Vigil

This morning, Canadian opposition leader Jack Layton died of cancer.



Many people will write more eloquently about this than I. Some already have.



But I'll add this: Layton was a human guy in less than humane times. He was clear that politics affects peoples' lives. He knew that good policy has to be good for everybody.



And somehow, even in his goodbye note to a nation, he remembered that we all need hope, love and optimism, and tried his best to pass them to us.



Hundreds came to the candlelight vigil honouring his memory on Parliament Hill tonight, and considered their candles, or the red maple leaf flag that billowed at half-staff on the Peace Tower, or the sky, or the eternal flame.



And at intervals, they sang, quietly yet firmly, O Canada. For Jack Layton, for themselves, for a nation. Some throats caught. Some eyes wept. There were long, thoughtful stares. Still, the song kept rising and rippling through the crowd like a current in still water. Down deep, some, I hope, were thinking about ways to change the world for the better...

R.I.P., J.D.

Life as the Elgin Street Irregulars' designated literary coyote is not all free wine and cheese book launches, lemme tell ya.

Cards and letters began pouring in last week, politely pointing out that after the royal sendoff one gave to Erich Segal, it would be utterly churlish of one not to do the same for the late J.D. Salinger.

A more recent rash of polite missives has begun to pose the question: "Speaking of late, why the hell has one not stirred one's fuzzy butt and done so, already?

My bad.

But JD poses a unique quandary. His record. About mid-last century, he writes a clutch of short stories and novellas, and a vanishingly small number of novels, one brilliant, and one pretty damn good.

After which he bugs out to New Hampshire and turns recluse, not publishing another word for half a century, amid whispers that he's still writing reams of brilliant stuff for his own amusement only.

You can see the problem for pioneering metabloggers such as ourselves, even ones that have moved on from their original purpose. We have lived (and occasionally died) by the daily outpouring of committed bloggery. People who post more than regularly and who veer into the breathtakingly confessional at the mere drop of an innuendo. An innuendo often as not picked up, dusted off, undressed and punted center stage to swing around the pole, a bare sentence or two later.

JD? All that copy for 50 years, and we get nuthin'... The ESIs' unofficial position on his passing is that we think he would have made a lousy blogger. Make of this what you will.

An irreverent pause

American stand-up comedian George Carlin died yesterday in Santa Monica of heart failure. He was 71. The creator of the Hippy Dippy Weather Man ("the whole country is high, man") and Seven Words You Can't Say on Television was a unique contrarian whose humour pointed up the absurdities (some pretty damn unfunny) of living on this planet. He was smarter (and funnier) than most of the politicians who ran his country.

The US Supreme Court ruled his routine based on those words was, indeed a bad thing. Actually, seven of them. Yet an entire generation made it a priority to know what they were. In his memory, we pause to recite the infamous seven, three times fast, giggling a little snarkily, no longer certain why the Supreme Court was so het up in the first place. Unless the prosecution wasn't really about the words, per se, but his attitude toward authority(ies)... Carlin will be missed, but not forgotten.

Image: The Charleston Paper

Black and blue and squirrelly all over

I had a doctor's appointment over the lunch hour last week and, afterwards, decided to pop home for a moment.

I was distressed to find a rather large black squirrel lying quite dead in the middle of my winding driveway, just a few paces from the moat that surrounds the observatory.

Did I forget to pay the Italian taxes on ESI's global headquarters? I wondered. Is this how the good fathers of Tuscany remind Canadian residents their payments are overdue?

I fork over a lot of property taxes in this country, too.

Now is the chance, I thought, for the City of Ottawa to make up for its lacklustre, sporadic and altogether uninspired snow-removal efforts on my Centretown street.

After all, the squirrel, though on my driveway, was actually on city property, which extends several metres inward from the curb. And you can't be too careful, right? West Squirrel Virus may be running amok, infecting the downtown core.

I dialled 311 and after a little push-button menu-manoeuvring was duly assured a city roads crew would come pick up my ex-rodent friend. It was dark when I got home, so I didn't notice till the next day that someone, likely a neighbour, had simply moved the squirrel slightly to the right, atop a small stone ledge that borders my driveway.

Another call to the city. Yes, at this point I could have bagged the fluffy-tailed critter (sorry, Coyote) myself. But it was the principle of the thing. Again I was told the squirrel would be gone by day's end. No such luck.

