Appeared in the Toronto Star, August 29, 2001
Letter to the Editor:

Re: Society set to fight sale of dog meat

It is natural in this country to deplore "the practice of killing puppies and kittens for the pot", however, the reasoning behind the recent "rescue" of three young dogs from a street market in Vietnam is a tad shaky.

When Canadian Humane Society CEO Michael O'Sullivan bought the dogs, during a Hanoi visit to attend a meeting of the United Nations Wildlife Treaty, it is plain he believed they were being sold for meat. However, the market as he described it "had everything from dresses and flowers to live ducks and over 100 kittens." One assumes that the dresses weren't meant to be eaten.

We're told that the puppies are farm-raised, fed with rice for several months and then taken to market. Considering that many Vietnamese subsist on rice and little else, it's hardly surprising that their animals enjoy the same diet.

A representative of the Vietnamese community is quoted as saying that dogs and cats are raised as pets in the home, now, and eating them is "very, very rare." Isn't it possible that Mr. O'Sullivan, while well-meaning, might simply have given a street vendor a really good day in the pet-selling business?
Imagine it. "Hey, a rich Western guy just bought my last three dogs! He must have a really big house." Ironically, Mr. O'Sullivan's armful of third-world puppies looked a darn sight better cared-for than the suffering creatures busted out of the Misener Mill in Vaughan.

Mr. O'Sullivan might meet his objectives more effectively by focusing his in-person rescue-efforts on the miserable denizens of Canada's satanic puppy mills. He could mobilize his grassroots supporters to blow the whistle on backyard animal abusers. He could lobby his own government for tougher animal cruelty laws. He also might want to open up a dialogue with the Agriculture Ministry about Canadian factory farming before getting into a dog-meat debate with Vietnam.

Sincerely,
H. Mel Malton
Huntsville

TOP

The Essentials

By H. Mel Malton

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a little trip. It was only for three days, so I didn't pack much - just a small overnight bag, the size of a briefcase. When I got back, I tossed my toiletry bag onto a chair in the bathroom and left it there, planning to deal with it later. It's one of those fabric purse-things, with clear windows in it so that you can see what's inside. That evening, a couple of friends came over for a visit, and after a quick trip to the loo, Bev came out and said "that make-up bag is so you, Mel." I didn't quite get what she meant.

"The corkscrew, for example," she said. "I bet you only travel with the essentials." We started talking about luggage, and came to the conclusion that we are what we pack, no doubt about it.

My make-up bag didn't have any make-up in it, for example. Oh, I paint my face occasionally, when the social situation requires it, but generally, I don't bother. I just wash my face, brush my hair and I'm ready to go.

Inside the bag was a toothbrush and toothpaste, a plastic soap container with the current bathtub chunk, a disposable lighter, a pair of nail-clippers, my hairbrush and a stick of deodorant. That was it. Oh, and the corkscrew. Don't leave home without it.

I didn't always travel so light. When I was in my twenties, I never ventured outside without first having spent a good hour on my grooming. I had soaps and exfoliants, creams and unguents and a whole battalion of bottles and tubes, pots and brushes, and I wouldn't have dreamed of going away for three days without taking the whole kit and kaboodle with me. I even had a faintly medieval pair of metal tongs for curling eyelashes.

I'm not sure when all this changed. Maybe it was when I started touring with a Children's theatre company, and had to get up at the crack of dawn and drive with a group of grumpy, barely-awake actors to an elementary school in the suburbs for a nine o'clock show. Grade Two kids don't care about curled eyelashes. Maybe ten years in the theatre biz weaned me off the makeup-thing. You only put that stuff on when you're working. Using makeup offstage made about as much sense as wearing your MacDonald's uniform to the beach.

Anyway, now that I'm close to forty, packing makeup for a trip makes no sense to me. And there's more to this, too. I remember inviting a couple of actor-friends up to the family cottage one weekend. They both arrived with large suitcases, and that was fine, but one fellow had included a whole box of videotapes.

"Ummm, what's that?" I asked.

"I brought a bunch of movies - you know, in case it rains."

"Paul, hon. There's no TV here." He was aghast. No TV? He spent the weekend pacing, changing his outfit every two hours and pounding back the beer as if, given enough alcohol, he could hallucinate a video screen.

