Tag: contemporary life

Stop The “Relationship”

One of the reasons I hate “relationships” is people are beginning to think they’re the natural order of things.  They’re not.  Antony was not in a “relationship” with Cleopatra; he was in love with her.  D’uh!  Unfortunately, in the 21st century, a lot of people think love is some kind of an emotional unicorn. (Everybody knows what it looks like, but nobody’s actually seen it.)  So, rather than taking a chance on a nasty kick in the heart, we’ve replaced the whole messy business of love with the “relationship” — a muddy little word that can mean just about anything.  This guarantees that nobody has too big an emotional stake in a very emotional game.  The problem is, however, once you’ve signed a pre-nuptial agreement on your feelings, most “relationships” last a lot longer than your emotional commitment to them — with disastrous results.  Here are a few ways an overdue “relationship” can suck the life out of you.

I’m A Coward — This is when two people stay together because — well — because.  Nobody wants to end up sitting alone on a park bench, feeding the pigeons.  However, staying together just to avoid that is something science calls inertia, and once that sets in, you’re already halfway to that bench.

Revenge — This is simple: “You’re not the person you told me you were, and I’ve wasted a lot of time on you. So now I’m going to make you just as miserable as I am.”

Emotional Paintball — This is the relationship that’s nothing more than a low-level firefight.  These people spend their days sniping at each other and setting up elaborate emotional ambushes.  They do it for the drama ’cause there’s nothing else there.

What About The Stuff? — These are the people who stay together because of the house, the cars and all the other crap they’ve accumulated.

What Will The Neighbours Think? — This is the couple who are always looking over their shoulders ’cause they believe everyone is so-o-o interested in them.  They don’t actually like each other anymore, but their collective egos won’t let them split up.

The Children — Worst reason ever!  Passing your dysfunctional lives on to the next generation is just child abuse.

Sex — Here’s the deal.  Eventually, gravity and Mother Nature are going to come calling, and you’re not going to look all that good naked, anymore. ( Just sayin’!)

And that, folks, is why you’re better off believing in love.

Labour Day: A Brief History

Next Monday is Labour Day and as we all know, Labour Day has fallen on hard times as of late.  North American consumer culture keeps chugging along; therefore, many workers (labourers, if you will) have to work on the first Monday of September.  For the rest of us, it’s the last long weekend of the summer — time to heat up the barbeque, cool off the drinks and relax one last time – cuz pretty soon the great Canadian winter is going to bring us six months of snow and Hockey Night in Canada.  However, as you’re sitting with a cold one — fat, dumb and happy that the kids are going back to school on Tuesday – here are a few historical tidbits to chew on before the steaks are ready.

Legend has it that Labour Day is actually a Canadian invention.  It’s the result of two canny Conservative Prime Ministers and a hard-case Liberal newspaper editor.  I don’t know if the story’s exactly true or not, but I’ve heard it told this way a couple of times, so it’s mostly true.  Besides, it makes a good story.

In 1872, the Typographical Union of Toronto was on strike against The Toronto Globe newspaper – which, by the way, is the great-grandfather of today’s Globe and Mail.  The noted Liberal politician, George Brown, was none too happy about this, since he had founded the Globe in 1844, and it was his paper they were striking against.  He rooted around in his law books for a while until he found some antiquated anti-labour laws and had the strike leaders arrested for conspiracy – 24 of them!  Other labour leaders decided not to take this sitting down and organized a mass rally in Ottawa for the first Monday of September, 1873.

Remember, Canada was less than a decade old at this point, and there was great concern that the shiny new Dominion would not survive.  Socialists roaming the streets, making outrageous demands (a 54 hour work-week, for one) were seen as a serious threat to the orderly conduct of business and to the country.)

Enter, Prime Minister, Sir john A. Macdonald (who has also fallen on hard times as of late) but is still one of the wiliest politicians this country has ever produced.  In 1873, Macdonald’s government was up against the wall.  (Long story short: they’d been taking bribes from railroad companies — really, really big bribes.)  So, where other people saw lawless socialists attacking the foundations of our nation, Sir John saw potential votes and a chance to slap the crap out of the Liberals.  He promised the marchers, as God was his witness, to repeal the anti-union laws.  Unfortunately, the railroad bribes were so big that Macdonald’s government didn’t survive.  Fortunately, his promise did.  The Trade Union Act of Canada was passed in 1874.  Pretty soon, everybody and his brother (pun intended) were legally demanding things like a 54 hour work-week and time to eat their lunch — and those September marches continued.

