This kid's in a heap 'o trouble, but it's a helluva free advert for Mercedes

Can I borrow the car, Dad?

Sure thing, kid. Drive safe!

When you're nineteen years old, burying the speedometer is not necessarily incompatible with safe driving, at least in your own mind.

So little Jimmy takes the family Mercedes out for a spin on the QEW, and next thing you know, he's famous! Yup, he's got a speeding ticket for the highest speed ever recorded by the OPP!

191 miles an hour!

The totalitarian adventures of Fuhrer Doug Ford

The first thing Doug Ford did on becoming Ontario Preem last year was downsize Toronto city council. That was widely seen as a "f@ck you Toronto" move, payback for Toronto's failure to elect him mayor.

He's since moved on to "streamlining" the approval process for the big real estate developers, scrapping the basic income pilot project, capping funding for autistic children, and revamping health care delivery with a view to opening opportunities for privatisation.

Having fixed municipal government, the development process, and health care delivery, and shut down those whining parents of autistic children, Doug set his sights on restoring order in the chaotic Ontario Provincial Police. Fortunately, he knew just the man for the job; his good pal Ron Taverner, a seventy-two-year-old Toronto police inspector.

Ford had the search criteria for a new OPP commissioner re-jigged so Taverner would appear qualified, but then another problem cropped up. The number two guy at the OPP began raising a stink. So Ford had him fired.

Not that he personally fired him. Doug would never do that... No, the Deputy Commissioner of the OPP was fired by Deputy Minister of Community Safety, Mario Di Tommaso, another pal of both Ford and Taverner, who was made Deputy Minister by... Doug Ford!

Today it comes out that Taverner had been scheduled to testify at the sexual harassment hearing for a Toronto policewoman who claimed she suffered relentlessly while serving under his command. Heather McWilliam has been waiting for this hearing for five years, and just as things were finally getting under way, the hearing adjudicator quits!

What are the odds?!


When you're cutting down a forest, there's gonna be some sawdust... I think Stalin said that. Look for lots more sawdust, especially when the teacher union contracts come up for renewal in September.

Fuhrer Ford is just getting started!

So I run across Paul Newman in a bar

No, not that Paul Newman.

And not to be confused with my uncle Paul Neumann of Darmstadt, who is no longer in the best of health but could formerly be found in a bar from time to time.

I'm talking about my old pal Paul who showed up in my high school class picture in the GCVI yearbook, a fact neither of us discovered till we were well into middle age.

I typically run into Paul Newman about once every ten years or so.

Paul is apparently well into his old age now. He's getting those monthly cheques from the Canada Pension Plan. That makes him an official senior citizen in my book. And since I have yet to receive one of those, I guess this makes him old and me young.

One thing we had in common is me and Paul were both going to be millionaires by the time we were thirty.

Ha ha ha!

Who knows... without divorces and alimony and child support, one or the other of us might have made it.

So I'm taking Junior for lunch for his birthday at the Stampede Ranch yesterday, and I'm not there for five minutes before I hear "I seen you walk in and I only know one person that ugly; it can only be Dieter Neumann."

Shit... that can only be Paul...

We did the usual reminiscing about who's done what and who has died.

The older you get, the more you know who died. Funny how that works.

I've been exceptionally lucky in the death department. I know Paul's dad Dennis must have passed away a good twenty years ago, whereas mine is still going strong. But those ageing relatives are none of them gonna live forever, and right now mine are stacking up over their final destination like airliners over O'Hare in a blizzard.

Paul and I once shared a car ride from Calgary to Guelph. That's a trip both of us made many times. If things fell the right way you could do it in under thirty hours, which we did. As I recall it, I drove the whole way and he slept the whole way, except when he was briefly awakened by the G-forces as I was doing some dramatic manoeuvres weaving around abandoned gas stations in northern Ontario in a desperate attempt to lose an OPP cruiser.

Ya, it was a blast from the past, and I hope there was a lesson in it for Junior.

All you young folks out there who think the future is gonna stretch out forever, it ain't.

Make your time count.

Granny busted for "stunt driving"

I see where a local elder has run afoul of the law by being caught out doing more than fifty clicks over the speed limit.

Fifty over is all it takes to warrant a charge of "stunt driving." That's a legacy of the Fantino era, when Julian Fantino, the greatest living embodiment of the Peter Principle, was the big boss at the OPP.

When I read the part about being late for a card game, I panicked...

Oh my God, Bubby's in the hoosegow! Sit tight, Ruthie, we'll have a top lawyer on the case by morning!

Why is winter always a surprise?

I've lived in Canada long enough to know that come November, you might wake up one day and find snow on the ground. Furthermore, that snow is likely to stay awhile. Like till next May.

Nevertheless, November once again found me unprepared.

The snow-blower for my Ford 4000 is parked behind the garage. If memory serves, I think I need to fix the drive chain, which snapped on my last snow-clearing mission back in the spring.

The Ford 4000 is conveniently parked just out of range of my longest extension cord. Once the temperature falls to below 10 C, that Ford diesel needs to be plugged in for a couple hours before it's going to start.

You know the temperature is well below that if the snow stays on the ground overnight.

