Famous Look.

"So now it's my fault? Ask Rottweiler to explain it to you, I'm sure you've met before."

"Actually no, we've never had the pleasure," said the PM. "But I've heard good things about you."

"Yeah, well you're listening to the wrong people," I said, wandering off.

"Damned extremist, thinks he's entitled to his opinions," said Doolittle.

"That's not Canada," said Count Julian, looking miserable with pie all over his face. "That's not the country I left and might have come back to rule at any time."

By now, Joe Laydown and Gilles Dujacques had wandered over, seeing quite a crowd of journalists.

"I want to add that the NDP is very much against extremism in all forms, except for a few," said Laydown theatrically. "And I blame people like Peter O'Connell for the violence."

"Well this isn't exactly violence," said Gilles Dujacques, "more like the waste of a good pie. This is why Quebec needs to be free from the chains of federalism. We don't throw pies, we just serve an inferior vintage when we want to use food to make a point."

"Well, to me this is violence and a demonstration of the dangers of neo-Nazi conspiracy," said Rottweiler in his theatrical whimper. "This is what I am fighting against, as well as, ironically, for."

"Perhaps you've said too much," said Killpecker in a stage whisper.

"I can never say too much," declared Rottweiler. "But O'Connell can -- I tell you this, the parliament must be rid of all ultra-conservatives, whether they say they are, or not. I should decide all things. There's something I need to tell you, I've been keeping this a secret, but ..."

Horns were growing out of his head !!!

I was waking up !!!

This wasn't really happening -- I KNEW IT -- there was no way some man of little consequence like myself could get elected in Canada. Why, the people would rather have a store dummy come to life and stand up for them -- WHAT A NICE SUIT -- a perfect suit.

And the other hint that this was a dream? Rottweiler getting ready to say who he really was.

That only happens after the fact. What fact? Don't let it creep up on you, because it's coming.

"So we're off the hook?" said Doolittle-Harper to nobody in particular.

"You were never on it," said Fate. This is Canada. Relax. Let your mind go blank.

[Peter O'Donnell]

Uh-oh, I am dreaming again.

One cold and windy day in February, Count Julian stood up in the House to read his non-confidence motion in the government of Stefan Doolittle.

"He still has money left to give away, and the Canadian people demand that our Natural Governing Party should get in there and secure those assets, however small, for the use of the appropriate patronage clients. This is only right, this is our Canadian heritage, and this is what my members want me to do. I am only a hostage to their demands."

Considerable applause mingled with laughter greeted this pronouncement.

NDP leader Joe Laydown was next to speak. He went over the atrocious record of the government on the important files, kowtowing to China, surrendering to the Taliban, cooling down the earth which seemed a bit odd given that my feet were still thawing out from the daily walk over to the Hill from my mistress's apartment (hey, I am dreaming right?) He concluded, "much as I hate to co-operate with anyone from the Natural Governing Party without a cabinet seat secured, we shall support their motion."

Finally, we heard from the Bloc leader, who basically said with a shrug, "hey, time for an election, we need some more roads paved in the Saguenay."

The vote proceeded. By now I was sitting as an independent in a little corner up by the entrance to the Peace Tower, from where I could almost make out the Speaker's face, but not quite.

When they came to me, the vote was tied 153-153. The speaker had not voted, everyone else was present, and it was up to me now.

I stood up and said, "Anyone got some gum?"