The best-read Nosey Parker blog post ever — by a long shot — was a piece I did back in May 2011 called The Dog That Cornered Osama Bin Laden on the Navy SEAL war dog named Cairo. I think some very popular dog websites and discussion groups had posted prominent links to the piece, because there was massive readership of that piece for MONTHS. Years even. The story ended up being included in a book about war dogs.

Another 2011 blog post that’s been getting a lot of recent activity — much less than the Cairo piece, of course — is the one I’m rerunning here. Because of the Cairo phenomenon, I was curious if this piece on Gig Young was spiking again two years after it appeared because it was being pointed to by a special-interest network — on old Hollywood this time instead of dogs.

So I added a note at the end of the piece asking readers to tell me how they came to it. Turns out there was no organized promotion going on, just people who had been watching Gig Young movies on DVD or TV and then searching the Internet to find out more about the actor and his films.

There must be an awful lot of people looking at Gig Young movies and then reading the Nosey Parker blog post on him because a Google search for “Gig Young” gives you his Wikipedia entry first (of course) and then, in second spot, the Nosey Parker piece, ahead of even his IMDb link.

Although I’m repeating the blog post here, I’m also including this link to the story as it originally appeared back on March 2, 2011, for anyone who wants to check out the string of comments attached to it.

I’m doing this because I’ll be away for a couple of weeks and out of Internet contact, so I thought I’d leave something fairly interesting on this space while I’m gone. It’s a long piece too, so you can read it in two or three sittings if you’d prefer. Take your time. See you later.

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Almost nobody remembers Gig Young now, but 41 years ago he was the toast of Hollywood.

The Academy Awards for 1969 were presented on the evening of April 7, 1970, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

It was the second year the Oscars were televised worldwide and it was also the second year there was no host — a brief interregnum between the Bob Hope era and most of the 1970s when hosting was done by committee (before one last hurrah for Bob Hope and the beginning of the Johnny Carson era).

Winning the Oscar for Best Picture was Midnight Cowboy, the only X-rated film in the history of the Academy Awards to win Best Picture.

John Wayne got the only Oscar of his career as Best Actor for his role of crusty Rooster Cogburn in True Grit and Maggie Smith won Best Actress as an eccentric Scottish teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Goldie Hawn (in  one of those typical Oscar “huh?” decisions) got the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Cactus Flower.

And the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor goes to … Gig Young for his performance as Rocky, the sleazy and manipulative promoter of a Depression-era dance marathon in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

It was a popular choice in Hollywood, where Gig Young had established himself over the previous 30 years as a charming, genial party guy who often played the role of a charming, genial lush onscreen  — and on the Tonight Show couch as a frequent, amusing guest of Johnny Carson.

Young had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor twice before, for 1951′s Come Fill The Cup and 1958′s Teacher’s Pet, but the 1969 win was the pinnacle of his career — and the beginning of the end.

Actually the beginning of the end for Gig Young began with the birth of Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Nov. 4, 1913.

For most of the next three decades, Gig Young was Byron Barr, a charming, genial kid and aspiring actor.

According to most biographies, Byron was raised in Washington, D.C. (more about that later) before winning a scholarship at the end of high school to the famous Pasadena Community Playhouse in California, where he worked on his acting chops before being picked up as a contract bit player by Warner Bros. in the late 1930s.

The young actor was still known as Byron Barr — and got the occasional screen credit under that name — until his breakout role in 1942′s The Gay Sisters, in which he played a character named … Gig Young.

Warner Bros. decided “Gig Young” was a catchier name than “Byron Barr” (and — unbelievable as it may seem — there was another young supporting actor kicking around Hollywood at the time also named Byron Barr) so “Byron Barr” stopped being a charming, amiable second-string actor and “Gig Young” stopped being a movie character’s name.

Gig Young, actor, then reverted to Byron Barr, pharmacist’s mate in the U.S. Coast Guard, for the duration of World War II.

When the war ended and Byron Barr returned to civilian life, Warner Bros. dropped his contract. But Byron Barr decided to keep his Warner Bros. stage name and Gig Young quickly became a solid, busy Hollywood presence in movies like Wake of the Red Witch, The Three Musketeers and Only the Valiant.

In the mid 1950s he was hosting the television series Warner Bros. Presents while keeping up his busy movie career and busier social life.

By 1956 he was on to his third wife, Elizabeth Montgomery, daughter of famed Hollywood actor Robert Montgomery. Elizabeth Montgomery would go on to superstardom in the 1960s as Samantha Stephens, the nose-twitching hexess in TV’s Bewitched (1964-72).

But first she had to dump Gig Young. Montgomery divorced him in 1963, citing physical and emotional abuse fuelled by her husband’s alcoholism.

The Gig Young party gig was starting to run low on steam, but there were still two more wives, a pretty good TV series called The Rogues and that 1969 Academy Award to go before the whole charming, amiable Gig Young persona blew apart in a million pieces.

He married his fourth wife, Hollywood real estate agent Elaine Williams, shortly after the Montgomery divorce and daughter Jennifer — Byron Barr/Gig Young’s only child — came along in April 1964.

Of course, Williams was divorcing Barr/Young within three years (physical-emotional abuse/alcoholism) and in the subsequent child support proceedings Barr/Young proclaimed that Jennifer was not his biological child and he was not responsible for her upkeep. The court ruled against him, but more about that later.

So Gig Young staggered into the 1970s, clutching his Oscar, with a few more movie roles to come but far more trouble.

Typical was his experience in 1973 when Mel Brooks picked Gig Young to play the Waco Kid — a role ultimately assumed by Gene Wilder — in the groundbreaking western comedy Blazing Saddles.

Let’s let Mel Brooks tell you what happened on the first day of filming when Cleavon Little’s character Bart and the Waco Kid (Gig Young), a broken-down, drunken gunslinger, meet for the first time in jail:

“We draped Gig Young’s legs over and hung him upside down. And he started to talk and he started shaking. I said, ‘This guy’s giving me a lot. He is giving plenty. He’s giving me the old alky shake. Great.’ And then it got serious, because the shaking never stopped, and green stuff started spewing out of his mouth and nose, and he started screaming. And, I said, ‘That’s the last time I’ll ever cast anybody who really is that person.’ If you want an alcoholic, don’t cast an alcoholic… Anyway, poor Gig Young, it was the first shot on Friday, nine in the morning, and an ambulance came and took him away. I had no movie.”

Gene Wilder flew from New York to Los Angeles over the weekend and was playing the Waco Kid on Monday morning, but that’s another story.

The DTs didn’t deter Gig Young and he was still firmly on his downward spiral when he hooked up with director Sam Peckinpah (another guy on a downward spiral) to make a couple of ultra-violent, nihilistic movies — 1974′s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and 1975′s The Killer Elite.

(It seems to be during the making of these films that Gig Young started collecting guns.)

There were two more movies after that and one more marriage before Gig Young’s ignominious end.

Young was an invisible presence in a terrible movie, The Hindenburg, also released in 1975, and then he hit rock bottom in 1978 when he was cast in a patchwork reworking of an unreleased kung-fu movie called Game of Death — incomplete footage of which was shot prior to star Bruce Lee’s death in 1973.

So Gig Young’s last movie had him in a minor supporting role to an action star who had been totally inactive for five years.

Not really a good mental and emotional place to be for his fifth marriage on Sept. 27, 1978, to 31-year-old German actress Kim Schmidt (sometimes erroneously listed as 21 and sometimes erroneously listed as Australian).

I’m not sure why Kim Schmidt married him — maybe it was true love, maybe it was Oscar love, maybe it was just something to do — but it was a bad decision.

Three weeks after the wedding Gig Young ended the marriage in their condo apartment, Suite 1BB of the Osborne Apartments on West 57th Street in New York City, on Oct. 19, 1978.

He ended it by loading a Smith & Wesson .38-calibre revolver — one of many, many firearms he kept in the apartment — and putting one slug through his wife’s head and one slug through the roof of his mouth.

Exit, Gig Young.

But not gracefully.

Adding insult to felonious injury, his will left the bulk of his estate to his 1970s agent, Marty Baum of CAA, and $10 to his putative daughter, Jennifer Young. (How creepy is that, taking as your real last name the fictional name of a guy who had disowned you as his daughter?)

In the end, it was up to Gig Young’s sister, Genevieve Barr Merry, to bury her brother. Which she did, in the Green Hill Cemetery in Waynesville, North Carolina.

And that is where Gig Young’s story ends and mine begins.

A couple of years ago, I took an extended road trip down the east coast of the U.S., partly to write travel stories, partly to heal wounds of a dissolved marriage and partly to feed an eccentric hobby of mine — visiting the graves of interesting dead people.

I must admit that Gig Young didn’t meet the main criterion of my search for dead people — for the most past they were people I admired or, at least, could stand in awe of.

People like Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone (a simple stone on a rural hillside in the Finger Lakes district of upper New York); Mark Twain ( a grotesque monument in Elmira, N.Y., erected 30 years after his death by his daughter to jointly honour her dead Russian composer husband); Billie Burke, the actress who played the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, alongside her previously deceased/bankrupt husband Flo Ziegfield of Ziegfield Follies fame (simple graves on a hilltop outside New York City shaded by a huge statue Burke erected in honour of her mother). People like that.