The day I parked it there I had just attached the 3-furrow plow, meaning to get to plowing up that weed-ridden flower patch on the east side of the front yard. That's a job the Farm Manager has been nagging about for at least two years, and if nothing else, I thought mounting the plow was a gesture of good faith on my part.

The walk behind snow-blower is in partial dis-assembly in the garage. It will start and run, but there is something wonky with the pulleys. It'll spit a drive belt out before I'm halfway down the driveway. I planned all summer to fix that, but here we are with snow on the ground, and wouldn't you know it, I never got around to it!

Last time I was out and about I'd dumped off a load of tree-tops behind the woodshed, thinking I was going to cut them into wood-stove sized pieces of firewood. That's another issue the Farm Manager has been on the warpath about.

"You better get going on the wood because it doesn't look like we'll get to Christmas with what's in the woodshed now!"

She's right of course, but I can't admit that, so I've been fobbing her off with how next time it's a nice afternoon I'll be carving up those six-footers behind the woodshed.

Today that nice afternoon came.

I haven't actually fired up the Stihl for a good two months. Topped her off with gas and bar oil, and set about to starting her up. After a few pulls on the cord I noticed I had bar oil all over my pants, my boots, the floor... and on account of the temperature, the bar oil had a viscosity just slightly more fluid than used bubble-gum.

I'd forgot to put the cap on the oil reservoir.

While I'm cleaning up that mess, I notice that one of the two nuts that secures the chain sprocket cover is missing. This has happened before. They will vibrate themselves loose if you don't tend to them. Not a big deal. The saw runs fine with just one nut holding the sprocket cover in place. Just keep an eye out...

So I get at my woodpile, and not five minutes later the other nut falls into the snow, the sprocket cover flies off, and the bar and the chain both disappear into the snow.

I'm left standing there with a perfectly running Stihl but it has no bar and no chain attached to it. Not gonna cut a lot of wood with that rig.

While I'm debating whether I should run into town and buy chainsaw parts, or just slash my wrists now and get it over with, Kipling calls.

You know how whenever you're at the end of your rope, if you can find somebody with an even more horrendous hard luck story, you find the strength to carry on?

Well, Kipling only calls a few times a year, but every time it has that salutary effect.

He's just finished rebuilding his VW diesel van for the nth time. That's not a slag on the VW; it's got over two million miles on it. You have to do a rebuild every half million or so.

But the story isn't that simple. That diesel broke down on the edge of an Indian reservation somewhere north of Ottawa. He had another couple hundred miles to go to deliver the load of windows he was taking to a building supply place up there.

The locals were friendly enough, but they didn't have the technology to fix a VW diesel, so Kipling is stuck, in a snow storm, with a diesel that won't start, and a load of windows that need to get delivered the next day.

He calls his broker and has them send another truck up to complete the window shipment.

That truck is going to take ten hours to get there. In the meantime, Kipling figures he better stay with his van to protect both the van and the cargo from vandalism.

While all this is going down he's also got the worst cold in his life and it's getting worse and worse by the hour, and he's thinking he's just another cough away from pneumonia.

"I coughed all night. I coughed so hard I shit myself."

Well, that was more info than I needed to know, but suddenly I was able to put my chain-saw issues into perspective. I've got a warm house right here. He's spending the night in an unheated van in the middle of a blizzard guarding his windows. Not to mention cleaning up after that personal hygiene incident under those circumstances.

Long story short, Kipling gets a ride back to Cambridge with the driver his company sent up to finish his job. His van is still up there in the boonies. He borrows a truck and a car hauler and heads north to retrieve his van. While he's winching the van onto the trailer the OPP stop by, and wouldn't you know it, he's got absolutely no paper work for the truck he borrowed.

There was some to-ing and fro-ing, but fortunately reason prevailed. The cops concluded that he wouldn't be stealing that ten year old VW van if he was driving a new F-350 Ford, and they gave him the benefit of the doubt on the rest of his story.

Getting the benefit of the doubt from the cops isn't something you can count on these days.

Anyway, he didn't get paid for that job and he was off work the next two weeks rebuilding that VW diesel.

I missed an afternoon of chainsawing.

It just proves that your troubles can be few so long as you compare yourself to someone who has lots more.

Oh, and winter has arrived!

How to tarp your campsite

They used to call me the "tarpmeister."

Mind you, that was a few years ago, and I'm not sure anymore who "they" were. Probably that pack of relatives who got all moralistic the time I gave Junior the green light to raid random beer coolers around the  campground.

But that's another story.

I will admit that my tarping jobs in recent years have fallen short of my own high standard.

But oh, if you could have seen the glory we lived under this past week!

Last winter the Farm Manager bought an old Rockwood camping trailer from a Kijiji advert. We've been tenters all our lives, and I'm not sure what possessed her to make this move, but I confess I did go along with it at the time, so it would be uncouth to whine about it now.

My first challenge was getting the lights to work. Did that the day before we left. When I say "the day," I mean all day.

The old Ford 150 has had the vehicle end of my trailer wiring hanging off the back bumper for several years, through rainsleetsnow and mud year after year.

For some reason it didn't work.

