I warned you all that there would be fireworks when I returned to my birthplace in Kenogami, QC, for the town’s 100th anniversary and a reunion of our Saturday night dance club.

Well, let me tell you—we painted the town positively … uh … beige.

Don’t get me wrong. The spirit was as willing as it was when we were crazy, lust-driven teenagers 50 year ago. It’s just that the flesh has kinda gone all to hell.

It is simply not a good idea to meet an old friend after so many decades and pose the normally-harmless greeting: “Hey, my man, how ARE you?”

I got more medical information in two days than a doctor absorbs after a 25-year subscription to the Lancet. And gave back in spades.

All these conditions tend to activate that part of the brain that brings wisdom and thus prevents one from waking up still-drunk at sunrise amid the petunias of the flowerbed outside the dance hall.

In fact, I confess to having gone to bed sober every night of our five-day tour—and early enough that my gout didn’t turn my knee into a pumpkin at midnight.

Still, our minds remain sharp enough to recall both how wild it was back in the day, while recognizing now that any ill-considered attempt to relive past accesses might just put us not amid the petunias, but under them.

That being said, it was still one helluva party.

With that the bonus we don’t have to worry about either our parents or blackmailers getting hold of the photos.

Top 10 reunion thoughts on how the Kenogami Teen Town dance club experience has changed after 50 years.

10. Back then, guys would ask to borrow your comb. Now, they would like to borrow your hair.
9. Back then, we danced close because our hormones were exploding. Now, it’s because our waistlines have expanded.
8. Back then, your toes started tapping as soon as the music started. Now, the gout kicks in.
7. Size still matters when the boys brag in the washroom, but now we’re comparing results of our last prostate exams.
6. We spend the entire evening calling each other “buddy” and “dear” because our brains have forgotten everyone’s faces and our eyes can’t read the name tags.
5. We used to respect guys who could hold their liquor. Now it’s the guys who can control their bladder.
4. The cops used to drive by looking for underage drinkers. Now, they’re on the lookout for suspects who may have wandered away from the nursing home.
3. Back then, we flexed our arms to show off our muscles. Now, we flex our legs to show off our knee replacements.
2. Guys still have those suspicious circular bulges in their wallets. But now, they’re caused by extra-strength Rolaids.
1. But, all in all, you feel pretty good that you and the gang aren’t really THAAAT old. Until that fucking Mclaren announces he’s a great-grandfather ….

Father Lovelace tries to attract his flock with communal beer and cigarette host.

The mighty lake itself, a 30-mile-across inland sea that happily creates its own climate, turned black after a spectacular sunrise and the aura of raw power emerging from its depths attracted some spectres seeking to calm the storm. Or maybe something else.

Yup, you know there is going to be a tear in the space/time fabric when Lovelace ends up in a motel with a great gaggle of nuns.

The saintly sisters have been prowling the grounds like some many Grim Reapers ever since I got up for my first coffee and smoke, desperately repeating the sign of the cross in some attempt to bring peace back to the planet or at least this isolated kingdom that has enjoyed the 21 wonderful years since my last visit.

It’s kinda hard to tell exactly how many there are of these brides of God, because they are all dressed the same, black habits covering them so securely from head to toe that they make burkas look like bikinis. There were at least a half-dozen out last evening, one for each of the beers I demolished on my own spiritual quest for enlightenment on the smokers’ retreat on the patio outside our room. Or maybe it was just one and the progression of brews created a familiar mystical double-vision.

The women in black obviously failed in their immediate mission because the lake has followed its own scripture to spawn another thunderstorm for the ages, sending them packing back to the little cottages on the motel grounds and an appropriate distance from us pagan sinners.

The timing of our road trip back to my birthplace in the Saguenay corresponds with the waning days of the provincial election campaign and a distracting issue has been calls from some quarters for an even-increased secularization of Quebec to remove the trappings of religion from public life and view.

This campaign is an ill-concealed drive against invading Muslim hijabs, Sihk kirpans and Jewish yarmulkes more than the final submerging of the mother church that dominated Quebec for 400 years, but our little homegrown nuns may someday find themselves victimized by the same tide.

Perhaps they will eventually face the same treatment as us smokers, the furtive moral cripples left over from another great force that once ruled the land.

I can visualize the signs hanging on the doors of their little cottages when they try to return for another retreat down the road:
“These units are strictly non-believing. Any evidence of praying visible after check-out will be subject to an additional $50 cleaning bill to exorcise the second-hand aura of faith. If you find a Bible in a bedside drawer, take it back outside where it is supposed to be used to anchor down the ashtray during heavy winds.”

Maybe those signs already exist. It would explain why we puffers and those sisters find ourselves thrown together wandering around on the fringes, braving the storms.