But my ultimate destination was North Carolina, the place of my birth and the place where I had scattered my father’s ashes over his parents’ graves the better part of a decade earlier.

I was doing some travel writing/gathering up in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains first and that was where I stumbled across the fact that Gig Young was buried in Waynesville.

That was also when I became aware that Young — an actor I was very familiar with from my childhood — had died in a bizarre murder-suicide. And I couldn’t figure out what he was doing buried in a small mountain town in North Carolina , far away from Hollywood and New York City and even Washington, D.C., where he supposedly grew up.

So driving down the Blue Ridge Parkway chasing 19th Century inns, steam locomotives and a moonshiner named Popcorn Sutton, I stopped off at the Green Hill Cemetery on a hot, sunny June afternoon to look up Gig Young.

One major thing that distinguishes American cemeteries from Canadian cemeteries is the number of little flags erected at gravesites. Those flags are usually put there by the American Legion and other post-service fellowships to honour departed members.

In a normal U.S. cemetery, a third to a half of the graves will be showing flags, in part because of higher American war death tolls in the past half century and in part because mandatory conscription — and thus an extended base of former military personnel — was in effect in the U.S. from the early 1940s through the 1970s.

Then there’s another quirk: The further south you travel, the more Confederate flags you see intermingled with United States flags in cemeteries. Those flags are maintained by organizations like the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy to honour the southern dead of a war fought 150 years ago.

I tell you this because the Green Hill Cemetery is so old it has far more graves sprouting Confederate flags than U.S. flags.

I like cemeteries: They’re calm and peaceful and have interesting stories to tell. And I generally like people who work in cemeteries: They tend to be calm and peaceful and have interesting stories to tell too.

And when you’re looking for a needle — one single grave — in a haystack — a cemetery with anywhere between 300 and 300,000 (Arlington) graves — the people who work there are a good place to start the search.

Since there aren’t usually a lot of living people in a cemetery on a midweek afternoon, it didn’t take long to find caretaker Lonnie Higgins.

Lonnie was a nice guy but a fairly young guy, cemeterily speaking, so he didn’t have quite the sense of historical ownership I was looking for.

Lonnie could direct me to a grist stone once operated by Daniel Boone (everything in the mountains of North Carolina has some connection to Daniel Boone), to the car dealer buried in a Model T Ford and to the grave of the very last serving Confederate officer (Alden Howell, died 1947 age 106), but he had no idea who Gig Young or Byron Barr was or where he was buried.

Lonnie thought a little more.

“And we’ve got that actress here, the one from Bewitched.”

“Elizabeth Montgomery?” I asked in disbelief.

“No, not Samantha. Her mother.”

“Agnes Moorehead?”

“I guess. I heard she was buried here but I’ve never seen her grave myself.”

That was just too weird: The guy once married to Elizabeth Montgomery and the woman who once played her mother on TV buried in the same rural cemetery in the middle of nowhere.

And then, thankfully, Fred Rathbone drove up in his truck.

Fred was the former Green Hill caretaker, retired now, but the main man for 35 years and the repository of knowledge I had been looking for.

And yes, Fred was related to Basil Rathbone, the Sherlock Holmes actor whose urn crypt in a New York mausoleum I had recently been locked out of.

“He was my daddy’s second or third cousin.”

Well, everybody in North Carolina is pretty much related to everybody else, including Daniel Boone, so the Rathbone connection was no surprise.

With the pleasantries over, I asked Fred about Gig Young.

“Oh, yes, he’s here but not under that name. Under the family name.”

“Barr?”

“Yeah, that’s it. I’ve seen it many times but I don’t remember right where now. Over that way somewhere. There’s a family monument and then the individual markers.”

“And Agnes Moorehead? She’s buried here too?”

Fred looked confused.

“Lonnie told me Agnes Moorehead, the mother from Bewitched, is buried here too.”

Fred’s furrowed brow cleared.

“Oh, no. The Bewitched connection is to Gig Young. He was married to Samantha, you know. Lonnie just got his witches mixed up.”

Lonnie and Fred and I had a good chuckle about that one.

So Lonnie and Fred went on talking and watching birds and listening to the wind in the trees while I went grave hunting.

And about 45 minutes later — after finally turning 90 degrees from the direction Fred had pointed me in — I found the Barr family plot.

And under the Barr monument there were five gravestones:

John E. Barr 1877-1975

Emma C. Barr 1879-1944

Donald E. Barr 1906-1949

Floyd H. Barr 1883-1969

Byron E. Barr 1913-1978

So there was Gig Young, buried with his family under a modest stone stained with I don’t know what, except maybe shame.

I went to find Fred and Lonnie and showed them the grave.

Fred told me John and Emma were Gig/Byron’s parents, Donald was his older brother and Floyd was his uncle.

And Fred told me Gig/Byron’s father, John, had served in the Philippines in the Spanish-American War (1899-1901) with Fred’s grandfather.

“So the family was here for a long time?”

“Oh yeah, they owned a cannery.”

“Well, all the published information says Gig … um, Byron … was born in Minnesota and grew up in Washington.”

“Well, John and Emma were away for a while but they came back when Byron was six or so and he grew up here. That’s for sure. I grew up with him. I was a lot younger than he was but I saw him around.”

So that’s why Gig Young is buried in Waynesville, N.C. At the end of his sad, broken life, his sister took him home to be buried with his family in the little mountain town where he spent his childhood.

And that’s pretty much it.

Except for the daughter, Jennifer.

Even though her father had denied her and spurned her in his will, Jennifer Young grew up in Hollywood claiming some reflected glory from her famous/infamous father/non-father.

She has a music career of sorts now and is trying to find backers for a documentary on her father, but she was known as a fixture on the Hollywood party scene for years and made headlines in the past 15 years for two things.

1. Jennifer was BFF and former roommate of Beverly Hills madam Heidi Fleiss, although Jennifer denied persistent accusations that she was one of Heidi’s stable of high-priced Hollywood hookers. Charlie Sheen, a Heidi client, could shed more light on that if he didn’t have troubles of his own that probably outweigh most self-inflicted career setbacks endured by Jennifer’s father/non-father. (I really think Charlie should take a good look at Gig Young’s lifestyle choices. But he won’t. See you at the end of the road, Charlie.)

2. In the mid-1990s, Jennifer launched a highly publicized campaign to get possession of her father’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar from agent Marty Baum, who had claimed it in a round-about way under the terms of Gig Young’s will. In a tripartite agreement involving Baum, Jennifer Young and the Academy  of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (legal owners of the statue), Baum agreed to turn over the Oscar to Jennifer on his death.

Well, Marty Baum died in November 2010. Jennifer Young got the Oscar in December and the Academy says she can keep it for 48 weeks of every year until she dies. That’s about as close to a happy ending as this story can get.

How the heck could a word spelled “Toews” possibly be pronounced “Tayvz?”

I’m here to explain. Sort of.

I say “sort of” because, even when you know the reasons why, it still doesn’t make a lick of sense.

For starters, both Jonathan Toews, captain of the NHL Chicago Blackhawks, and Vic Toews, Canada’s minister of public safety, pronounce their surname the same way — and for the same reason.

They’re both Manitoba boys (although the political one was born in Paraguay) and both are of Mennonite stock. Surprisingly, Toews is a not-uncommon name throughout both the Canadian West and the American Midwest wherever Mennonites settled in the 19th and early 20th century.

Jonathan Toews’ family was originally Dutch Mennonite but, because of religious persecution, moved to Germany in the 16th Century before eventually emigrating to Canada. And Vic Toews’ forebears were also German Mennonites (quite probably originating in Holland too) who wandered east into the steppes of Russia before Vic’s grandparents were killed during the Russian Revolution and a relative brought Vic’s father to Canada in the 1920s.

So the commonality is “Mennonite” and “German” and that’s where the strange pronunciation comes in — from the weird and wonderful German/Deutsch language, considered by linguists to be one of the 10 most difficult languages in the world to master. (I’ll second that — I’ve been failing miserably to learn German for about four years now.)

A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in 30 hours, French in 30 days, and German in 30 years.

— Mark Twain, That Awful German Language

We’re going to ignore Vic Toews from here on in and just concentrate on Jonathan Toews in honour of Captain Serious’s current appearance in the Stanley Cup final (and because, as a general rule of thumb, I ignore Vic Toews whenever possible).

According to the genealogists, the original Dutch name was “van Toovs” which, when the family sought refuge in Germany, became “Töws” and later — without the umlaut (those two dots over the letter) — “Toews.”

There are a couple of things here and I’ll try to keep them simple (Ha! This is German — no chance.)

The simplest one is the W which, in German, is pronounced V. (And the V is sometimes — but not always — pronounced F. So Volkswagen is actually pronounced “Folks Vagen.” And Jetta is pronounced “Yetta” and so on.)

The hard one to explain is how “oe” comes out “eh.” But then it’s German, so it doesn’t have to make sense.

The first thing you need to know is the O with an umlaut is a completely different letter of the alphabet than a regular, un-umlauted O. And the same goes for the letter A and the letter U which also have umlauted versions — which also sound NOTHING like the original.

