Kerrekt Kanadian
Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Tue, 21 Dec 1999 08:03:19 +0000
Earlier this year I asked an old Canadian pal of my wife's
had she ever heard of a chap called Paul Kennedy?
Wireless chappy, I understood. Her prairie-wrinkled
old sparklers gleamed momentarily, then dulled.
'Well,' she said. 'The name is kinda familiar. Does he
have an Advice Column of the Air?'
'That sounds like him.'
'I'll let you know.'
Like several other Canadians of our acquaintance,
she sends, each Christmas, a multipage, photocopied
account of her remarkable family's achievements
during the previous year. You know: Charlene's
studying ecological trends in Rekjavik; in April,
Little Billy was promoted to First Triangle in
the Winnipeg Philharmonic; Big Bill just can't wait
to get out of the correction facility to hug his adorable
new granddaughter ... & so on.
This year she enclosed - 'for Scottie' - a small coloured
photograph cut from some magazine or other of a fellow
with the kind of grizzled hair, thrillingly roguish smile
& improbably distinguished good looks that you normally
only find in great, international diamond 'traders'.
You can imagine my disbelief as I now try to reconcile
this noble apparition with the kind of velvet collared
opinions that can clammily embrace: welfare shirkers;
Pooh Bear (in the name of Jaysus); the solipsistic Thoreau
in preference to Emerson; the greasy hucksters from Athens
screaming to have their stones back. And has no compunction
about sneering at that bracing administrator, Michael Harris.
Scottie B.