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.