The FM did drive a pretty good bargain on that camper, but it had one flaw. And kudos to the previous owners for 'fessing this; it leaked under certain conditions.

Like rain.

We're heading up to Chutes Provincial Park hard by Massey. They've had rain there before. According to the FM, they will again.

I always figured people get trailers when they're too old and decrepit to climb those trees and fix a proper tarp. That ain't me. But now I have a trailer and I still have to fix a tarp?

Part of the problem with my vehicle wiring is that I'm pretty sure my dear daddy hooked it up years before he sold me the truck. Dad has his own way of doing things. I don't knock it because generally it's worked out OK.

At least for him.

After a whole lot of sleuthing I had it down so that when you hit the left turn signal on the truck, you also get the left turn signal on the trailer!

Anyway, I'm going camping with the Farm Manager, and there is a reason she is the "manager." She has been telling me for months that we need to tarp it. I find a 15 X 20 tarp that should do the deal.

Chutes is a park we've been to many times. There are many reasons not to like it; too close to the Trans-Canada Highway, too close to town, not near enough to big water...

As we were passing through the town of Espanola, an OPP cruiser pulled in behind us and stayed there for a good ten minutes, through numerous turns and stoplights.

There can be no finer vindication of your wiring repair job!

But here's the secret when you camp at Chutes; campsites 92 to about 96 are close enough to the falls that you never hear town sounds or Trans-Canada truckers pulling the air brakes. The sound of that water cascading over those falls just drowns out everything else.

So we had site 92 this year, and it lends itself quite readily to a 15 X 20 tarp. And baby, did I get that tarp up there!

With the trailer you have to get the tarp a good four feet higher into the trees than you would with a tent. Back in the day I would have just climbed those trees. That inevitably leaves you with pine tar all over you.

Here's the shortcut; a claw hammer. I happened to have a 24 oz Estwing that's been lying around in the truck for years. You wrap the rope around the head, toss that puppy over a branch ten feet over your head, tie it off, and you're good to go!

But be cautioned; this can be a dangerous undertaking. The downward trajectory of that 24 oz hammer can be darned unpredictable. Best to move any youngsters out of the immediate vicinity. Even then you have to be on your guard; nothing says "dorkshit" louder than tossing a hammer up in the air and having it come back and give you a concussion.

Chutes is called that because back in the log-drive days, when the white settlers were raping the old-growth forests that the original inhabitants had managed to coexist with for thousands of years, they used to build "chutes" around or over the many waterfalls.

Chutes Park today is where one of the bigger log chutes stood on the Aux Sauble River.

That tarp ended up square over the trailer, and when I say "square" I mean even when you stood 50 feet back you could see that the edge of the tarp was perfectly parallel to the edge of the trailer's hard-top. And those extra few feet of tarp on the width side came out perfectly over the Farm Managers cooking console!

It was, as God is my witness, the most perfect tarp job of my life!

...and we didn't have a single drop of rain for the entire week we were at Chutes.

The long drive

Have to say I love the long drive.

That is one thing I have in common with my dear father.

He likes the long drive too.

After he had the auxiliary tanks fitted out for the motor home he was able to do the Great Lakes Circle Tour in a day and a half, where mere mortals thought two and a half weeks was a good time.

I've never left the old boy much reason to swell with pride at the thought of me, but he'd be proud of this; I made it from the door of ex-wife 2 to the door of my daughter's place in res at Trent University in exactly one minute under two hours.

Look at a map and figure that out!

Quite a few times when the co-spawn of ex-wife 2 and myself were living in Ontario and I was still at the Irving shipyard in Saint John I made the Saint John to Guelph trip in under 13 hours. In fact, I once nailed it just under 12!

Those were painful times. A twelve and a half hour drive and a four hour visit with my children and then twelve and a half hours back to fitting pipe-hangers aboard the good ship HMCS Vancouver.

But I digress. The long drive.

Paul Newman and I once did the Calgary-Toronto run in well under 30 hours. We were driving Paul's Grand Marquis. That right there is a sign of the times, isn't it?

What car company nowadays would have the audacity to market something called a "Grand Marquis?"

"Oh, I see you are piloting a Grand Mar Kiss, so I assume you are a total twat!"

But Pauli and I took turns and kept the hammer down and by God we set a personal best on that Calgary - Toronto jaunt.

The one highlight of the trip will forever be the pedal-to-the-metal 20 laps around a boarded-up gas station in North Ontario with an OPP cruiser in hot pursuit. I'm driving and the g-forces wake Paul up and he says "you're not playing ring-around-the-service-station, are you?"

Of course not... go back to sleep... meanwhile, the last lap I did I see fuckface the uber-keen OPP recruit has piled the cruiser into the snow berm, and we're good to carry on down that trans-Canada highway!

And I still like the long drive. What's even more fucked up is that my father still has his driving license, and he still revels in the long drive.

Not that long ago I was heading back home from a wedding in Montreal. I'm cruising at about 140 kph, and there's this motor home looming bigger and bigger in the rear-view... oh there it goes, he's well ahead of us now...

Talk to you when I catch up with ya, Dad...

The long drive...

Are we all Kerouac's children or what?