In this shot of Kenogami Protestant High School’s grade one and two class from the early 1950s, there is no prize for guessing which grumpy-looking little prick is the author.

They say you can’t go home anymore, but I’m calling bullshit on that myth.

Hell, if I’ve got a case of beer in the trunk and some smokes in the console, I can and will go to anyone’s home—you should hope not yours—with or without invitation or even a particularly good reason.

And that’s what’s happening this week as I return to my home town to spread mayhem and second-hand smoke throughout a storied land.

Maybe we should change the name of my birthplace to Rodney Dangerfield because we sure as hell don’t get much respect.

The prime minister travelled up home earlier this year to announce a new rail line and port improvements with the national media dutifully reporting this would bring new jobs to “the town of Saguenay,”

“Town”?!

The 145,000 residents of the “town” will likely just shrug off this latest slight (particularly because we know it likely stemmed from a crappy translation of the term “ville” which can mean either town or city in French.)

But you can imagine the uproar in other cities like Charlottetown, Kenora, Fredericton, etc.—all smaller than Saguenay—if they were similarly downgraded.

We expatriates take this more seriously, going into yet another slow burn as emails flow in from friends and former classmates scattered all over the planet.

And we are far-flung, children of a great Missing 12th Tribe, mainly Anglophone, that largely disappeared from our birthplace in the 1970s running away to study, seek broader job opportunities, or in the case of our parents, retire.

Many tribes, actually, considering Saguenay city and its like-named region once consisted of many towns, cities and enclaves before wholesale urban amalgamation in Quebec.

These would be the tribes of Kenogami and Arvida and Riverbend and Bagotville and Dolbeau and many more proud names that we still defiantly announce at the U.S. border when an officer demands: “Where were you born?”

More than 40 years after the mass exodus, the children of the Saguenay are still linked by the bonds that held us when we were growing up.

Starting with the security and comforts of a hopelessly middle-class lifestyle, which our parents were relieved to find after years of depression and war and surprised to discover in an unlikely urban setting isolated inside a wall of mountains and trees that cut it off from the rest of Quebec, Canada and the world.

We spent the 1950s and 60s in a unique northern snow-bound, edgier version of the sitcom Father Knows Best (whose French translation we eventually got to follow as “Papa a Raison”—a little more rigid title that reverts back to English as “Dad IS Right.”)

That TV series slant is quite appropriate because my home town of Kenogami (now a neighbourhood absorbed by the metropolitan Saguenay monolith) was pretty well owned and run by the Price Brothers pulp and paper company that employed thousands in its mill and kept us happy and loyal through a benevolent paternalism that would be considered appalling today.

The company owned our house. It maintained huge parks and had its own greenhouse to provide flowers for a short growing season. Excess steam from the mill was piped in to heat our school and churches (how’s that for “thinking green” a half-century ago?)

Price Brothers was Big Brother with all the attendant rules that governed just about every aspect of our lives. Big deal. It sure worked for us kids raised in a regimen built around the mill whistle that told us when to get up, when to leave for school and when to get home to beat the curfew that kept our exploding teenage hormones off the streets.

A centrepiece of this grand mind-control scheme was a recreational centre built by the company in the 1950s to provide a focal point for positive activities that ranged from basketball, through bowling, to crafts and amateur theatre.

One of the programs that emerged within this Price Brothers Memorial Hall was a Saturday night constant called Teen Town where we Baby Boomers became the best dancers in Canada.

This weekend, a pissload of survivors of these unique circumstances in a unique place and unique time will assemble to celebrate Kenogami’s 100th birthday and those dance nights.

City Hall dumped our own Rodney Dangerfield on us earlier this summer by announcing we couldn’t use the recreational centre for our bash. Considering how far many of us live away from our original home, we could be forgiven for throwing in the towel. That is not the Kenogami way—

Instead, we threw city hall the bird and announced we were coming anyway to party, party, party.

With this gout thing, every beer I drink is going to go right to my big toe. Big deal. So I’ll buy flip-flops.

If beer and a throbbing digit is the price of respect, take me home.

I woke up three weeks ago with my right knee swollen to the size of the Greek national debt and MFW (My first Wife of 40 odd years) took one look before snorting: “It’s gout. It’s from booze.”

Now see here, Doctor Ooze, I’ve had gout before and it appears briefly in my left toe caused by my classy consumption of rich traditional French cuisine like poutine on a stick and has nothing to do with booze.

“Yup, it’s gout,” said the doctor when I presented myself to a local clinic two days later with my leg so stiff that half the population of the Middle East tripped over me in the waiting room. “Take a whole bunch of pills, quit drinking and let’s do a whole series of embarrassing tests to find something more exotic for my memoires.”