I guess what I'm getting at is that concept Bev identified the other night - travelling with the essentials. What are they, after all? I just finished reading a great children's book by Gary Paulsen called Hatchet, about a 13-year-old boy who's stranded in the Canadian bush after a plane crash with nothing but a hatchet to keep him company. He figures out how to make fire by striking the steel head of the hatchet against a rock, he makes tools, spears fish, and survives. It's inspiring. I wonder if I could do that - I certainly couldn't have done it twenty years ago - I'd have been racing around frantically in the pines, looking for an outlet for my curling iron.

And what are the essentials now? I look around my cluttered house and vow to downsize. I don't really need all those knick-nacks, the kitchen is stuffed with dust-covered appliances and my closets are full of clothes I haven't worn in years. Where did all this stuff come from?

I read about people in third world countries whose household treasures include one cooking pot and a couple of straw sleeping mats, then I read a coffee-table book extolling the virtues of palatial boathouses on the Muskoka Lakes, where the recreational watercraft is better housed than most of the global population.

I reach for the newspaper and read up on the newest disorder to hit the middle-class - compulsive shopaholism, and turn the page for the latest dope on the homeless. I take in the Fraser Institute's decree that poverty is overestimated in this country, and then I read in the local paper about some kid who'd been taken into care because he's starving to death. Essentials? You tell me.

All this got fired up because my friend Bev noticed that I travelled with a corkscrew instead of a hair-dryer. Really, there's nothing worse than a smug, middle class writer lording it over everybody else because she's turned her back on the beauty myth and hasn't got a television set. Still, there's a grave imbalance out there, and it doesn't hurt to comment on it from time to time. Maybe we could all sell our non-essentials and give the money to the poor. Maybe we could give the fashion-boutiques a miss and fire off a couple of bucks to the food bank. Or maybe it's all a lost cause, and we'd be better off heading down to the local beauty parlour for a quick makeover to boost our self-esteem.

Essentials are relative, after all.

TOP

Appeared in Muskoka Advance, September 2, 2001
Re: PWC Bill Unfair (Aug. 26)

Dear Editor:

This is in reply to Mr. Nick Gabura's recent letter defending the rights of Personal Watercraft owners.

Imagine you are at a concert, enjoying some gentle music along with several hundred other people. Suddenly, somebody comes into the auditorium carrying a large radio. This person sits on the edge of the stage, finds his favourite rock station on the dial and cranks it up to full blast. When the audience complains that he is ruining the concert, the radio owner announces that he has a perfect right to listen to any kind of music he likes, and that he's been taking his radio to concerts for years. Naturally, the audience appeals to the management.

I don't imagine anybody wishes to interfere with your personal right to enjoy Muskoka's waterways, Mr. Gabura. The trouble is that a large number of PWC drivers have no manners, and interfere regularly with the enjoyment of others.

You'd hardly expect a concert hall to anticipate the arrival of a radio-owner who wants to blast his own music into the middle of the Pastoral Symphony, but after the fact, you can hardly blame the management for posting a "Radios Banned" sign.

Perhaps a PWC driven modestly has, as you assert, "lower sound emissions than conventional outboards" and similar engine emissions. Perhaps the word "emission" is one you might want to contemplate. Nobody really has the "right" to produce emissions of any kind, and if one does, it is considered polite to apologize immediately afterwards.

PWCs are built for speed, as any wave-jumping, adrenaline-pumped twenty-something will tell you after reading his owner's manual. It is no accident that the ads for PWCs feature buff, bronzed lifeguard-types in mirrored sunglasses, gripping the handlebars and snarling as they wrestle their own wake. Riding a PWC in a modest way is like driving a Harley below the speed limit on a straightaway.

Rather than whine about the "fairness" of local government snatching your noisy toys away, why not consider the alternatives? The coolness-factor of the PWC has diminished significantly since Stockwell Day's notorious photo-op, and driving a PWC slowly is just dorky, right? Consider getting a kayak or a canoe - then you can exercise your God-given, Canadian waterways enjoyment-rights without emitting all over everybody else.

Sincerely,
H. Mel Malton
Huntsville

TOP

Former Premier takes over Laingford Parish Council

By H. Mel Malton

In a surprise development yesterday, retiring Ontario Premier Mike Harris agreed to act as the new chair of the Parish Advisory Council of the Laingford Anglican Church, now renamed the Saints Alive Corporation(c) .

"I plan to make some changes," Harris said in a news conference yesterday. "We're gonna make this congregation competitive, and at the end of the day, you'll see real growth in this key sector of the spiritual marketplace."