So I’m tempted to say the German alphabet has 29 letters, not 26 — except there’s also that strange device called “eszett” in German — ß — which is sort of SZ but not really. And there are about half a dozen other combos — like äu — which have lives of their own unrelated to all the other single letters in the alphabet. So maybe it’s a 35- or 36-letter alphabet. What can I tell ya, Jake — it’s German.

But we’re getting off track here. Back to “Toews.” The Germans changed the Dutch  “van Toovs” to “Töws” (remember, the Germans pronounce W as V) and when a German doesn’t have an umlaut handy, he or she adds an E after the O — as in “oe” — so the reader knows the writer would be using an umlaut if he or she had one.

The worst thing is that it’s almost impossible for anyone raised speaking English to pronounce “ö” (umlauted O) or “oe” properly. This explanation will drive native German speakers crazy, but it’s sort of like pronouncing a long A in English  — but with your lips rounded like you would to pronounce U.

You have to make a Derek Zoolander or Angelina Jolie face, in other words. And you still aren’t pronouncing it right. The English-speaking mouth simply can’t do it. I swear.

Besides, it hurst your lips and makes you look funny. So, in the words of Don Cherry, “Don’t do it, kids.”

Again, this will drive my German friends crazy (Nein-nein-nein, Alan!)  but I have a little pronunciation trick. Whenever I see two vowels together in a German word, I know to just pronounce the SECOND of the two vowels. That’s how I know Riesling wine is pronounced REEEZ-ling, not RIIIIIZ-ling. Like I said, that probably drives Germans crazy. (And I still actually call it RIIIIIZ-ling because that’s how I erroneously learned the word oh so many decades ago.)

So back to “Toews” again. We now know the W is going to be pronounced V and we’ve decided to igore the O part of the OE combo altogether — and the E in German is pronounced (sort of like) “eh.”

So that’s how “Toews” is pronounced “T-eh-V-s.”

I told you it wouldn’t make a lick of sense.

Don’t get all puffed up about it, but the rest of the world has suddenly decided that Toronto is cool. Or at least interesting.

And, yes, I think it probably has an awful lot to do with Gawker’s exposé last month about the elusive smartphone video that may or may not show Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.

No matter how much the allegation startled Torontonians, imagine the double-take it forced on non-Canadians who used to find it convenient to view Toronto as “New York run by the Swiss” (in the words of Peter Ustinov), a rather sterile and correct metropolis.

(I say “non-Canadians” advisedly because Canadians outside the GTA have such a generally low opinion of Toronto that they would not be surprised by almost any scandalous allegation about our city, our people or our politicians. We Torontonians, on the other hand, think of ourselves as a pretty decent, cosmopolitan lot and the rest of the world outside Canada sees us — or used to see us — as a bunch of nice, polite, boring do-gooders.)

But all that’s changed since the Gawker foofaraw about Ford (or Slurpy or whoever) smoking something in a glass pipe. If Mayor McCheese is a possible  crackhead, doesn’t that make the whole damn town a little … impulsive … unpredictable … dangerous?

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at this headline on Time magazine’s website last week.

That’s Time magazine. Not the force it used to be, perhaps, but still a news outlet that garners serious international attention. And that story hit the No. 3 spot on Time’s “most read” chart for June 4.

Unfortunately, they filed the story under the category “Swampland,” but what the hell — you can’t have everything.

Amazingly, a Google search of “Rob Ford” produces almost twice as many results (227 million) as one for    “Ford Motor” (120 million).

I won’t say the sophisticates of New York or Berlin or Hong Kong are looking at us with admiration now, but they aren’t taking us for granted any more. They’re watching our eyes more closely and paying attention to any fast movements we make with our hands.

It reminds me a bit of when I learned that a former newspaper colleague, a pleasant and rather ordinary woman, had a concurrent alternate identity as a very hands-on, practice-makes-perfect online sex columnist and therapist (no, not anyone connected with the Toronto Sun). I did look at her in a completely different light after that. I didn’t think it made her a better or worse journalist — just a far more complex and nuanced person than I had previously given her credit for. Much like the rest of the world is now looking at Toronto.

It’s not just the Ford issue that’s set tongues wagging about us, but I think the high-profile Ford kerfuffle started the ball rolling.

The Ikea monkey business hit a sweet spot all over the world and John Malkovich’s  recent quick response to help a badly bleeding tourist has been very big — and very positive for Toronto. Imagine a town where movie stars hang out on street corners just waiting to save the afflicted and downtrodden — that’s Toronto, baby.

The Cooling of Toronto has been something in the making for a while. Toronto’s cultural milieu has been on the world’s radar for years, what with Pride Week, Caribana, same-sex marriage, our bubbling music scene and, of course, the high-wattage, celebrity-friendly Toronto International Film Festival.

But even when we were seen to be sorta trendy and a bit avant-garde, the package was still wrapped up in a cuddly blanket of “nice.” Nice is nice but not particularly exciting.

Now that the world’s seen our crack pipes, leather corsets and whip collection, we don’t seem quite so nice. But far more interesting.

And that means things that happen in Toronto — fairly ordinary things in the normal course of events — have suddenly acquired a cachet and deeper lustre simply because they happen in Toronto. Toronto — a cool town, a town with buzz, a town where anything can happen. New York run by Brazilians, not Swiss. (Toronto will never really compare with NYC, of course, but maybe that just means we’re coming into our own, with a completely different set of attributes.)

Future international coverage of Pride Toronto, Caribana and TIFF, for example, will certainly have more zing and a higher profile this summer than similar coverage did in earlier years. And more general news stories will feature Toronto more prominently as a locale or an angle or a flavour.

Take, for example, this piece that appeared on the deadspin.com sports website on Monday. (Deadspin is the site that broke the story about college football star Manti Te’o's “dead” girlfriend being non-existent.)

The article by Hamilton Nolan is about Toronto Pro SuperShow, a three-day cornucopia of all things fit and muscled and strong and steroidal and spray-tanned that took place last weekend at the Toronto Convention Centre.

It’s a good piece — no Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, yet good — but the surprising thing is that Deadspin sent someone up from New York City to cover it. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened a year ago.

The fact that deadspin.com is owned by Gawker may have something to do with it, but not all. Gawker and everyone else is simply paying much more attention to what happens in Toronto than they ever did before.

And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Having a rep as an edgy town, a naughty town can attract the wrong sort of “friends.” And once you get a reputation for being down and dirty, it can be rather hard to play the girl next door again.

It’s a little like when the powers that be suddenly declared Toronto a “world-class city” in the mid-1980s. What had been a fun, laid-back, relatively affordable town became — in a matter of two or three years — expensive, snobbish and wound-too-tight.

I long for the Toronto that used to exist before it became a “world class city.” I’m just hoping we don’t all end up regretting the day the rest of the world decided Toronto was cool. And it’s especially weird if Toronto is now cool because of … Rob Ford?

And listened to. And spied upon.

I’m not paranoid. (Well, maybe a little, but who in his or her right mind isn’t?) I’m being realistic.

And it’s not a matter of egotism. How can I be special if I’m just one of millions and (in the grand scheme of things) billions?

Apparently somewhere around 13 billion phone calls are made every day in the world.

The simple fact that anyone can even make that estimate and the fact that the technology and infrastructure exist to successfully transmit those billions of daily electronic conversations mean they can be tracked and recorded and listened to — if someone has the resources and will to do so.

Same goes for e-mails, text-messaging and any other form of electronic, over-the-air or through-the-wire communication.

I don’t think governments should be doing any of that but it doesn’t surprise me that any government that has the capacity can’t resist the temptation to do so. At first just a little, within stringent boundaries, carefully monitored and with a huge background briefing folder of reasons why it is so very necessary.

Then, as the ball gets rolling, the numbers start climbing exponentially, the defences get sloppy and finally become non-existent, and the massive invasion of privacy and abuse of civil rights becomes entrenched, commonplace and business as usual.

Governments can’t help themselves. It is the nature of the beast. No matter what they say.

Just look at the income tax you pay.

“Income tax” is a concept completely alien to most of human existence. It was introduced in Canada and much of the rest of the world less than a century ago to pay for the enormous cost of World War I. A terrible, unnatural measure but an absolutely necessary one (the government of the day said) to ensure the survival of our culture, our free society and democracy in general. And, of course (the government said) such an abomination will be done away with as soon as our survival is assured and we can return to “normal” life.

Fat chance. Governments have always had a hard time giving up powers they’ve acquired, whether those powers be legitimate and above-board or surreptitious and opaque.

And so, of course, we continue to pay income tax — at rates that would be beyond horrified belief for Canadian taxpayers eight or nine decades ago. Yet we pay — partly because we understand it’s how we keep our society functioning but mainly because we know what would happen to us if we didn’t pay.

The government says “You owe us and you must pay — or else” much like a mob enforcer. Only instead of split lips and broken bones, the threatened punishment can be years in jail or the destruction of one’s life and/or business.

In other words, income tax is just extortion — carried out on a massive scale and done with the weight and authority of the law. But still, when all is said and done, it’s extortion. Just like the OLG is another bookie when push comes to shove and the LCBO is just another bootlegger. But legal, sanctified and so much more powerful than a freelance entrepreneur.