This is the third attack of that lame ailment since I was first diagnosed back in the 00s and I’m getting weary of these reminders showing up every few years to offer the ridiculous suggestion that I may not be biologically perfect.

“By the way, what’s the matter with you, anyway?”, the doc asked.

No, you tell me—you’re the physician I assume belongs to the Porsche I hobbled by in the parking lot.

“What I mean is,” said the medic as she scanned the sheet I had dutifully filled out before being admitted to her frigid inner sanctum, “you don’t seem to like doctors very much.”

Based on the evidence, you could see where she might reach that conclusion.

I had been to see a doctor only four times in the last 50 years, in 1972, 1984, 2006 and 2012, and the 1984 event doesn’t count as a burden on medicare because that was for a vasectomy to prevent the conception of future burdens.

It’s not so much that I don’t like doctors as the people they hang out with, who are, like, sick and stuff.

Plus, when I got into the journalism business, an insurance buddy told me the rigours of my trade meant I would likely be dead by 40 anyway and so who needs medics to screw that up by suggesting I quit drinking, smoking, coffee and pizza to drag around this mortal coil till I was maybe 41.

At any rate, this latest outbreak didn’t stay boring for very long. After a week of gout pills, nothing got better and my disposition got a lot worse because I couldn’t drink on the medication.

A return visit to the clinic prompted a second opinion from another medic who claimed it wasn’t gout, but rather osteo-arthritis. He said the cure was all about physio-therapy involving much flexing of the joint to increase muscle strength. I felt like John Cleese in Python’s dead parrot sketch—it was patently obvious I couldn’t bend my leg if Raquel Welch herself turned up with a tow truck to offer me Kama Sutra lessons.

So he gave me some more gout pills and sent me off for a blood test without allowing me any time to study for it.

The lab technician jabbed me enough times for the CSI gang to determine this might be a crime of passion (I have low blood pressure and Dracula would require a sump pump for even a low-cal lunch.)

Long story short, I’m still waiting for the test results and filling in the time doing absolutely nothing except marking off on the calendar the number of days it has been since I’ve had a beer.

No one has heard from me through social media because I couldn’t get my legs under the laptop desk until today (I’m sitting here with a bag of frozen peas strapped to my knee with my foot propped up on an old dictionary.) This milestone still doesn’t represent any cure and I’ll be back in the clinic for more voodoo science next week.

On the plus side, my family is taking good care of me. For the first time in decades, they hold the door open when I take out the garbage propped up on my new cane and have cushions placed strategically around the kitchen should I fall over while doing the dishes.

Now, I know there are a lot of you out there concerned that I haven’t written a word for weeks and the unbending joint hasn’t been the only impediment.

The medication I’m taking is an anti-inflammatory. Since I can’t write anything inflammatory or equally grump, what the hell is left already?!

(Hmmmm … maybe it’s wearing off ….)

The Grim Sweeper by rukowski via Strip Generator

Even more feared, after death, is the Dim Sweeper, whose motto is: Dust to dust. Ashes all over everything.

Yup, that would be me. I’m telling you, my brother Pete would have lived forever—or at least been buried at sea—if he thought there were the remotest chance I might ever be in charge of any part of his cremated mortal remains.

After all, I hadn’t done such a great job for Our Sainted Mother….

Mom died in 2001 after one helluva run that saw her make it to 94 with a full sack of marbles. Always the practical one, she made her own funeral arrangements that included, according to what she always told me, an appropriate urn for her ashes.

Things get a little hectic when you’re the executor of an estate and a few things slipped through the cracks over the months following the funeral, like Mom’s remains (hey, I was busy and it’s a fair hike to the town where she lived.)

Fortunately, my daughter was at a friend’s cottage nearby and I called Sam to pick up the ashes on her way home.

You know how young people are. “Yewww, Dad, that’s totally creepy” she complained. “What am I supposed to say when I go to the funeral home?”

That’s easy. Just say: “I’m Sammy Lovelace and I’m here to take my Nana for a ride.” That didn’t improve her attitude, but she arrived with the goods. A lot of goods. A great heaping plastic bag inside a cardboard box filled with, well, Mom. There was no urn, either, and a call to the funeral director confirmed that my mother had not been able to decide on an appropriate repository and just abandoned the search.

No big deal. Her instructions for disposal stated she wished a small portion of her ashes to be buried beside Dad’s in the family plot back in New Brunswick while the rest were to be spread from a bridge overlooking a favourite spot on the Rideau River. Not having a recipe book to shed light on measurements for these two drops, I decided to do the NB thing first. But I wasn’t about to make a special 1,000-mile return trip for just that purpose and so poor Mom spent more months in her box in my filing cabinet waiting for our fall fishing trip to our camp, also in NB.