Day Three: yet another call, and another promise. But as of suppertime Friday, my open-air squirrel cemetery was still thriving. Call four: I was told a supervisor would phone me shortly to advise when the road crew would arrive. An hour passed. Still nothing.

Finally, I walked outside with a plastic bag, grabbed a shovel and scooped the poor animal inside, then disposed of him as nobly as I could under the circumstances. Death is never pretty. And the whole thing made me a little sad.

I called the city for the fifth time. Don't bother coming, I said. It didn't seem right to make the squirrel, or me, wait any longer.

Photo: Squirrel, not exactly as illustrated.

Requiem for a Tavern

Went to work and then to Hull. Then the B.C. Met Dan M. there. Talked about airplanes. Home at lunch, then to Capital and then the Prescott. Met John B. and Jack M. Went to Alex and had green beer. Then to Ritz and met Jim G and Eric C. and learned that Denny G. had a heart attack and died at the Ritz. Jim G. lost his driver’s license after neg. breathalyzer test.

Partially redacted diary entry: Tuesday, March 17, 1970 – Ottawa

My father kept a daily diary from the year 1965 until his death. His diary was more of a journal of the day’s events as opposed to any personal and private confessions. It sure wasn’t close to anything like a blog. Of the over thirty years of entries, I have yet to find anything getting close to wanky self-indulgence in them. His self-indulgence rested in the activities he logged about. And Ottawa’s taverns ranked fairly high in those activities.

In his diary of 1970, the Ritz Hotel, on the corner of Bank and Somerset, figured prominently, though it ranked second place to my dad’s favourite watering hole – the Belle Claire Hotel on Queen Street. The B.C. was a popular haunt for many Ottawans, and was noted for its decent food. It was regularly patronized by politicians, sports figures, police, and crooks. Paddy Mitchell and his cohorts were regulars there. The Ottawa Rough Riders also made it a second home. Yeah, the good ole days when sports pros were just regular Joes who drank as hard as they played.

On Bank St., there were a few choices. The Alexander Hotel (the “Alex”) was a popular spot near the corner of Bank and Gilmour. The Ritz, on the other hand, never had the class of the Belle Claire or the Alex. It might have in its hey-day but by the early seventies no one of note was a regular there. Up until the mid-1970’s it maintained its segregated entrances: Men’s Tavern on one side, Ladies and Escorts on the other side. I can still sense the smell of stale beer, smoke and sometimes-urine that would waft out the doors as I walked past on my way to or from Big Buds or Hartman’s IGA with my mother. A big part of why the corner of Bank and Somerset Street is still considered the dodgiest part of Ottawa rests with the legacy of the Ritz Hotel. Some of that carried over to the Lockmaster, though the Lock carried a special nostalgia by the time it came on the scene, what with taverns being very much in decline. University kids and karaoke changed things for the better, I suppose, but not by much.

Now the wrecking ball looms. The Grads. The Alex. The Windsor. They are all gone. The heritage neophytes are up in arms about losing this grand old building first occupied by the Crosby Carruthers Company in the late 19^th century. A few of us reminisce about the good old days of the Lock or the Duke of Somerset, or hanging out on a Sunday night to see Ottawa’s version of The Pogues: a band called Jimmy George.

I read, not long ago, prior to the renovation failure, that the owner was intending to open up some new retail services on the site. They were even thinking of putting in a Tim Horton’s.

Maybe it’s good that we let it fall.

For my mother, I know she won’t regret seeing it come down. She carries no such nostalgia.

Strumming past the graveyard

I attended a funeral on Monday. I didn't know the deceased, but it was nice to be there to support his grieving widow.

Her husband died Friday night from pancreatic cancer. All tremendously sad. There were many tears as a silken-voiced guitarist strummed out a balm of gentle notes.

It occurs to me that the departed took his final bow as Coyote and I were enjoying a rare concert by the incomparable Daniel Johnston, a cat who's probably used up at least five or six of his nine lives.

I found the show inspiring, in part because Johnston has long struggled with mental illness. Everyone from Nirvana to Bright Eyes has covered his songs. Some are heart-tuggingly touching. Others are just plain fun, even when it comes to death. As a prelude to the funeral mass, it seems fitting that Johnston sang his cheeky little gallows-humour riff on Bruce Springsteen's Cadillac Ranch: Funeral home, funeral home / Got me a coffin, shiny and black / I'm goin' to the funeral and I'm never comin' back.