Meanwhile, in the USA and over in Europe, trade unionists were working away, trying their best to get a few decent working conditions themselves.  Internationally, labour leaders all had the same agenda.  They wanted something a little better than legalized slavery for their people.  Then, if there was any good will left over, they figured a little dignity for the working man would be nice, too.  Most union demonstrations revolved around May 1st.  The thinking was that people would come out and join spring demonstrations after a long winter.  Plus, the trade union/radical/socialist message could tag team with May Day celebrations already in progress.  After all, May Day stuff — like music and street fairs and dancing around a pole — had always been the practice of common folk.  Obviously, the thinking was sound because the idea caught on.  Today, May 1st is universally recognized as International Worker’s Day — and it’s a legal holiday in over 80 countries!

Back in Canada, the trade union movement was growing apace and in the industrial heartland of the northeastern United States, it was exploding – almost literally.  On May 1st, 1894, labour disputes erupted in violent and deadly clashes in Cleveland, Ohio.  Then, at the end of June, the first large interstate labour action took place: railroad workers in several states staged a boycott in what came to be known as The Pullman Strike.  Just as an aside, American President Cleveland ordered federal troops to put down the strike.  Hundreds of people were injured and 13 union workers were killed.  However, this isn’t important to our main story.

Our Prime Minister at the time, John Sparrow Thompson (never heard of him have you?) saw what was happening in America and around the world and decided to defuse the situation before it got started.  As the Pullman Strike in the US was entering its fourth week, on July 23, 1894, his government declared that the first Monday in September would be a national holiday.  It would be in the tradition of those original Ottawa trade union marches — dedicated to the labour movement and appropriately called Labour Day.*  The more cynical historians say this was simply a move to draw attention away from May 1st.   Whatever Thompson’s motivation, even though Canada had its share of labour pains, it avoided most of the bloody clashes that characterized the international labour movement — situations like the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1896, which started as a peaceful May Day union march and ended up scattered with corpses — over twenty dead.

Labour Day was a small concession to the early trade union movement, but it demonstrated that Canada and Canadians do recognize the importance of ordinary working people.  So, if you get a minute between long weekend activities, lift your glass to the men and women who got seriously kicked around to gave us this holiday.  Good on ya, folks!

*President Grover Cleveland also created an American Labor Day less than a month later.

Summer Thoughts 2022

We’re not even halfway through summer yet.  OMG!  It’s hot.  I’m grouchy.  There are motorcycles.  The guy down the street still believes everyone in the neighbourhood loves classic hip-hop.  And I wish there was an Advent Calendar for the Autumn Equinox – but there isn’t.  Anyway, here are some random thoughts to occupy your mind while Mother Nature tries to broil us in our own oil — again this year.

Life is not a bowl of cherries, a river, a journey or a process – life is a ski jump.  You start off slowly, gather momentum and just when you reach maximum velocity and think you’ve got it all going on – oops! – you’re sailing fifty metres in the air, and there’s nothing underneath you.

Isn’t it totally convenient that most of the people you know — from the woman you see on the bus every morning to that best, best friend you’ve known since university — go into suspended animation when you’re not there?

That great subversive Winnie the Pooh is still banned in China.  Which proves that if you want to upset a dictator (I’m lookin’ at you Putin) laugh at him.

One of the coolest things about getting older is that, when people talk about you behind your back, you can’t hear them.  And this works on so many levels.

In fashion, sometimes the only difference between faux pas and faux posh is about $500.00.

This is the best way to explain the difference between movie audiences in Europe and North America.  In North America, people want to see Gary Oldman play Macbeth.  In Europe, people want to see Macbeth played by Gary Oldman.

In the small town of Union Bay, Canada, a 95-year-old woman, Anna Stady, chased a bear out of her kitchen.  This says a few things about wildlife in Canada and a whole bunch about Canadian women.

And speaking of …  They’ve reintroduced European Bison to Britain.  Someplace in Kent has a whole pile (herd?) of them.  They haven’t been around in the wild since the Middle Ages.  Good on ya, Brits!  Is this the short road to Jurassic Park?

And finally:

Young people spend so much time using their phones to “interact” with their friends on Social Media, one would think that teenage pregnancies would be somewhere around zero.