When our ancestors arrived here in Petunia Valley many years ago, they were absolutely thrilled to discover that they would not be expected to live on just potatoes, as they had back home in Ireland. In Canada, they could eat potatoes and pork. It’s been seven generations now, but we’ve never really gotten over that giddy light-headed feeling we had when the menu suddenly doubled up like that.
Since then, we’ve added white bread, processed cheese and pie, but deep in our hearts we know that man can live quite happily on meat and potatoes alone. I call it the “cosmic sense of enough” and you see it everywhere in this community, from the simple menu of the Kingbird Café to the spare decoration of St. Stephen’s-on-the-Drumlin church. And you can see it in our politics, too.
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We never asked that much of government. We did ask them to dredge out the harbour for a port and we petitioned for a dirt road south to civilization so we could get the mail more often. But when it came time to build the stuff we felt we really needed, like a hospital or street lights or the Opera House on Michigan Avenue, we reached into our own pockets every time. As the years went by, the authorities gave us a whole bunch of things we never asked for like the railway, income tax, public education and attack advertising on television. But we’re a patient people and we try not to make a big fuss about small things that don’t affect us one way or the other.
Our federal MP, Winston Hallett, went through the guardrails of public life last year in a highly publicized sex scandal. Vern Bunton and I went to an all-candidates meeting this week to seek out his replacement. First we listened to a tirade from a young man in an ill-fitting suit whose eyeballs were set so close to each other you couldn’t fit a knife blade between them. He said some pretty savage things about his “socialist” opponents and their “dangerous” views on global warming, wind power, permissive immigration, obscene arts funding, same-sex benefits, ethanol and Statistics Canada. In summary, he told us that a vote for any of his rivals would see us all marched off in chains to the communist gulag. The tirade puzzled me because socialism has never really caught on in Petunia Valley. Chances are you’ll see a socialist up here about as often as you see a Volvo or a snowy egret.
“Why is that young man so angry?” I asked.
“I think the NDP must have burned his village and raped his women,” said Vern drily.
The next speaker, a woman in homespun, told us that secrecy in government has reached epidemic proportions and she went on to lambaste her youthful opponent for abusing power, bullying civil servants, gagging the media, intimidating critics and locking the doors of Parliament.
Vern looked at the ceiling. “It’s hard to pin all that on the young fella. He’s only been out of Port Petunia once and that was a hockey trip to Brandon.”
“It’s like they can’t actually hear each other,” I said. “They are supposed to be in a conversation but they might as well be on opposite sides of a field shouting at each other.”
“That’s the thing,” said Vern. “Sometimes a person’s way of listening to you is just his way of ignoring you.”
“But it’s all they know!” I wailed. “And the bigger problem is that it works. If you push people into groups and paint a big sign on them and demonize them, you can get your own way. If you went down to Ottawa and told people the discussion should be more civil, they’d laugh in your face. What they need is a good example and there isn’t one anywhere.”
Vern put his hat on and I could see that our participation in the national debate was done for the evening. He rose and walked deliberately across the hall in front of the stage toward the side door. There was a hush and Vern turned to address the crowd:
“You know, it’s like my dad always said: ‘You can’t build yourself up by running the other guy down.” Then he left.
It was a nice moment and I hope there are a few more like it in this campaign.
Dan Needles is the author of “Wingfield Farm” stage plays. His column is a regular feature in
Country Guide.
