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Free At Last, Free At Last!!!

The news broke last evening around suppertime, forcing First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government, John McDonald MacKay Archibald, from his regular Thursday night boiled dinner and into the national spotlight. This is his only official statement so far:

After the events of last week from the west – the survival of Paul Martin’s third minority government in a row, the collapse of the co-leadership and other arrangements between Peter MacKay and Belinda Stronach of the New Conservative Party, the Declaration of Albertaria made by Premier Harper – I thought we might be in for a quiet spell but the news of this Order-in-Council has taken us all by surprise. The people of Atlantic Canada had been expecting confirmation of the new capital region and steps towards a new elected government. We hardly expected semi-sovereignty and a practical level of autonomy from the rest of the nation. Myself and Cleatus Morris, Deputy First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government, will be meeting with our legal counsel after we have our pie to review next steps.

Early reports are confirming that, apparently in a rush to get out of Ottawa before the long sleep of Parliament, the summer recess, the Federal Unity Cabinet under the direction of Prime Minister Paul Martin has – in addition to announcing the long planned confirmation of the new capital at Tantrama City – extended asymetrical federalism for a third time after Quebec and Alberta unexpectedly, irreversibly and perhaps erroneously granting the four Atlantic provinces their own regional legislature with devolved powers of a super-province as well as a direct draw on the national treasury plus exclusive powers over the fisheries, marine transport, ferries, inter-provincial bridge building and, oddly, the navy. Cleatus Morris, above left, Deputy First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government, describing himself this evening as First Admiral and Deputy First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government was reported as saying “Oh Happy Day, Oh Happy Day” as he danced a jig badly, stumbling and falling with glee as if intoxicated.

Protests and gatherings have already been reported in Guysborough, Souris and throughout the St. John River Valley. Communications with Newfoundland and Labrador have apparently been cut.

Angst At Lunch

To be quite fair the decision was reversed in about 24 hours but was everyone in the PEI Tory government asleep when this passed by their desks?

The Reuters story includes this:

“How many times, when you get upset or worried or concerned about things, is it in the middle of the day? It’s usually at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning when you wake up,” said Joan Wright, executive director of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention based in Edmonton, Alberta. The hotline received about 1,400 calls a year and about 50 were from people contemplating suicide, health groups said. “One of the things I was hearing is the government felt there weren’t enough suicide-related calls,” Wright said. Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province with a population of about 137,000 people, is trying to tame its budget deficit. The hotline cost about C$30,000 ($24,000) a year to run. “It’s a very small amount of money in our view,” said Reid Burke, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

When there is a call for one in every hundred people a year, you would think that would be enough to keep such a cheap service going let alone raise flags. According to Stats Canada, in 1996 PEI’s suicide rate was at or slightly above (depending on the end of the range) the national average: 15/3,862 or 20/3,933. Given the cash-strapped government’s decision to become a casino site and the highly-arguable rise in suicides that follow, the original thought to cut the line could be taken as cynical as, say, cutting auditor-general funding when faced with a scandal related to government pointlessly propping up dying private enterprise.

Two Zoos

We went to two zoos over the weekend. Both are legacies from the best part of 100 years ago of communities creating exotic educational assets. Both are well into a shift away from mere collections of animals for your gawking pleasure to having a something of a greater purpose. At Watertown, NY, in the middle of town in the center of the park on the hill, you will find the New York State Living Museum. At Syracuse NY, in the middle of town in the center of the park on the hill, you will find the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. At Watertown, you find the animals of New York state and you have a sense from all the building hat there is lots of expansion to provide more space for bears, deer, lynx as well as reptiles and amphibians, rattlers rattling at you through plexiglass. Thank God for plexiglass. It is focused and educational and I will never camp in upstate New York again. At Syracuse, you get to see the animals of the world: mountain side clinging goats from Afghanistan, Indian elephants, middle range apes from South America. There is a difference in scale as well. Syracuse is about 5 times the size of Watertown and maybe less than a fifth the size of the Toronto Zoo.

The elephants bothered me but they exemplifiy the transition that a zoo like the one in Syracuse faces. Oddly, an elephant pacing in a laregly concrete space bugs me more than a lynx pacing in a cage with trees and grass. But its because you think about it, isn’t it – many of the elephants have been there for over 20 years and there is likely no other place for elderly pachyderms, there is no money to expand the facilities, there may be no reason to extend the life of the herd into a next generation from a zoological point of view. I may be wrong on each of these points but that is what it looked like. Syracuse is clearly working on the well being of the elephants. It also has a very frank timeline about its history and one thing that span of decades tells you that turning a zoo around takes a lot of time in addition to money. Some apparently do not make it as the gift shop indicated that memberships from the Utica zoo were no longer being honoured as that facility had been removed from a certification list of some sort.