Governments will dress up their actions in fancy clothes but, in the end, it all boils down to “Because we say so — and we’ll hurt you if you defy us.”

I’m just using income tax as an example of what governments are willing to impose on their citizens in the name of … the greater good, national security, whatever.

Same goes for monitoring the lives and conversations of citizens, collecting personal data, intercepting private communications.

Of course they say they aren’t actually opening the electronic mail — just looking at the addresses, tracking frequency of posts, checking the weight for suspicious enclosures, maybe doing a chemical analysis scan here and there to see if a suspicious communication is laced with the intellectual equivalent of toxic ricin. But open it? Naw, we wouldn’t do that — you can trust us.

Well, I don’t trust them. And that’s just based on the empirical evidence of past actions and past government denials and later defences of reprehensible actions.

So, if I believe the government has the ability to monitor, capture and analyze all our electronic communications — which I do — then I also believe they will exercise that ability in some manner — which I do.

Should I be upset about that? Yes. Am I surprised? No.

Because governments, as organisms, have even fewer scruples than individuals and will go to extraordinary lengths to achieve what are seen as important goals and crucial payoffs.

And the individuals in government start mixing up their partisan beliefs and agendas with the self-serving idea that what is good for them and their allies is good for the country and good for me.

I’m interested to see how they’ll dance and weave — not very well or convincingly, I imagine — around the issue. But whatever they say, I don’t think they’ll change. I don’t think my rights and freedoms will be better protected. I don’t think Canada will be better served or protected.

And so the only way to protect myself is to claim my freedom and autonomy as openly and often as possible. I despise them for listening in and I do not give them permission to do so, but I am not going to cultivate what I say or think because of any concern about Stasi wiretaps or their cyberspace equivalent. This is Canada, not East Germany.

So I operate on the assumption that anything I write or say is for public consumption, one way or the other.

Listen to me. Read my lips. I will say exactly the same things in private that I say in public. And if you can read my mind, please follow the instructions I’ve just given you.

I think we can all agree on two things:

1) Cities evolve or stagnate

and

2) Not all change is good.

But c’mon — a Walmart big-box store sitting in the heart of Toronto right on top of funky, run-down, pedestrian-friendly, thinking-outside-the-big-box Kensington Market, dividing the remnants of Downtown Chinatown and Downtown Little Italy?

What was RioCan, developer of the Bathurst St. Walmart plan, thinking?

No wonder 65,000 (and counting) people have — in less than a week — signed a grassroots online petition objecting to RioCan’s attempt to change the city’s Official Plan to allow their Walmart development to go ahead.

And no wonder more than 400 people (by my count) with at least 100 more turned away at the door showed up for a public-input meeting at College St. United Church Thursday evening.

As you would suppose, most of those in attendance were there to oppose the development — did I mention it calls for a 300-car underground parking garage? — but a contingent of half a dozen RioCan developers, lawyers and consultants was also there to defend their baby.

And, of course, there was heckling. But very polite, very Toronto, quite intelligent and almost anti-belligerent heckling. A typical jibe was this, obviously aimed at a RioCan functionaire relaying (perhaps) the goings-on to higher authorities: “You said you were here to listen. So get off your cell phone and listen.” I love that — not smart phone, not iPhone, not BlackBerry, but “cell phone” — Kensington Market retro.

I’m not going to go into great detail about the relative merits of either side’s case or what was said at the Thursday night meeting. You can read or hear that elsewhere. And you’ve probably figured out where I stand on the issue.

There was such a turnout Thursday night that city planners have scheduled another opportunity for public input on July 9 in the City Hall council chambers (the big time). And there’s a separate public meeting to discuss the larger issue of Bathurst St. redevelopment back at College St. United Church on Monday evening (June 10 at 7 p.m., I believe).

But one thing you should know is that, whatever happens with the Kensington Market Walmart store, it’s not an isolated event — it’s a trend.

 

By the way, the brand name is Walmart, not Wal-Mart. Has been since 2008 even though the parent company’s official name is still Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

In the last fiscal year, Walmart Canada opened 73 new stores and most of those were in the 100,000-square-foot range (roughly the size of the proposed Kensington Market store) or smaller, not the much larger suburban mega-store model.

That’s partly because — in a defensive move — Walmart picked up the leases of a bunch of Zellers stores that were shut down when competitor Target moved into the Canadian market. But it’s also because Walmart Canada now has stores pretty much everywhere they need and want them in suburbia and has to look to high-density urban cores for future expansion.

And that, of course, means more compact stores packed into tighter slots. Like the Bathurst St. half-block site just across the road from  dumpy old Kensington Market. And that means more push-back from inner city residents who don’t want big box stores — even if they’re slightly smaller big boxes — bringing more traffic, more problems and less economic and social diversity into their neighbourhoods and communities.

Dumpy old Kensington Market does feel very threatened by the encroachment of big boxes like Walmart. But really, what have we lost if we lose Kensington Market? It’s just a dump, after all.

Well, think about this:

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was terribly damaged by the anti-cleric rampages of the French Revolution. It was an 800-year-old dump. It was in such awful shape the authorities were thinking about tearing it down in the early 19th Century. Then Victor Hugo wrote his 1831 best-seller The Hunchback of Notre Dame and suddenly everyone fell in love with the old cathedral again.

And how about the Alamo? Now one of the most iconic symbols of America, the old San Antonio mission had fallen on hard times after the Mexican army wiped out Davy Crockett and his Texican and Tejano rebel compadres in 1836. At various times it was used as a warehouse and a stable. It was a dump. And it too was almost torn down before the Daughters of the Republic of Texas took it over and restored it in the early 20th Century.

Kensington Market is neither Notre Dame nor the Alamo. But it is a wonderful place, a unique place, a place you should go and wander through if you’ve never been there. I really can’t believe it’s still surviving with all the redevelopment pressure on it.

Be really careful what dumps you get rid of. You may miss those dumps an awful lot a few years after they’re gone.

Naw, skip that — it sounds good but it gives the Senate too much credit. The truth can’t even get in the door of the old boys and and old girls club, let alone die there. The truth dies (ignored) on the doorstep of the Senate.

The Senate is a useless, corrupt, wasteful sham where bloated bagmen, spin doctors, political assassins and other assorted dignitaries go to … live a life of coddled privilege and protected insularity (I know those are redundancies, but so is the Senate) at taxpayers’ expense.

And so, of course, to protect their cushy gig, the Senate is willing to bend under pressure. They’re (maybe) going to finally let the auditor general poke around in their cesspool of excess … after decades, DECADES, of obstructing and denying the need for just such a healthy airing of their dirty, pest-ridden linen.

Oh yeah, they’ve also introduced “reforms” too. Like restricting senators to “only” 12 annual all-expense-paid trips anywhere in the world — except, of course, to their “home” provinces (and we know how homey the home boys and girls of the Senate are). They can go “home” — and then quickly back to Ottawa — as many times as they want. Of course, the people of their “home” provinces have no say in that decision.

(And I really don’t understand why they want to rush back to Ottawa so much — except for the feral comfort of being with their kindred spirits. I know people who sacrificed a lot to get OUT of Ottawa.)

So Senator Marcia Mucklethorpe can go to Morocco for the entire month of January (on “Senate business,” of course — there must be SOME reason for a Canadian senator to go to Morocco in January, apart from the sun and hash), then move on to Thailand (to observe parliamentary innovations there, of course) for the month of February , and … you get the picture.

And, of course, they blame all their troubles on “bad boys” and rogues like the Duffster and Senator Brazeau.

So let’s skip the current rogues gallery. Let’s go back in time less than a year to look at the performance and worthiness of an “ordinary” senator, a senator so ordinary that he never did anything  — I mean ANYTHING, check the record —  noteworthy either before or after his brief spasm of infamy.

Here’s a Nosey Parker blog post from back in August 2012.

Engagement photos of Senator Rod Zimmer and Maygan Sensenberger from “Rod Zimmer and Maygan Sensenberger’s Wedding Page” on Facebook.

So 23-year-old Maygan Sensenberger will be making a Monday court appearance on the first anniversary of her marriage to 69-year-old Manitoba Liberal Senator Rod Zimmer.

Sensenberger was arrested by police in Saskatoon Thursday when she got off an Air Canada flight from Ottawa with her husband.

At her first court appearance on Friday, a Crown prosecutor said the plane’s crew had radioed ahead to alert police after the couple got into a heated argument that escalated as the flight neared Saskatoon.

Sensenberger threatened to kill her husband and “take down the aircraft,” the Crown prosecutor reportedly said in court.

Sensenberger was remanded in custody over the weekend at Pine Grove Correctional Centre in Prince Albert and will appear in court again Monday morning, at which point she will probably be granted bail and the whole stinking mess will waft into the back corridors of Saskatchewan’s halls of justice.

All of which is fine by me. We get a few minutes or hours or days of chuckling or looking askance at the outrageous  knucklehead behaviour of people who should know better (we assume) and then we move on with the things in life that really matter while the headline perpetrators try to pick up the shattered, soiled fragments of their dignity and humanity.

The business of threatening to “take down the aircraft” is more than a little disturbing but we’ll see what comes of that accusation after a few high-priced lawyers have kicked it around the block.