After arriving at my aunt’s place in St. Stephen, NB, I called the cemetery to see what would be involved in a little addition to the contents of a plot and was advised of an entire production involving hired diggers, a preacher, funeral director, etc. Well, screw that.

It’s the thought that counts, not bulk, and it was apparent Mom would be rejoining Dad in much reduced circumstances buried in an urn that would necessarily be small enough not to set off local radar. And probably around midnight under an overcast grave-robbers’ (make that grave-adders’) sky.

But the local funeral director had only giant full-body buckets that would require a backhoe and a mortgage. Give the guy credit, though, he actually steered me in the right direction by sending me off to buy a stainless thermos from Canadian Tire (local rules dictate that ashes must be buried in stainless steel).

Smaller is better, except when you’re trying to spoon your Mother into a pretty tiny opening. Tough at the best of times, but even crazier after my aunt’s lawn care guy Charlie innocently threw open the door to the garage in which I was performing my forensics, allowing access by Hurricane Grizelda. The winds immediately attacked the wide-open funerary box swirling an amazing percentage of Mom into every corner of the garage before I got the lid back on.

Image via TimWitt on Flickr

Charlie totally freaked until we sat down with a couple of beers to determine protocols demanded by the situation. It didn’t seem right to sweep up Me Sainted Mother along with all the other crud on the floor, but Charlie needed the mower and it might react badly to inhaling the fine cinders. So, to bring a little more dignity to the scene, we used a Shop Vac.

It’s at this point, I should advise strangers to the site that the late Thelma Lovelace would have loved all this kerfuffle and has an eternity to tell the story a gazillion times if there is web access in Heaven.

And Mom’s travels and travails were far from over. Because we needed darkness for our sneaky cemetery raid, we put off the deed for the return trip from the camp, allowing Mom to travel to the lake and enjoy a week’s vacation in her thermos in the glove compartment of our Ford fishing truck.

The big night finally arrived and that presented some complications. We normally pulled out of the camp around noon, but lingered awaiting the timing required to arrive at the cemetery at dusk. Alas, that free time in the afternoon was dedicated to finishing off the beer and we were consequently a little buzzed when our teetotaller designated driver pulled into the bone yard. Plus, being rotten relatives, we hadn’t visited the family plot in years and would have trouble finding it during the day, never mind at night. It was hardly a stealthy operation as a half-dozen tipsy miscreants created a light show with their flashlights stumbling around peering at gravestones.

But, by God, we finally found the consecrated ground zero and had Mom deep under in no time, the digging and undercover nature of the job interrupted by over-moistened gang members, including brother Pete, taking flash camera photos of the less-than-solemn commitment ceremony. A couple of weeks later, I completed the journey by choosing a totally windless day to launching the rest of the ashes off a bridge in the small Ontario town where Mom had enjoyed almost 30 years of retirement. A relative of Hurricane Grizelda lurking under the span grabbed the remains and shot them back up to cover the car—and me—before carrying them off toward the masses assembled for the town’s annual picnic. I think I heard a hearty guffaw coming from the general direction of The Hereafter. It’s a good thing Mom loved to visit strange places and meet new people.

A decade later, despite everything, I went down to Cape Cod this summer to pick up some of my brother Pete’s ashes to take up to a reunion in Kenogami, Quebec, where our family lived wonderful times from the late 1940s through the 60s.

Someone better call ahead to have them lock up the cemetery and close all their windows ….

This is not an easy thing to do. Because I know it will be disappointing for all of you out there who think of me as a kindly pensioner tending his little garden after a grey-flannelled career and a personal life that pretty well set the standard for moderation in all things.

Not quite true.

There was a time in my past, a minor period of character lapse that so far hasn’t lasted any more than maybe 49 or 50 years, when I was considered a “party animal”.

That’s right. Under this public façade of legendary propriety beats the heart of a sinner who has been known to get down and boogie with the worst of them. I admit that some of the elements of this spiritual failure featured sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, although never in the volumes credited to me. This, I deeply regret (not the sins—just not enjoying the frequency to live up to the rep.)

The funny thing about this mea culpa is that I’m not even in this party photo pasted on Facebook walls all over the virtual universe (I missed the shoot because I was outside rolling drunks to get the cash to cab them home.)

But enough blackmailers have sent me the image to suggest there are too many witnesses still standing who would yell bullshit if I tried any lame denials.

Call off the Dick Cheney waterboarding crew. I’ll confess that the photo in question was indeed taken in my basement 48 years ago during a post-graduation bash so outrageous that it took me 25 years to find one guest who disappeared on my watch.

A little ancient history is required to put this all together, of course. I was raised in Kenogami, Quebec, and almost all of my learning took place at Kenogami Protestant High School (KPHS), which had a student population about 90 in 11 grades, until a whole pile of little schools around the region were amalgamated into a big one in neighbouring Arvida back in 1962.