Syracuse is looking like it has a fighting chance. It has moved into an expanded area with well laid out walkways and green space and is using that area to provide larger and rarer animals with access to that space. The tigers are a good example. The Toronto zoo’s collection included Sumatran tigars from Indonesia. In Syracuse, the tigers are Russian, from the coast facing the northern Sea of Japan.

Zoos also portray the change that has occurred in wealth and giving. The Maine children’s writer Robert McClosky, who wrote in the middle of the 1900s, in one of his early books writes about a poor kid nicknamed Lentil who kicks around the streets of a mid-western US town and finds himself in a celebration of the return of a prominent citizen retiring after a life of service. Half the town is named after this citizen as, frankly, he paid for half the town. The story itself is a little drummer boy tale as in the end Lentil plays his harmonica for the round, happy benefactor and all is well. That story almost makes no sense anymore as that same town today would either be gone or would be populated with a community of much more dispersed wealth through the combination of some socialism and and a much more diversified economy. Many more people would have disposible income surplus to their needs. But it would not be seemingly free money like the money of the man in Lentil.

The zoos of the early 1900s were paid for by the prominent as well as through public campaigns but perhaps not well enough at the outset as other demands were made on the trust funds, stock crashes intervened and likely generations just passed. Like the elephant, the function of that sort of wealth may have changed. Another key factor is, of course, secularization and individual reward worship. Many old time capitalists told themselves something of a story about charitable giving – it was their duty. It was also civic republicanism. The gifting was mandatory because the words read from the pulpit said so and it was adding to the greater good. And it was believed and it was done and then, over time, it was not so well believed and it was no so well done and all of a sudden there are more interesting things to do on the weekend with all our cash. All of a sudden, the folk who could be benefactors pretty much have become us.

So we have, on one hand, elephants and a few apes who are maybe not well served and, on the other, focused active preservation of species which may not exist elsewhere soon, like the Russian tiger. Zoos are on the move and many may pull out of the demanding curve like Watertown and Syracuse seem to be. Both worth going to, both worth reading up on before you go so you know what to expect.

F.A. Cup

Now that the long weekend is upon us and the events of Parliament’s crisis-ette have passed, it is important to remember there are real events out there in the real world and one happens tomorrow morning with the English F.A. Cup Final between Arsenal (yea!) and Man U. (booo!).

If you think Martin and Harper had issues recently, look at these two gents, the managers involved in tomorrow’s game – they have learned to love again compared to their past dealings but there is still a lot of love left over laying around doing nothing when these two meet. Roger’s SportsNet is telling us the game is on live and for free this year – starting 10 am EST. In past years, I have spent two hours swearing at the pay per view satellite dish when it would not take my order for the game so I am hoping the gods of digital cable transmission are with me tomorrow.

Tantrama City Gazette, 19 May 2007

In the run-up to today’s the confidence vote in Ottawa on the third Martin government elected just two weeks, a surprise move was made today by Cleatus Morris, Deputy First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government.

Announcing he was joining the Opposition at this important moment in time, Morris indicated that his decision was in anticipation of the election of the Conservative Party in Ottawa and “the need to ensure a friendly face was in regional office when the new party “gots control of the purse strings and the plans for the Morris…err…Tidnish to Minas canal.”

When contacted in Ottawa, remaining Conservative Party of Canada co-leader Peter Mackay said – “who?” Morris later told the CBC that he spoke with former PM Brian Mulroney today to discuss her move. “Byron said to me, ‘I’m your friend. . . I support you as a friend,'” he said. Mulroney was not available for comment other than to ask through his spokesperson – “who?”


Hastily Gathered Press Conference

First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government, John McDonald MacKay Archibald, expressed surprise at a hastily gathered press conference for no greater reason, he said, than there was

“…no friggin’ Opposition to jump to, the boneheaded numbskull. The Tantrama City Provisional Government is entirely appointed and temporary awaiting the Order in Council establishing the time-line for unification of the Maritime Provinces and the affirmation of Tantrama City as the new capital for the new province.”

FMD Archibald, below right, suggested he would meet with DFMD Morris later today to clarify the situation, adding “he knows he isn’t supposed to have that second mug of tea.”

Rumours have been reported that should the Martin government actually fall, as nearly occurred back in 2005, there might be a challenge to the system of regional apppointments to the Provisional Government, especially after the recent string of office creations including those of Assistant Deputy First Minister Designate Mrs. Mary MacKay Archibald Morris; Minister of ACOA Relations and Random Infrastructure Development Designate “Little Cousin” Kenny Archibald MacKay Morris; as well as First Air Marshall and SlingTide Project Comptroller Designate “Wee Andy” Andrew Archibald MacKay Morris, by his guardian ad litem Cleatus Morris, Deputy First Minister Designate.