Couples fight on commercial aircraft sometimes and occasionally those disputes reach the point where police become involved. It happens, It’s not nice, it’s not very adult behaviour, sometimes it’s whacked-out crazy, but it does happen. And the most it probably gets is about three paragraphs on an inside page of the paper.

The reason this particular incident hit the titillation buzzer is two-fold: 1. The supposed prominence of at least one of the principals, and 2. The obvious extreme age difference of the two married principals.

But I don’t care about all that.

I really don’t care that a near-septuagenarian marries a near-teenager. I find it more than a little creepy but I just don’t care. I certainly don’t give two hoots whether they’re actually in love or just using each other.

I’m not related to either of them, I have no fiscal interest in their estate planning and I’m pretty sure I never ever want to be in the same room with either of them.

What I do care about, however, is that I (as a citizen of Canada) am footing the bill for at least some (if not most) of their fearsome foibles and frolics.

You can bet a substantial chunk of your bottom dollar that the tickets for the Air Canada flight from Ottawa to Saskatoon for the good (or not-so-good … who really knows?) senator and (probably) his lovely bride were paid for by the Canadian taxpayer.

Canadian senators have virtually limitless travel budgets (if you can call an open tab a “budget”) to do with as they please. It’s not at all uncommon for a senator you’ve never heard of before to spend $100,000 — or more — of your money each and every year galavanting across Canada and around the world.

That’s on top of the $132,300 base annual salary each of Canada’s 105 senators gets and the $151,000 “office expenses” each senator is entitled to each year. Oh yeah, and the $20,000 annual housing allowance allotted to all senators whose principal residence is not in Ottawa (and you can rest assured that almost every senator — even those political hacks who spent their entire working lives feeding at the public trough in Ottawa — somehow or other have their official residences outside Ottawa).

Then there are the extra stipends senators get for actually doing something apart from showing up once in a while — $75,500 extra for the leader of the government in the Senate, $36,000 for her deputy, $36,000 for the leader of the opposition in the Senate, $22,800 for his deputy, $55,000 for the speaker, $11,100 for the government whip, $6,500 for the opposition whip,  $6,500 for the government caucus chair, $5,600 for the opposition caucus chair, $11,100 for each of the 18 Senate committee chairs, $5,600 for each of their vice-chairs, and so.

If you’re a Canadian senator, you basically have to be a bump on a log or a doorknob not to get some kind of extra pocket change.

Oh, did I mention that Senator Rod Zimmer occupies none of the above extra-stipended positions. But he still pulls in a pretty good buck.

Since he was appointed a senator by then-PM Paul Martin in 2005, Rod Zimmer has received about $2 million from the taxpayers of Canada for salary, office expenses (a large part of which is for “entertaining”) and residential allowance.

In that time, he’s also spent roughly $1 million on travel expenses — give or take half a mil. Since he’s been a member of the Canada-USA Inter-Parliamentary Group, the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Group, the Canada-Arab World Parliamentary Association, the Canada-Russia Inter-Parliamentary Group, the Canada-Cuba Inter-Parliamentary Group and the Canada-Morocco Inter-Parliamentary Group, I think it’s probably safe to say that $1 million is on the low side of what Zimmer has cost the Canadian taxpayer in travel expenses over the past seven years.

And what exactly has Rod Zimmer done to earn that $3 million? What has Rod Zimmer done to warrant out attention over the past seven years apart from his freakish wedding to Maygan Sensenberger a year ago and his unfortunate airborne marital discord last week?

I dunno. Nothing, as far as I can tell. I may be missing something but I sure haven’t come across anything worth  $30,000 in my books, let alone $3 million.

Please don’t get the idea that I’m picking on Sen. Rod Zimmer in particular. I’m not — I consider ALL members of the Senate of Canada useless and unconscionably expensive lumps of cowplop, not just Rod Zimmer.

Zimmer has been in and out of hospital in recent years with throat cancer. So what? I’m not attacking Rod Zimmer for being alive or being a human being — I’m attacking him for being a senator and a waste of taxpayer money. I would be quite happy if Canadian taxpayers spent $3 million helping Rod Zimmer try to overcome his cancer. I’m sure Rod Zimmer has had very good medical care at taxpayer expense. But it makes me furious that taxpayers have spent about $3 million financing Rod Zimmer’s useless (in my opinion) Senate career over the past seven years when that money could have been so much better spent helping other people across Canada try to overcome their cancers or other health problems.

Zimmer can marry all the 20-somethings in the world he wants, as far as I’m concerned — just not on my dime. He can spend his anniversary visiting his wife in whatever jail cell or courtroom around the world he wants — but not on my dime.

He can entertain God knows who and I wouldn’t give a spit — if it wasn’t on my dime. He can rub shoulders with Russian and Cuban “parliamentarians” all he wants — but I would really prefer that wasn’t on my dime either.

And that goes for the rest of the useless doorknobs in the Senate of Canada.

As a collective group of parasites (and the parasites who make their living serving the parasites), they cost us somewhere in the vicinity of $100 million a year. We don’t know exactly how much they cost us because they’ve used the power invested in them to keep the federal auditor-general from examining their books in detail.

They haven’t used that power to actually do any good for Canada or the world. Despite the relative freedom and security that would seem to come with a long-term, financially generous appointment to the Upper Chamber (what’s the Commons — the Downer Chamber?), these senators carry on as political hacks and water carriers for whatever party or special-interest group that secured their appointments. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir. Thankee kindly, guv (tug of the forelock).

Of course they expect you and I to bow and scrape and curtsey when they enter a room. Pshaw. Just because they say they are important people doing important things doesn’t make it so, even if they have convinced themselves their self-inflating malarkey is true.

So I wish Rod Zimmer the best of luck as he deals with the host of plagues visited upon him (some of his own making, others not), but I have no wish to share them.

Unfortunately, Rod Zimmer and his 104 Senate cronies are my involuntary financial dependants and yours, tied like millstones around our necks. Until we set them free from their gilded cage in the Senate, we are all doomed to a nightmarish symbiosis — like an embittered, raging couple trapped together forever in the pressurized cabin of an airliner streaking across an endless Prairie sky.

Also from “Rod Zimmer and Maygan Sensenberger’s Wedding Page” on Facebook, photos of wedding cake figures apparently posted there by Maygan Sensenberger:

_________________________________

UPDATE: WHAT HAPPENED THEN?

As I predicted, the lawyers did their jobs and the biggest, baddest charges against Sensenberger were dropped. She was eventually given a 12-month suspended sentence with probation for creating a disturbance.

Old Rod stuck with his child bride through the legal process and in October 2012 the couple gave a few carefully chosen interviews in which they pooh-poohed the whole “take down the aircraft” incident, pledged their undying love for one another and tried to launch Sensenberger’s acting and modelling career.

I haven’t heard anything about Sensenberger’s career since then. Haven’t heard anything about Zimmer’s career either, come to think of it.

But he’s still alive, still a senator, still collecting unseemly gobs of money from the Canadian taxpayer — and still bringing shame, by his very existence as a senator, on Canada.

 

Despite all his troubles, Rob Ford is a good and/or dogged campaigner who was very effective in carrying out his agenda during his first year in office. He held the line on taxes and spending — in many cases putting money back in taxpayers’ pockets (I cannot overemphasize what a big deal that is); he brought the city unions in line without a strike; he shifted power to the semi-suburbs from the urban core.

And you’ve seen the polls. No matter how proven you think the so-far-unproven Slurpy case against him is, an awful lot of people out there aren’t convinced — and need a heck of a lot more convincing before they ditch the guy who’s saving them money and representing what they believe are their best interests.

If Olivia Chow or Adam Vaughan or anyone else on the left thinks she or he is going to ride Ford’s blunders and failings into the mayor’s office, she or he is sadly mistaken. They just don’t have the manpower/organization — or the gut-level support — on the ground to win the semi-suburbs. The suburban anger and resentment that put Ford in office in 2010 is still there. Underestimate it at one’s own peril.

Here’s a nice map from Wikipedia (created by “Mr. No Funny Nickname” — really) showing the ward-by-ward breakdown of Ford and Smitherman support in the 2010 mayor’s race. You can easily figure out which colour represents which candidate. Don’t expect huge changes in the 2014 election map, regardless of whose name is attached to the blue bloc.

So despite being a wounded beast (most of his wounds self-inflicted, of course), Rob Ford is still an uncaged and dangerous political creature who has better-than-even odds of being re-elected mayor in 2014 — if he isn’t felled by the Slurpy video or an aneurism. Even those might not stop him.

The next municipal election is on Oct. 27, 2014 — a long, long time away given the pace at which current events are moving — but I think it’s an acceptable risk to say Rob Ford is probably going to run for re-election as mayor and probably going to win.

Then what happens? Probably four more years of debilitating crap (civicly speaking, of course).

Why?

Because the mayor of Toronto is only one vote on a 45-member council (44 wards and 1 mayor). If he wants to get his way, he has to convince, coddle or coerce at least 22 other members of council to vote the same way.