Somehow, I graduated in 1964—along with a fair number of the black sheep from our much-mourned home-town KPHS—and it seemed appropriate to have a party for the locals after the official ceremony and dinner-dance at the still-unfamiliar regional pile of brick.

That was the whole point of the party—to unite the maybe 10 hometown KPHS buddies and their 10 dates for a little dancing, roaming-hand-slapping and harmless illegal drinking in the legendary basement Lovelace pool room that had already seen its fair share of bacchanals.

But somebody spilled the beans and we were ultimately invaded by just about everyone from the regional graduation class until our little half-double was action central for almost 100 hormonally-overloaded teens let loose to spend their first overnight out.

Everyone had a mickey to bring a little magic to the officially-sanctioned soft drinks and the garage, already well-stocked with beer, filled up even more as additional cases emerged with the occupants of each arriving cab.

With all the essentials in place, we enjoyed as wild a coming-of-age piss-up you could have in a time and place where drugs were unknown, girls still wore impregnable girdles and you could do serious jail time buying a black-market condom in priest-ridden Quebec.

The local police report by Chief Inspector Maggie Macdougall (actually our busybody neighbour) claimed wide-spread upchucking in the bushes, loud Negro Music and animated conversations involving noble guys claiming to only be interested in their dates’ minds while trying the utmost to change them.

At any rate, nobody died, although some neophyte drinkers were certainly imploring Their Maker to put them out of their misery as they awoke on hard floors with harder hangovers. My sainted mother called in reinforcements from the local Sainted Mothers Club to cook dozens of breakfasts to revive the battlefield casualites.

The natural maternal instinct toward the fallen did not extend to me because I got blamed for everything and everyone, especially one delicate young thing we’ll call Nora to protect the once-innocent. Nora wasn’t from Kenogami, rather native of a neighbouring anal-retentive town where her strict parents wouldn’t even allow her to VISIT depraved Kenogami.

As a matter of fact, she wasn’t allowed to visit anywhere or do anything except study to be at the top of our class at the regional school. No dances, no drinking, no smoking, no boyfriends, no fun. All very un-Kenogami-like. I think her parents figured her first night out ever would come to a proper end when she dutifully came home from the official school dance before her coach turned into a pumpkin at midnight.

So why were they still calling me two days later?…

The answer to that question walked into my Senate office in the late 1980s after security called up to report a “someone identifying herself as Nora from your old school” begged an audience.

She looked great after all those years, albeit suggestive of a winning horse that had been ridden hard and put away wet. Her eyes sparkled as she entered my private office, but I suspect that the object of her gaze was not me the old school chum, but rather the world-class bar behind my desk.

With the first of many drinks in one hand and a chain of smokes in the other, she flipped the calendar back a quarter-century with my subtle query: “What the hell happened to you after the basement bash?”

It would take much bandwidth to tell her story, which involved three lost days breaking many commandments, taboos and societal standards. She had not only lost her virtue, but had thrown it away with great enthusiasm at a number of parties that emerged like mushrooms from the torn-up ground of our subterranean pissup.

The whole episode can be summed up in her response to her hysterical parents when she arrived home as well-worn as her much-abused white prom dress: “I told them to fuck off and then went to sleep for a week.”

Ah, we all know the wages of sin, don’t we? Yeah, well, in Nora’s case, these took her to a doctorate and the post of Don at one of those prestigious colleges in England (I’m pretty sure it was Cambridge, but could have been Oxford or Hogwarts.)

But that journey was all the more rewarding because of all the newly-discovered vices that fueled such a great ride, leaving a host of heart-broken lovers and well-tipped bartenders in its wake.

As she took her leave to head back to her hotel (she was in Ottawa as a keynote speaker at a scientific conference on sub-particle interactive dynamics in relativity theories suggested by the Horowitz-Dander Conundrum), she paused at my door to note:

“Who would have thought, Gord, that a whole new world would start for me at your crazy party in your crazy basement?”

Who, indeed?!

That is why, if you check my resume under “education”, you’ll find the item that says: “Provided social and spiritual mentoring to world-famous Cambridge Don” ….

Okay, now that I’ve got rid of all the kids in the audience, let’s get to the nub of the matter contained in an email I got from a correspondent in Texas named Bert posing the following question: “Dear Gord, there has been a lot of stuff on CNN suggesting you Canadians have got a lot of things right on medicare, immigration, banking and crime prevention. You make a lot of sense behind the humor and I’d be interested in your take on what makes two peoples who share a continent, language and Christian faith so different.”