Harris outlined a 10-point plan, which he said would be implemented as soon as he took office. "We did a poll just last Sunday, and we have a plan already," he said. "Stakeholders want a secure economic base in this church - they want to leave a legacy for their children's children." Harris' campaign of reform, named the Take Up Alms Strategy, was not available for congregational review, but the chair assured concerned parishioners that it had been written by an expert consultant. A U.S. consulting firm, Fleecing the Shepherd Inc. (FSI) was responsible for the study, Harris said.

The Take Up Alms Strategy includes various cost-cutting measures, all designed to maintain or improve the current level of basic soul-care enjoyed by the congregation. "We will continue to service the faith community," Harris said, "and it won't cost anyone a red cent. You have my word on that."

The strategy includes the following innovations, lauded by FSI as being "fiscally and theologically responsible."

1. Wealthy members of the church will no longer have to put anything in the collection plate - in fact, they will be invited to fish something out every Sunday. Parishioners with an income less than $35,000 per annum will be expected to tithe.

2. Monetary shortfalls will be offset by the sale of surplus items in the Parish Food Bank.

3. The Food Bank space will be renovated to accommodate an exciting new corporate advertising display, the revenues from which will fund the new Parish golf course, planned for the parking lot in 2003. (Golf course membership cards will be issued to eligible parishioners at the discretion of the treasurer.)

4. Food Bank clients will pay a user-fee, and will be expected to wash church windows, serve coffee during fellowship hour, and work in the coat-check area on Sunday mornings, in return for their emergency supplies.

5. Sunday services will be cut back, in order to create demand. There will be one Eucharist every second Sunday, and parishioners will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis. Some restrictions apply.

6. A waiting list for meetings with the rector will be posted in the narthex, and those in need of immediate pastoral care may contact the parish's new, private spiritual-direction-provider, Clerical Services Inc. (NY). Visa and American Express cards accepted.

7. In order to improve Christian Education, a new Sunday School Curriculum will be implemented immediately. Based on a new translation of the Bible, currently being compiled by God-R-Us Publications (Detroit), the New EZ Read Bible (with catchy slogans!) will include a CD-ROM of entertaining video-games (Armageddon(c) and It's Not a Sin If You Invoke Jesus First(c)) and a catalogue of quality merchandise, including the God-R-Us mascot, Pharisee Phreddy(c). Copies of the new curriculum will not be available until 2004, but Church School leaders will be expected to begin teaching the new material immediately, using the most recently updated Teacher's Pamphlet.

8. Parish Advisory Council members will be paid a salary, commensurate with experience, and will receive a pension upon retirement. PAC meetings will be held on every second Saturday in months containing the letter J, and the first PAC retreat weekend will be held at the Posh Sands Golf Resort, Kuskawa, in the Executive Dining Room. The cost of this retreat will be covered by a recently discovered surplus in the "Fix the Roof" fund.

9. Servers, readers, associate clergy, Eucharistic assistants, choir members and altar guild members will be required to update their skills, at their own expense, by attending the New Ministry Seminar(tm) in Toronto, to be held for one day only, December 25, 2002. Those who do not comply with the upgrading requirements will be downsized.

10. All parishioners will be issued with identity cards, which will contain information regarding church attendance, givings, personal and family details, and pastoral records. No card, no service. The Saints Alive Corporation(c) reserves the right to forward this information to marketing firms and government departments at their discretion.

"We think this is a good plan, good for the parish and for the global faith community," Harris declared. "If your church isn't on the cutting edge of new developments in the faith-provider sphere, how can you hope to remain competitive in a global marketplace?"

The new PAC chair closed the press conference with a prayer.

"May God help us all," he said.

TOP

Last Words
(Broadcast on CBC Radio’s “First Person Singular”, Summer, 2002)

The bag was bright yellow, a cheerful nylon beach-tote that evoked sun and sand, even in the dead of winter. It accompanied my aunt Min everywhere, a kind of insurance against a moment in which someone might sigh and say “there’s nothing to do.”

“How about a little game?” Min would say, the yellow bag would appear and out came the Scrabble Board. My aunt’s board was well-worn and dog-eared. The tiles were kept in a small blue satin bag with a drawstring, a thing I’d sewed for her one Christmas when I was ten.