Toronto is not a “strong mayor” city like New York, where Michael Bloomberg has the power to set budgets,  unilaterally appoint and fire department heads, and veto council decisions. In Toronto, all those powers rest in the hands of council as a whole and the mayor has to corral at least half the herd to get his agenda through.

The funny thing is that lefty mayor David Miller tried very hard to change Toronto to a “strong mayor” system during his tenure. A hand-picked panel he installed in 2007 to find ways to make the city run better recommended Toronto’s charter be amended to a strong-mayor system because the current strong-council form of governance is “unwieldy, difficult to operate, and diffuses accountability, authority and responsibility.”

 

I’m sure Miller and the left are happy now that that 2007-08 initiative (and a similar 2004-05 venture) failed because councillors of all stripes were unwilling to give up their bits of power and prestige for what, at the time, was billed as “the greater good.”

 

Ford’s current attempt to streamline the city’s operation — and save gobs of money — by cutting the size of council in half is almost certainly doomed to the same fate for the same reason.

 

About a third of Toronto council is on the left  side of the political spectrum, about a third is on the right and about a third is in the mushy middle (how Canadian). Before the 2010 municipal election, that split was weighted to the left. Since the 2010 vote, the split is weighted to the right.

In the first year of his mayoral mandate, Ford had exceptional success in pushing his agenda — partly because a few more right-leaning councillors were elected along with him and mainly because his high level of support shocked and intimidated non-supporters into acquiescence or at least muted/blunted opposition.

But that power faded after the first year as councillors and the city got used to — and tired of — his blustering, bullying, bull-in-the-china-shop approach.

Ford is so entrenched in butting heads with the left that he seems incapable of giving up his my-way-or-the-highway method of vote-gathering. As a result, the mushy middle has been getting bigger and he’s alienated so many allies that a Ford proposition now often gets a positive vote IN SPITE OF Rob Ford, not because of him.

Take, for example, Karen Stintz, the city councillor for Ward 16 and chair of the Toronto Transit Commission. During the current term of council, Stintz has voted the same way as Ford about 80% of the time. In a normal universe, you would say that makes Ford and Stintz allies.

But we all know what the reality of the Ford-Stintz dynamic is since their bloody fight on the subway-LRT issue and the sacking of TTC general manager Gary Webster. Ford considers Stintz a traitor and Stintz considers Ford a real danger to her own survival.

Not that it matters to anyone else but I write this blog so I’m putting this in: I happen to agree with Ford on the subway issue. Choosing LRT (either Light Rail Transit or Light Rapid Transit, depending on your mood) is a waste of money and a load of trouble in the long run. Toronto needs more — lots more — subways and they should be protected, primarily underground lines running heavy-duty, industrial-grade equipment. Of course that costs more, but we need public transit lines that don’t crap out in the middle of a Canadian winter and we need high-traffic, heavy-duty corridors built for 100 years of use, not the 30-year lifespan (if lucky) of the rinky-dink, unreliable LRTs.

 

Anyone who has ever been stranded on the Scarborough RT line in the middle of winter knows the correct side of the subway-LRT debate. I just don’t think many — if any — Toronto councillors have ever had that miserable experience. And don’t tell me “modern” LRT equipment is more durable and reliable than the vehicles now in service. It’s called “light” for a reason and what we need is “heavy-duty.” LRT may be fine for Vancouver or Los Angeles but it just doesn’t cut the mustard in a real winter.

 

The logic of choosing LRT over subway was that it was cheaper and the money more readily available. Neither of those is a good enough reason.

 

Canada’s largest city, most-visited city, most economically important city needs subways to function properly — and lots of ‘em — and the federal and provincial governments should be putting up most — probably all — of the money needed to build them. If they won’t, give us back all the tax dollars that flow out of the GTA to federal and provincial coffers and we’ll build our own damn subways.

 

New York, London and Paris (to name only a few) are major international metropolitan centres that work only because they have extensive subway systems with dozens of lines spreading out, connecting the far-flung parts of the body politic with reliable, constant, convenient subway service. Those absolutely essential arteries were not paid for by imposing sales tax surcharges and road tolls on the residents of New York and London and Paris. They were paid for by senior levels of government that understood — and accepted responsibility for — the obligation of the nation to keep its largest, most important city functioning properly. Believe me, most French have a lower personal regard for Parisians than most Canadians have for Torontonians — but the French understand that keeping Paris moving and working is essential to the whole country.

 

Our local politicians shouldn’t be arguing about which of the GTA’s pockets to pick for the money to pay for the half-baked Metrolinx plan: They should be forming a united front to demand — and force — the federal and provincial governments to come up with the money to do an absolutely necessary job properly. If the McGuinty/Wynne government at Queen’s Park can waste billions shuffling around gas plants, enabling boondoggles and shutting down viable railways, surely they can re-order their priorities to put GTA taxpayer money where it would actually do some good.

 

To get back on track, Rob Ford can probably win re-election as mayor in 2014 despite all his self-induced problems and despite the most fervent wishes of a good chunk of the city core. But — to put it in sports lingo he might like — Rob Ford has “lost the room.” He’s gone Tortorella once — or twice or 10 times — too often for his players to stomach.

So if you think the last year of council has been bad and the coming year will be worse, imagine what the endless siege and trench warfare mentality of another four years like that will do to the city of Toronto.

Something has to change. But what?

Can the mayor change his nature  and his proclivities and his chosen way of advancing his agenda? Don’t know for sure but I don’t think so.

Can his former allies regroup, reform and hold their noses to “back the plan if not the man?” Possible but increasingly unlikely.

The worst-case scenario is also the most probable: That the mayor himself will win re-election but more individual councillors vehemently opposed to him (and thus fewer former or potential allies) will be elected in 2014 — thus leaving Toronto with a lameduck mayor and a splintered council pushed by the whims and vagaries of 45 personal agendas. Not a pretty prospect.

What to do. What to do.

All I can think of are the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

A lot of people in this town — more than one sad, sorry, snarling man — have to step up and become genuine leaders.

I see more and more Toronto city councillors and media pundits complaining about Rob Ford crisis “fatigue.”

Pshaw.

Amateurs. Children.

When the tough get down and dirty, the aficionados get out the popcorn. This is just starting to get interesting.

Is Rob Ford guilty? Of course he is. Absolutely.

Of what, precisely? Don’t know. Don’t care. We’ll find out eventually (maybe). But I am so glad Ford is digging in, hunkering down, calling in airlifts of fried chicken and “getting on with the city’s business.”

Speaking of which, why are anti-Ford partisans complaining about the current crisis damaging the city’s ability to function and carry on business as usual?

Hypocrites. Liars. Idiots. Anybody spewing the “city can’t function because of Rob Ford” line falls into one of the above categories.

They know council shuts down for the summer and will do as close to squat as humanly possible from mid-June to mid-October whether Rob Ford, Genghis Khan or Mother Teresa is mayor.

Oh sure, there’s a scheduled council meeting on July 16 and 17 but it’s just a going-through-the-motions thing sparsely attended by reluctant, grumpy, hard-done-by second-stringers forced to fill out the quorum.

Apart from that, it’s Luminato, NXNE, Pride Week, Canada Day, Caribana, the CNE and a bunch of beer fests, rib fests and vegan fests (really — lots of those this summer). All events that have only the vaguest, most ceremonial connection to Toronto city council or the business of municipal governance.

The Toronto Festival of Clowns ends in a couple of days so, no matter how appealing the connection to current municipal politics, even that won’t disturb city hall’s summer somnolence.

Council is going to do absolutely nothing all summer long. And the city will survive. Probably thrive. Actually, I guarantee Toronto will thrive this summer. It’s the nature of the beast.

The street lights will work (or not) regardless of whether our vigilant councillors are on duty (or not). Water will flow from your taps (or not). Every street in the city will be shut down for road repairs, sewer reconstruction or a charity walk/run/ride EXACTLY when you need it. Guaranteed.

But life will go on. The fourth largest city in North America (suck eggs, Chicago) will live, love, do business, skip work, play games, laugh, cry, fight, eat, drink, be mildly dyspeptic and get sunburned without any guidance or interference from council.

Therefore we have a good four months to kick around the Ford scandal, lift every rock, interview every drug dealer, check every expense account and election promise, poke sticks in every nook and cranny and generally have a fine old time exercising our democratic rights and moral duty before council tries to reclaim the agenda.

I want you to think of this as a training exercise.

The reason people are “tired” of the crisis is simply because they haven’t stretched out their crisis/involvement muscles in a long, long time. Start working on your stamina, folks — you have far more inside you than you realize right now.

I was a child of the ’60s — a most convulsive, interesting decade.

I remember kicking snowbanks to death when I heard John F. Kennedy was assassinated (winter came early in ’63). I remember watching Canada’s Maple Leaf flag being raised for the first time. The space race. The Beatles. The Stones. The Berlin Wall.  “I have a dream.” Martin Luther King’s and Bobby Kennedy’s assassinations. Vietnam. Riots. The Summer of Love. Expo 67. Trudeaumania. The FLQ. “Just watch me.” The Cultural Revolution. The first heart transplant. Moon landings. The Chicago Seven. Prague Spring. Danny the Red. Nixon. Watergate. Woodstock. Charlie Manson. Gulp. And that’s just a superficial sampling, what I remember off the top of my head.