Aw, hell, that’s easy, Bert. You can see the whole story in one edition of our local paper that came out on July 4, your Independence Day holiday that is observed up here as “Turncoat Terrorists who Took Advantage of Our Much-Mourned Gracious Majesty King George’s Syphilitic Dementia Day.”

Mmmm. OJ. Image via Openfile.ca

First off, we had a federal minister resign because she was caught drinking a $16 glass of orange juice, which is considered very offensive in a nation where everyone feels the proper place for a hefty sum of $16 is invested in TimBits and Lotto 649 Quick-Picks.

Compare that with the U.S. where a minister/secretary refuses to step down after a failed “sting” operation shipped a whole bunch of guns to Mexican drug dealers who used them to kill an American border agent. The Republicans are going to impeach unless they can succeed in their own sting operation to plant some expensive orange juice on him.

Image taken from of the Ottawa Citizen - www.ottawacitizen.com

Another big story here is that charges have been laid against a local priest for something other than diddling children. He is accused of fraud after $400,000 went missing from the parish coffers and mainly ended up being shovelled into the bottomless pit of a high-end casino. Because everyone gambles in Canada (except me) the real crime in the eyes of our citizenry is just having $400,000, legally or not. Canadians consider wealth to be very tacky because it can lead to a fondness for $16 glasses of orange juice. Catholics in particular are upset because of the basic immorality of a godless casino ending up with $400,000 raised in church bingos where 90 percent of the players are on welfare.

In the U.S., men of the cloth are supposed to get rich by defrauding their flocks, but they do it by flogging over-priced Jesus bangles and other cholera-laden Holy Water trinkets made by sweatshop pagans in godless China. Americans have forgiven Jesus for being poor, but don’t put his name on their currency, reserving that trusting tribute to his Dad—the money behind the Man and the manna.

Talking about God, Canadians don’t. This is because we love reading maps and notice that the U.S. Bible Belt corresponds exactly with Hurricane Alley. Americans continue with their hopeless prayers that The Almighty will get over his psychotic hatred for trailer parks. Here, we bring in regulations banning hurricanes and that has obviously worked a lot better. All of our prime ministers have been very devout, but always hid that from public scrutiny. Our politicians would rather have a photographer capture a shot of them coming out of a whorehouse than walking into a church because Canadians accept that our legislators like screwing people more than seeking absolution in confession.

Now here’s the real zinger, Bert. A survey in the same edition shows that 94 percent of Canadians favour abortions and 82 percent same-sex marriage or civil unions. Whoa! Compare that to a divorce rate exceeding 50 percent in America where obviously half the people, like Newt Gingrich, don’t believe in ANY kind of marriage, never mind the ones where both the bride and groom conveniently share the same gift registry at Canadian Tire.

This may be a little overwhelming for a Texan looking north to our peaceable kingdom, but rest assured it’s all part of our Grand Plan (Canadians have for 100 years been recognized as the world’s greatest planners because it takes that long to get anything done up here due to Aboriginal land claims.)

We remain peaceable by culling the herd. You Americans breed like rabbits (even rich ones like that reborn reality-TV nut-bar who drives his family around in his big bus when he’s not driving his long-suffering wife with his Big Buster). Even with all that boinking, the U.S. still experienced its greatest reduction in crime 15 to 20 years after your Supreme Court ruling on Roe versus Wade allowed the abortions so enthusiastically embraced by round-heeled welfare moms to wipe out an entire generation of future criminals.

We came up with a similar, but expanded, solution to crime some 45 years ago when statistics revealed most of it was committed by the criminal races—French-Canadians, Irish-Canadians, English-Canadians, etc.

Thanks to the wholesale adoption of birth control, abortion, gay marriage and every-expanding cable channels that pretty well eliminated any time or desire for breeding, there were soon almost no Canadians left to commit crimes anymore. Or to do anything else, either.

With the police unions raising hell about looming layoffs, we dramatically increased immigration quotas in the hopes that some of these millions invited in to drive our taxis and clean our toilets might do a little crime on the side, in an understated Canadian kinda way.

That part of the plan worked a little too well and now everyone is up in arms because we can’t even pronounce any of the names of the accused appearing the local police blotter and court news (a far cry from when they were all O’Learys or Lovelaces).

Most of these foreign-born miscreants aren’t citizens yet but we have to accept they might be someday, following their 30-day sentences for murder and the 20 years for smoking near the incinerator in Ottawa’s toxic waste landfill site.

Just because these migrants managed to avoid all the other crime-reduction measures and got born, doesn’t mean this country won’t be ready when they emerge from Citizenship Court wearing their tacky little Cosa Nostra maple leaf pins.

They’ll finally be Canadians—and pending legislation will require they do their bit to fight future crime by also wearing tacky little maple leaf condoms.