Pencilled in the margins of the board were the Famous Scores from games gone by, with initials and dates to say who’d triumphed, when. A truly splendid game was one in which the combined scores of the players was over 600 points. We played for mutual success - not exclusively, for Min simply hated to lose - but with an unwritten rule that you weren’t to waste a triple word score space by putting down a cheap, three-letter word.

The Game spawned its own family language, naturally. “You blobbed me,” meant you’d put a word in the space where I was planning to put a word. “Pro bono publico” described the lofty kindness of setting up access to a likely double for someone else. And if an opponent played a seven-letter word (an extra 50 points), it was understood that flowery compliments must follow. “Oh, well done! You cleverboots.” From the moment I could string the letters together to spell cat or boat, I’d played the game most often with my diminutive aunt Min.

By age 12, I was taller than she was. She was a feisty, witty single woman, who’d emigrated to Canada at 30 by herself, to grasp life’s adventure with both hands. After a long career in social work, she retired to a little bungalow in the town where we lived, north of Toronto, and settled down to a busy schedule of volunteer work.

Min loved words - the Scrabble tiles were just a slice of it. Her house was full of books, the shelves overflowing, books piled on tables, in corners, in the bathroom, the words spilling out of her in puns and anecdotes and stories.

She was the very best of aunts, a friend and confidante, an older sister, fellow sweet-tooth, giver-of-good-gifts and huggable, always - a soft and fragrant armful, solid at the core for steadiness. I never had any doubt at all that she loved me entirely without condition - even when I won at Scrabble.

The cancer grabbed her pancreas in December, her 75th year, spread like a grassfire before anyone got word of it, and had riddled her little body through and through by January. Nothing could be done, they said.

Min’s last weeks were punctuated by a steady stream of visitors, legions of friends, floral tributes so abundant they had to call a halt for lack of room. It’s gut-wrenching, saying goodbye to someone who has always crackled with life - to see that life draining away so fast you can almost hear it go.

She is sitting in the living room - propped up on pillows, a tiny dying Queen.

“Shall we have a little game?” And I nod, yes, and up comes the yellow bag, and out of that, the Scrabble board. We set it up on the little table that is placed before her. To her right is another table with water, juice, medicines and tissues. My mother hovers for a gentle moment, then melts away to do something in the kitchen. The clock ticks.

Min brings out the blue satin bag, shakes it, the tiles tinkling against each other like wooden coins. We settle into the ritual. I want to say something profound - I love you so much, my heart is breaking, but instead I choose a letter and she chooses one - closest to ‘A’ gets to go first. “Hah,” she says. “My go.” Her go.

We place words on the board, Min keeps score as always. I try to will my letters to come up with something innocuous. F.R.G.E.E.A.I. - and there’s GRIEF, a word I can’t possibly use. I juggle the tiles to wipe the word away. Min places TRIPE on the first double word score, and chuckles. I place GRAPE crossways to it, a safe word, certainly. And so the game continues - we don’t say much - we never do when we’re playing. I keep pumping up my courage to say something to the point - I will never forget you - and I keep on mouthing the words of the Scrabble ritual, as Min places MANDALA - seven letters - on the board. “Oh, nice word - you cleverboots.” My voice is brittle, far too cheerful, and I am angry suddenly - like a very small child whose will is thwarted , who wants the game to go on forever. I want to scatter the wretched tiles, dash the board to the floor with my hand, a ten-year-old hand I see suddenly in my mind’s eye - sewing a scrap of blue satin.

The game ends early - Min is tired and I haven’t noticed. I haven’t been in on this dying business, I’m not up to speed. We part with a hug. I kiss her cheek, the skin against my lips feels as thin as onionskin, so weary, her shoulders fragile as bird bones.

I missed the moment of her death - I lay in bed in another town, waiting for the call, the summons I’d been promised. I would drive, I knew, as fast as I could when it came. But I arrived too late.

Later, trying to picture it, I imagined her mind like the blue satin bag, full to bursting with all those words, those seven-letter wonders on a triple word-score, spilling out, released by her dying. Did the words burst forth like hot breath, the abundant Es and As - the coveted X and dreaded Q, did they bounce across the floor and come to a useless, dusty end underneath the bed? That’s the image I conjured to begin with, but now I imagine something else. Now, I see the letters rise and dance like angels, grasp hands in miracle combinations, begin a kind of transcendent spelling - forming words in the air above her cooling, empty face - the last and best ones of the game.

TOP