The 1960s were a decade of constant, staggering change and unexpected jolts. I grew up thinking that was normal —business as usual. Running with the wolves felt perfectly okay. And even though we knew we weren’t in control of the world, we felt like we were participants and could make a difference — somehow, some way, some day — as long as we stayed on the board and rode the wave.

But nowadays we’re all reactionaries. We seem to be just reacting to a very limited number of programmed options offered up to us by the powers that be. Our lives are being boxed into the same packages allowed by our cell/smart/dumb phone contracts.

Well, doubleclutch that. Take back the night. And the day. And the dawn and the dusk. And cyberspace. And the airwaves, too. Take back the chickens and jackdaws, for that matter. And, most of all, take back your right to decide what you think is important and interesting.

So when politicians and pundits tell you the Rob Ford thing is getting “tired” and needs to be put on the back burner, tell them to take a seat — and have some popcorn while the whole over-the-top, unscripted, whacko melodrama unfolds through the summer, the Rob Ford Summer.

Getting involved in any discussion about drinking and driving is a dangerous thing unless one is absolutely, uncritically subservient to the most hardline attitude about eradicating the problem.

But what the hell — let’s get into it. I’ll deal with the “When did you stop beating your spouse?” attacks later.

I’m sure part of the reason this discussion isn’t wider is because most ordinary citizens who are actually aware of the situation gained their knowledge painfully from first-hand experience and don’t want to broadcast their embarrassment and/or shame.

I’m only aware of it because my friend Sandra Macklin, former news editor of the Toronto Sun, pointed out the Paul Ainslie case last week The situation stuck in my craw. It seemed like such an aberration from normal Canadian legal procedure that I looked into it.

Here’s what I found and where I stand …

Serious questions are raised by the three-day driving suspension slapped on Scarborough East Councillor Paul Ainslie in early May after he was given a breathalyzer test by Toronto Police in a RIDE spot check.

The serious questions are not about Ainslie, who came clean on the roadside suspension to a scrum of reporters gathered outside Mayor Rob Ford’s office last Thursday.

I am sure Ainslie has great regrets about the incident, wishes deeply he had refrained from that last glass of wine (of either two or three he says he had in total) before getting in his car on May 3, and will probably never again let a drop of alcohol touch his lips when he is responsible for operating a one- or two-ton mass of motorized metal.

But those would be Ainslie’s principal concerns about the incident, not mine.

No, the serious questions I have are about the power of police in Ontario to act as prosecutor, witness, judge, jury, appeals court and executioner in cases like this when no actual law has been broken.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not condoning or excusing drunk driving in any way shape or form, and I am all in favour of strict enforcement of laws to try to keep intoxicated drivers off our streets and highways.

But Ainslie broke no law and was not legally intoxicated according to the Highway Traffic Act, the legislation under which one can be charged — and punished — for driving while impaired in Ontario.

NOTE: As pointed out in the comments below, drunk driving is a Criminal Code offence. It’s the increased police powers in the grey zone below legal impairment that are covered by the HTA.

A driver is legally impaired — or at least subject to being charged with being impaired — when he or she has a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher. Point-owe-eight, as it is commonly known, represents 80 milligrams of alcohol present in 100 millilitres of blood.

If you are operating a motor vehicle with that level of alcohol in your system, you almost certainly are a danger to others and to yourself and should definitely not be behind the wheel of a car even if you don’t feel drunk.

But Ainslie had not crossed that line. He actually wasn’t nudging the line. He was in a grey zone known in legal circles as the “warn range” — which signifies that a breathalyzer reading has placed the subject’s BAC between .05 and .08.

And therein lies the rub: If you are driving with a BAC of .05 — still probably not the greatest idea, I hasten to add — you are NOT legally impaired. But with a BAC of .05, police in Ontario ARE allowed to seize and suspend your driver’s licence for anywhere between three days and 30 days, impound your vehicle in certain instances, levy a $150 fine (called an “administrative monetary penalty”) and impose other punishments.

All arbitrarily. All without benefit of lawyer or judge or courtroom or right of defence or appeal. You are completely at the mercy of a traffic cop on a dark street — or bush road — in the middle of the night.

I simply do not understand how that star chamber approach to justice can exist within the context of the Canadian legal system that has developed through centuries of trial and error, through the constant, ongoing struggle to balance the protection of society with the rights of the individual.

This is nothing new. For a couple of decades, police in Ontario have had the legal authority to seize the licence of anyone blowing between .05 and .08 for 12 hours. That power was increased in 2009 by amendments to the Highway Traffic Act contained in Bill 203, the Safer Roads for Safer Ontario Act.

Those amendments (and related introduction of new regulations) did not change the “warn range” of .05-.08 BAC, but did give police even greater power to impose arbitrary penalties ranging from the aforementioned three-day licence suspension and $150 admin “penalty” for a first-time offender to a 30-day suspension, mandatory alcohol treatment programme, six-month in-car breathalyzer ignition lock and $150 fine for a third offence within five years.

I’m not really sure why I’m calling them “offences” and “offenders” because no actual law was broken. A three-day — or even 30-day or, come to that, 300-day — licence suspension cannot even be used by an insurance company to increase an “offender’s” risk classification and thus auto insurance premiums.

And all this happens without the accused/convicted having the right to defend himself or herself in an impartial court of law.

Bill 203 even laid it out explicitly in the Section 48 (9) amendment to the Highway Traffic Act: “There is no appeal from, or right to be heard before, the suspension of a driver’s licence under this section.”

Whatever happened to Section 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom? Just to refresh your memory, Section 11(d) says a person charged with an offence has the right “to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.”

The rationale in giving police the right to impose arbitrary punishment is that “warn range” actions don’t actually constitute a “charge” and thus do not require the cumbersome baggage of presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial.

By the way, Section 11 (g) of the Charter supposedly protects a citizen’s right not to be found guilty unless the punishable action constitutes a legally recognized offence.

I just don’t see how they can have it both ways. It’s Catch-22: One is denied the right to mount a defence in a fair and open trial because one is not actually being charged with anything, but one is being punished for doing something which does not legally constitute an offence.

Let me go back to a very important point: I am all in favour of tough drinking-and-driving laws and I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone — myself included, if it ever comes to that — who is reckless and selfish enough to endanger innocents (and themselves) by driving while intoxicated. (See how strong the pressure is  — even self-imposed pressure — to not be seen as “soft” on drunk driving just to engage in this discussion?)

But I simply cannot abide any legislation that paints a wide grey zone and gives individual police officers the absolute and arbitrary power to impose their own justice within that zone. That just isn’t the Canadian way, folks.

Rather than violate Canadians’ charter rights and hand judicial powers to individual police officers, why not just drop the level of legal intoxication down to .05 from the present .08? Better yet, drop the acceptable level to 0 and be done with it. Then it’s cut and dried. No “warn range,” no grey zone, no absolute and arbitrary power placed in the hands of individual police officers.

I think I know why that isn’t done. Because intoxication at a BAC level of .05 is very difficult to prove conclusively, that would be my guess, and it would have a draconian effect on almost every aspect of society. As for a BAC of zero, I’m not sure if newborn babies are ever that low.

So why, then, are police given the power to impose arbitrary and absolute punishment on people for actions and states of being that legislators and jurists are unwilling and/or unable to declare unlawful behaviour?

I want clarity and I want the law to be unambiguous and enforced judiciously with protection for individual rights as well as public safety.

As things stand now, if someone is stopped in a RIDE check and blows .05 on a breathalyzer, he or she can be found guilty on the spot of being “almost drunk” and punished without actually being charged with a crime.

From a crime and punishment point of view, being “almost drunk” is much like being  “almost pregnant.” You either are or you aren’t. I’m sure you can think of plenty of other comparisons.

When it comes to legal rights, legal procedures and legal punishment, “almost” just isn’t good enough — not by a long shot.

I’m still perplexed as to how and why “almost” snuck into the Canadian legal process and became grounds for giving individual police officers the power to act (as I said before) as prosecutor, witness, judge, jury, appeals court and executioner without let, hindrance or counterbalance.

In this fact sheet on impaired driving, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation relies on statistical evidence to make its case for taking the keys out of the hands of a driver in the .05-.08 range:

“Drivers with a BAC above 0.05 but below the legal limit are 7.2 times more likely to be in a fatal collision than drivers with a zero BAC” and “in 2005, 16.7% of drinking drivers killed in Ontario had a BAC less than 0.08.”

Those statements seem objective and believable on the surface, but they are just swimming with ambiguity and subjective nuance when you look closely at them.

We are given no hard numbers and context to compare, just percentages which could mean anything, depending on how one phrases the statement. Are we talking one or two or 12 or 200 or 1,300 real people? What other contributing factors are involved? What are the comparative statistical death rates in the general and/or non-driving population? Is the BAC of everyone who dies in a car accident in Ontario tested? Does diabetes change the BAC level of an individual? How accurate is the data? How reliable is the data? How current is the data?