To ensure fairness and equality, the women will be wearing nagging headaches….

In my regular weekly column in the still-mourned Ottawa Journal, I had listed things that patriots could do to celebrate the July 1 holiday in 1977 and some suggestions have stood the test of time, like:
–“Argue with an American about who won the War of 1812.”
–“Bitch about the CBC.
–“Feel smug that we’re the only English-speaking people without an accent.” Etc., etc.

There were a couple dozen more appropriate zingers (Letterman hadn’t yet taught us to stop at 10), but the one that caught the eye of the foreign-born religious extremists was the sweet little admonition that suggested an effective way to mark the nation’s birthday would be to:
“Kiss a beaver!”

The ink-stained wretch who handled my copy that night (you get your paper in the morning because editors work the same hours as Dracula) liked that line so much that he turned it into the big bold headline on top of my column:

Wave the flag July 1
–and kiss a beaver!

Now, I worked with that editor for 10 years and can assure you that he was a guileless soul who didn’t have even one brain cell capable of finding anything salacious in such an innocent turn of phrase. Like me.

After all, another harmless item on my list was, “Take a moose to lunch”, so we’re just talking here about different takes on domestic wildlife.

Alas, the purity of heart, mind and soul that comes from working nights does not flow across the sunrise divide when the jaded daytime scum arrive to fill the newsroom with sleaze.

Because the sunlight set had no work to do (the heavy lifting having already been done by the pasty-white, coffee-fueled, baggy-eyed nightsiders) they could spend all kinds of time reading the paper and criticizing before wandering off to the press club for a long, languid, liquid lunch.

Marvin the Snitch, an oily sub-human of the City News Sub-Desk, loudly sounded the alarm.

“Holy shit! Lovelace has done it again! He’s urging our readers to engage in oral sex!”

I won’t bore you here with the many tales of the practical jokes I have inflicted upon Canadian journalism over the last 45 years (I’ll milk that in future columns), but it advances this story to know that I had a rep that had launched a thousand memos warning editors to watch my copy for “innuendo”. (I think this expression is Italian for “bend over so we can check for hidden satire and sophomoric gags.”)

Marvin’s outburst caught the attention of the immigrant religious fundamentalists—two anally-retentive Presbyterian Scots who just happened to outrank me by many miles as news editor and managing editor—and the creepy little rat was happy to explain to the clueless clansmen that “beaver” was a New World term for a part of the female anatomy never mentioned back home in Glasgow, let alone kissed.

With the classic Presbyterian call to arms of “W’ull nae be havin’ nae smut in a family paper read by wee bairns and yon vicar”, they stopped the press to exorcise this perceived affront to public decency.

Well, actually, being cheap-prick Scots, they waited until the press stopped anyway for a regular plate change, allowing at least another 20,000 readers to be morally ruined. But, finally, they got rid of the offending line and changed the in-your-face headline to something more Presbyterian: “Have a great national birthday.”

The kilted duo threatened me with all kind of dire circumstances should there be any great public outcry from the pulpits across the land, but there isn’t much left as a dreaded threat to a guy who had spent seven years working nights. Especially when the newspaper surveys showed his column topped all the polls.

Plus I denied any scurrilous intent and even got testy with these single-malt boat people pointing their fingers at my Canadian beaver.

Long story short, there was no reader reaction at all. Nada.

The Scots were relieved.

Frankly, like any dirty-minded scribbler involved with innuendo of scurrilous intent, I was a little disappointed….

Happy Canada Day, beaver-lovers!

I just found out my wife is sleeping with a senior citizen.

Oops, hang on—what’s that you say? That senior citizen is ME?!

Oh. Right. Well, never mind, then.

I hit 65 on my birthday last week, finally providing me with Senior Status and the accompanying Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card that declares I am now an addled old fart who can no longer be held accountable for just about anything.

Last year, I was just a young punk still stupid enough to go tenting with daughter Sam. Now that I’m a senior, I ain’t going anywhere except to hell in a handcart.

Granted, there are some who claim I have lived like that ever since elementary school, but I never listen to such naysayers because they’re just a bunch of dried-up crones who can’t remember where they put their car keys, never mind recalling my sterling qualities.

Most of you who know me as a mild-mannered, new-age sensitive kinda guy who never had any hard-held views on anything except silly little irritants like planet-raping SUVs, stupid golf, boring soccer, traitorous Florida vacations, anti-Canadian sissy air conditioning, soul-destroying lotteries, take-out coffee, anti-smoking pogroms and other insane things like rear spoilers on four-cylinder Hondas.

But now, if an original idea ever pops out of the survivors in the swamp of beer-killed brain cells, I can speak my mind without fear of correction or retribution because I am now, officially … eccentric. And you punks have to listen to my outrageous bullshit and maudlin memoires because I am now also a respected elder. Tuning out or even rolling your eyes would constitute senior abuse and get your sorry little deadbeat asses thrown under a jail.

