Parade Season

Parade Season

I’m confused. Is it parade season or is it protest season? They’re busy bangin’ pots and pans in Montreal and other places in Quebec. Is it a parade or a protest? Who knows? In Winnipeg there’s a gay pride parade this weekend – I think it’s a parade although it could be seen as a protest against anybody who’s not gay. I was at one of those following the death of my gay son at which I was asked to speak from the steps of the legislature back in 1995. Holy crap! What that was, was a protest parade!

Then there’s ‘the strides for change’ in St Vital Park on Saturday, which is a five k. hike for MADD or Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That’s certainly a protest parade against the drunks who kill people while driving. And let’s not forget the Hi Neighbor Festival in Transcona. That’s definitely not a protest parade – well it ends at the beer gardens so what do you expect?

It seems everybody is walking in a parade of some sort these days. Everybody in the Middle East is on his or her feet. Mind you, they’re not banging pots and pans down there but rather using a variety of firearms. And those damn things got bullets in them. The people in Quebec might want to consider that before the pot banging gets too loud.

Then of course, there is all of Europe on the march too, protesting this, that and the other. Well, all except the Irish. Every year the Orangemen get together to march through the streets just to piss the Catholics off. The Orangemen parade and the Catholics protest.

But you know, governments and other authorities having jurisdiction are so deeply rooted in their own agendas, their only response is to send out the cops – by the thousands. That’s got to cost a pretty penny. Them cops don’t work for nothing you know.

See, I always had this notion that governments were servants of the people rather than being their keepers. It seems I am rather naive. You could call them ignorant and/or arrogant. You could say they are drunk with power. In all these scenarios you could be right, either individually or collectively. There’s something about the mantle of office that casts a spell over these people when they put it on. A case in point is that Conservative backbencher testifying at the Gomery enquiry about Karl Hans-Schreiber. His dismissive comment was that after all, Schreiber was nothing more than an arms dealer, completely ignoring the fact that his party was the arms buyer and user, thus justifying Schreiber’s existence. Well, don’t get me started on that!

The point of this whole dissertation is to illustrate the futility of it all. The only salvation is that it gets everybody up off their collective arses and moving around, getting some exercise. Walking is still the best full-body workout there is – bar none. At least, that’s the way it seems from here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.