Are statistical probabilities — especially artfully sculpted statements of statistical probability — the new norm for determining guilt or innocence? Heaven help us all if that’s the case. “Almost” and “probably” then become the new “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

But if those numbers are bad enough to support action by police (which is what the ministry seems to be saying) then make it a legal offence. Do the right thing. Do the legal thing. Do the constitutional thing. Just don’t try to take some ambiguous moral high ground to justify giving police arbitrary and absolute power in a legal grey zone — for anything.

If a cause is noble and right, it should be able to fit within our traditional, time-tested legal framework — not resort to a totalitarian cheat mechanism to get the job done.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to an interesting story that touches on discussion in the comment section below. Unfortunately links cannot be added to comments (to prevent massive spam attacks, I believe), so I’m adding it up here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oh, and here’s a link to another story about off-duty cops asking drivers to “volunteer” saliva and blood samples — at highway roadblocks in the middle of the night. I’m sure you want to help protect the public, don’t you, sir?

Let me repeat that:

Is Sir Elton John, he of Rocket Man and Lion King, really worth 10 of Dame Maggie Smith, she of …hmmm, I want to say Jean Brodie and Travels with My Aunt, but I’ll say instead … Harry Potter and Downton Abbey?

And is Sir Elton worth five times as much as that other grand theatrical Dame, Helen Mirren? For that matter, is Dame Helen’s worth in this world almost twice as much as Dame Maggie’s?

I don’t think so. On any count.

But that’s the relative valuation that has been put on these and other celebrities in an eBay auction of hand-painted garden gnomes that has been going on for the past week in support of charity projects of Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society.

It’s a convoluted bit of business tied in to the world-famous Chelsea Flower Show and its 100-year ban on the use of garden gnomes in displays at the prestigous annual bloomfest.

WHO’S WHO OF CELEBRITY GNOMES

Here are half a dozen garden gnomes handpainted by Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Helen Mirren, Lily Allen, John Hurt, Joanna Lumley and, of course, Sir Elton John. You try to figure out who did what. I’ll run the gnomes and names together at the end of this piece. 

If you want a little more detail, here’s a background story I wrote last week:

Ignominious gnomes invade royal garden party

by Alan Parker

 

One of the world’s most prestigious garden shows has just been invaded by a horde of tiny creatures kept at bay by Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society for 100 years.

 

Each May since 1913, the grounds of London’s Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home for military pensioners on the banks of the Thames River, has been the site of the RHS spring flower show.

 

Over that century, the Chelsea Flower Show has become one of the world’s best-known and most popular gardening expositions, attracting royalty and commoners, celebrities and weekend gardeners by the tens of thousands.

 

By the mid-1980s, the show had become too popular for its own good, attracting more than 250,000 visitors to an area smaller than Toronto’s Rogers Centre. In the words of Stephen Bennett, who became director of shows for the Royal Horticultural Society in 1986, it was “scary.”

 

As a result of the overcrowding, a limit was placed on the number of tickets sold to the event in 1988. Now only 160,000 passes are printed for the show over its five-day run. Demand is, of course, much higher than supply so the scramble for tickets is fierce and competitive.

 

But one person who is always at the front of the line — given a preview tour the day before the show opens, in fact — is the Queen. Elizabeth II has attended the Chelsea Flower Show most years since she was a princess. On Monday (May 20) she made her 49th visit, walking the grounds in the late afternoon with Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Prince Harry and a coterie of other royals.

Members of the royal family have been patrons of the Chelsea Flower Show since Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII and mother of George V, opened the first relatively modest show in 1913.

 

But, just as royals are always welcome, another group has been banned from the Chelsea Garden Show throughout its 100-year history: Garden gnomes.

 

Blame it on snobbery or aesthetics or horticultural fashion, but garden gnomes have been specifically targetted by the RHS’s operating rules since the Chelsea Flower Show’s inception. As well as the ban on “brightly coloured mythical creatures,” the show also prohibits exhibitors from using balloons, flags, “materials exuding a foul odour” and anything else the RHS may deem to have “no direct or demonstrable relevance to horticulture or gardening.”

There have been repeated attempts over the years to circumvent the ban, but the RHS has stood firm. Even esteemed herb grower Jekka McVicar, who has won 14 gold medals at Chelsea, had her knuckles rapped in 2009 for trying to sneak her favourite gnome, Borage, into her display.

 

But all that changed this year. Not only were garden gnomes allowed into the Chelsea Garden Show, they were positively welcomed. And abetted by a cast of celebrities including Sir Elton John, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Helen Mirren.

 

The change of heart was partly an attempt by the RHS to defuse accusations of snobbery and stuffiness and partly a straight-forward money grab — for a good cause.

 

More than 100 celebrities were invited to decorate small garden gnomes for display at Chelsea and for auction on eBay during the run of the show this week.

 

The money raised will go to the Royal Horticultural Society’s £1 million charity fundraising appeal to encourage more British youth to get involved in gardening, from setting up horticultural apprenticeships to expanding school gardening programmes.

 

The first wave of 19 garden gnomes went up quietly on ebay.co.uk on Sunday with entries from such luminaries as the aforementioned Sir Elton John, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Helen Mirren as well as lesser (but still luminescent) lights as Joanna Lumley, John Hurt, Lilly Allen and Miranda Richardson.

Early bidding was light. Elton John’s bejewelled and beglassed gnome, for example, had a high bid of £11 at one point on Sunday. Current offers on Sir Elton’s creation are now in the thousands of pounds, however, and will go much higher before bidding ends Saturday night.

 

Other celebrity gnomes are trailing far behind in terms of price but some — notably John Hurt and Miranda Richardson — were seeing even more bidding activity than Sir Elton’s gnome or either of the theatrical dames in the early stages.

 

Another flight of 10 gnomes was added to the auction on Tuesday, highlighted by Jamie Oliver’s entry, a Gnomeo and Juliet set signed by Elton John (whose company produced the animated film), and a bizarre pair of royal William and Kate caricature gnomes wearing what appear to be red-hot chili peppers (or dunce caps) on their heads. The auction on the new gnomes will run until early next week.

Will there be more added? Probably. More than half of the celebrities who committed to painting gnomes — including Dolly Parton — haven’t shown up yet. Surely Dolly is a woman of her word.

 

In the end, the celebrity auction will raise a substantial amount of money for the Royal Horticultural Society’s charity, the Chelsea Flower Show will proceed haughtily into its second century, and the humble, denigrated garden gnomes will once more be cast back into the thickets of gardening exile.

 

The lifting of the ban on “brightly coloured mythical creatures” was, you see, a one-time deal. When the Chelsea Garden Show opens again in May 2014, there will be nary a gnome to be seen. At least officially. Once you let a gnome into your garden, it’s hard to get him out.

 

As I mention in the above piece, bidding on the first wave of gnomes ended over the weekend. Bidding on 10 other gnomes — including the William and Kate and Jamie Oliver gnomes — continues until Tuesday, and there’s another week of bidding on three other gnomes painted by people who may be celebs in Britain but are completely unknown to me.

So let’s take a fast look at how bidding shook out on that initial flight of 19 gnomes.

The prices I mention may not all be exact because I was jotting them down as the eBay auction went into its final minutes late Saturday night. There may have been a couple of last-second increases I didn’t catch, but these numbers are pretty close to the final tally.

The sparkled and spangled (and signed) gnome by Sir Elton John was the big winner with a final bid of £5,100 — raised from £4,432.32 in the last few minutes of bidding.

With one British pound sterling being equivalent (as of Sunday) to about $1.56 Canadian, that would make Elton’s £5,100 gnome worth roughly $8,000 Canadian.

(I’m going to stick to the pound sterling numbers from here on in but I wanted to give you a rough comparative guide.)

This is, of course, Sir Elton’s gnome. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

The Elton John bid was far and away the leader of the pack. I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect Sir Elton had probably put in a reserve bid himself — just as a reputational precaution — and that £5,100 may have come out of Elton’s (or spouse David’s) own pocket. Or not — there may well be someone ludicrously wealthy out there who thinks a bit of plaster daubed with sparkly paint by Elton John is worth £5,100.

Joanna Lumley’s gnome

Also ranging quite high were gnomes painted by British TV style guru Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen (£2,003), AbFabulist and globe trotter Joanna Lumley (£1,100), and pop singer Lily Allen (£1,040).

Lily Allen’s gnome

Dame Helen Mirren’s gnome grooming drew £800 and actress Miranda Richardson brought in £621.

Helen Mirren’s gnome

But Dame Maggie Smith — considered by many to be the greatest English actress of her age — could generate only £530.45  £550.45 (see comment below) for her gnome. That’s a disgrace when you figure that Sir Elton John’s piece was considered to be worth almost 10 times as much. For shame, gnomists, for shame.

Maggie Smith’s gnome

And the statuette painted by one of my favourite British actors, John Hurt, brought in a measly £430.

John Hurt’s gnome

As I said, the auction on most of the remaining gnomes runs until Tuesday. The current high bid on Jamie Oliver’s gnome, as of this writing, is £400.

The William and Kate gnome set — just caricatures of the royal couple, not actually painted by them, I should point out again — is going for £2,000 as of this writing — up from £1,200 just a couple of hours ago.

So that’s it from now. Here’s the link again to the eBay gnome auction.

Enjoy your roamin’ in the gnomin’ gloamin’ (“Gloaming” being an Old English word for twilight, BTW).