Let’s face it, the next generation can learn a lot with the 843rd retelling of the tale of how I grew up raised by wolves in a cave and trotted 50 miles a day to get to school. Naked. Uphill. Both ways. In testicle-deep snow. Year-round. And had to run down a deer to bring home for supper. Keeping an eye out for Nazi assassins who would have stolen my bike if we could ever have afforded to get me one.

Yup, I think this senior thing is going to suit me just fine. Especially since I intend to abuse all the avenues offered by this new Golden Years status—because I want the gold to run out before the years and leave my rotten offspring with nothing but the fond memories of those wonderful slice-of-life stories.

So pay attention (fellow seniors might consider taking written notes), because I’m going to tell it like it is—unless I get distracted by a nap or maybe a massive coronary—in what I like to call …

Gord’s Guide to the Fun Things about Being Old.

• You use Fedex to get your dental work done.
• You can fart anywhere by invoking some strange senior’s condition (“Sorry, but it’s a sad consequence of Flatulentic Autonomic Reactive Tourette’s Syndrome. The smell is caused by Burritocirrhosis.”)
• Sex gets a lot better, even if it is the surprise result of self-examination probing for suspicious lumps.
• You finally understand cats, now that you nap as much as they do.
• Women in their 60s now look HOT, except you can’t remember why that’s important.
• You’re no longer stuck in an employment monkey suit and can dress in a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers—exactly the same uniform as worn by all the other Baby Boomer retirees.
• You get to give people a hernia when they feel guiltily obliged to suppress giggling when you announce: “Excuse me, I’m going outside to suck on a fag.”
• Waiters are understanding when you make an old-person request like “can you get the chef to go easy on the salt and maybe pre-chew the steak?”
• If you get home late from the tavern, you can just tell the bride you forgot where you live.
• Because you have nothing else pressing to do, you can cause telemarketing companies to go bankrupt by engaging their agents for hours with questions about duct cleaning and Nigerian lotteries.
• After decades of being a pervert, you’re now just a dirty old man.
• When you don’t tip the bartender, he now assumes you’re senile rather than a cheap prick.
• If you want to pawn an antique, the dealer doesn’t require paperwork to prove provenance after you simply assure him that you bought it new.
• When the wife says: That was great, let’s do it again!”, you can get some sleep by replying: “Do WHAT again?”
• Neighbours stop bugging you to babysit after you assure them: “I’d love to look after the kids—they can help me bag the old asbestos in the attic.”
• And finally, here’s the ultimate expression that brilliantly sums up the totality of the human condition that is senior citizenship. It’s the final word, the defining encapsulation, the carved-in-stone rallying cry for our Great Demographic Group. It goes like this …

…

…Oh, shit, I forget!

And it gets even worse. I can’t recall whether that scatological outburst means I’ve forgotten the ultimate defining expression or whether maybe those four words are really it—“Oh, shit, I forget.”

This smacks of deep thought. Instead, how about a rambling saga of my sad hard-scrabble early life as an orphan marooned in a Haitian suburban ghetto of Notre-Dame de Canadian Tire, Quebec …?

For a start, two blogs escaped last Thursday to double my normal pollution footprint and then I hit the big 65 this Monday and should have earned some bonus sloth time from that milestone.

But it’s hard to break old work habits and shed the guilt thing that has had me meeting deadlines for 45 years.

On the other hand, you have to cut some slack even for yourself after a death in the family.

So that’s what’s happening. Rather than crank out my regular silliness, I’m reporting the death of my cat to show you why I’m not writing anything today.

Doctor Watson, former orange giant who was the feline Mafia enforcer of the neighbourhood, died last night (July 13) at the age of 20.

He had become increasingly inactive over the last few weeks, while earning a good check-up in March, but still came down for breakfast yesterday morning and went out to patrol the property for 15 minutes. CSI evidence suggests that, upon his return for another nap, he had a massive stroke in his lair beside the tub in the second-floor bathroom.

We found him lying on his side, unable to lift even his head, and an attempt to pick him up found him stiff, providing the educated conclusion he was paralyzed.

That was enough to make the call. He had already been deaf for a year, was blind in one eye and hadn’t won a catfight in weeks.

On the other hand, he ate well, went out daily even over the winter and made the three-storey trek to his litter box in the basement many times a day and night. That was obviously over.

It was after hours for his local vet, but I took him to the 24-hour animal hospital. He did not stir in his basket on the seat beside me nor make any sound, a telling departure from his normal routine (he always hated the car).

It was all over in 10 minutes after arrival at the animal hospital.