A taste of Canadiana

As a Newfoundlander, she pointed out that back home there are two important observances on July 1.

Each year when the first day of July dawns, Shandel Leamon explained, Newfoundlanders mourn the events at Beaumont-Hamel, France, in 1916. On that July 1, as the Somme offensive began during the Great War, British generals sent hundreds of thousands of Empire soldiers over the top against an occupying German Army. In less than half an hour nearly the entire 1st Newfoundland Regiment – 658 men – became casualties.

“A span of two football fields,” Shandel Leamon explained, “took two months to take from the Germans.”

But then in the evening each July 1, the young student from Little Rapids, Newfoundland, pointed out that she and her fellow citizens celebrate joining Confederation. The island dominion formally became the 10th province of Canada on July 1, 1949. The evening therefore turns into a celebration with promenades, parties and, of course, fireworks.

 
I met Shandel Leamon and her co-workers – all Canadian university students in the employ of Veterans Affairs Canada – earning tuition money this summer at the Beaumont-Hamel historic site in France.

I had come 6,000 kilometres from Canada and met some of the proudest Canadians I’ll find anywhere. Wearing the VAC uniforms and full of stats, stories and history, they seemed devoted to their work.

Often, however, Canadians are not that distinctive in a crowd. As a nationality – a distinct population inhabiting the northern half of the North American continent – citizens of the “great white North,” can sometimes be hard to discern. So here, for the record are some of the traits that might help the uninitiated recognize me and my fellow Canadians.

Canadians are familiar and (for the most part) comfortable with extremes – cold weather and hot; Pacific and Atlantic Standard Time (a half hour later in Newfoundland); lotteries and the Goods and Services Tax.

When they assemble for sports, Canadians can be just as comfortable slipping on skates or skis or runners; heck, they’ve been known to play baseball while there’s still snow on the diamond or hockey in July.

 
They have holidays when most others don’t – such as Thanksgiving in October and Family Day in February. But so have they taken a regular holiday, such as Victoria Day, and made it their own – the May 2-4 Weekend (as in a case of 24 beers).

The world can recognize Canadians because – unlike the rest of the world – they’re blasé about such things as Niagara Falls and the Rockies, Celine Dion and Don Cherry, maple syrup and back bacon, sundogs and the Northern Lights, sunburn and the wind chill factor.

Of course, Canadians can be outed by pointing out the way they speak. A quick check of their pronunciation of “house,” “about” or finishing a sentence with “eh” are dead giveaways.

Though not as overt with their Maple Leaf flag on battlefields as say the British or the Americans, Canadians display them proudly on such domestic fixtures as bridges, vehicles, light standards and railings along the Highway of Heroes as a form of comfort, respect and consolation.

Canadians are the world. Most have come from somewhere else. They can just as easily be members of a First Nations society as émigrés from Europe, Africa or Asia. They can be found in churches, synagogues or mosques, or in none of those and still be accepted as spiritual. In that sense, Canadians are perhaps more like a United Nations than the UN is.

By the way, there’s one other uniquely Canadian trait. And once again I discovered this via Beaumont-Hamel student guide Shandel Leamon and her colleagues. At the end of our tour of the historic WWI battlefield, last month, I put a question to her.

“Do you get rest periods?” I asked. “Perhaps a chance for refreshment on a break?”

Leamon and her co-workers nodded in puzzlement.

“Well,” I said, “my tour group and I have a little something to contribute to that break.” And I pulled from my backpack a taste of home – a tin of Tim Hortons coffee.

As It might as well have been the Holy Grail or a king’s ransom. Leamon, as well as Alyx Holland (from Brampton, Ont.) Sarah Aubert (from Trout River, Nfld) and Amie Hodgkinson (from London, Ont.), all began hooting and hollering and leaping around the information centre. They insisted on hugging us and taking pictures (an outburst not typical of being Canadian, I have to say). They told us we had made their day.

Actually, no. They had made our day a distinctly Canadian one, and one worth savouring this July 1.

What time can and cannot heal

The tour guide had nearly finished his talk.

He had led a group of Canadian tourists (I was hosting) through a former European wasteland. Just over 90 years ago, the centre of Ypres, Belgium, was little more than rubble and mud. Fighting between invading German armies and Allied forces (including thousands of Canadian troops) defending the Flemish city had levelled everything recognizable. The First World War had left virtually every building in the city core in heaps of broken stone and splintered wood. Then tour guide Raoul Saeson pointed to a disintegrating wall of the former rectory near the reconstructed St. Martin’s Church.

“It’s the only part of Ypres that has been left as it was in 1918,” he said. “Every other part of the city has been restored to the way it was.”

My recent trip through the former battlefields of France and Belgium has opened my eyes to the remarkable recovery that people here have achieved in the wake of the two World Wars of the 20th century.

Earlier during that same day, tour guide Saeson had led us through the city’s former Cloth Hall. There, beginning in the 13th century, makers of the finest linens in Europe had gathered year-round to buy and sell their wares. On Nov. 22, 1914, three months into the Great War, the first shells from attacking German artillery crashed into the hall, eventually reducing the structure – about the size of three St. Lawrence Markets – to rubble.

Not until 1967 – more than a half-century later – was the rebuilding process of the structure finally completed. Today, the Cloth Hall (looking like the original marketplace on the outside) has been transformed into the In Flanders Fields Museum.

Each day the facility welcomes thousands of visitors to learn what daily life in Ypres was like during the 1914-1918 war. It houses the most vivid and personal displays of the wartime experience I’ve ever seen.

About 40 kilometres south of the city of Ypres, near the French town of Armentieres (yes, as in the song “Mademoiselle from Armentieres”), a restoration of a different type has recently begun. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, since 1917 the organization that has respectfully buried member nations’ war dead, erected tombstones and tended cemetery gardens, recently began a new project. At Fromelles, where in 1916 the Australian army suffered “the worst 24 hours in its history,” CWGC archaeologists are unearthing a mass grave and attempting to identify (via DNA) and then bury individually the 400 soldiers interred there.

A sign raised near the newly surveyed Australian cemetery in the town of Fromelles captures the essence of this reburying initiative:

“Don’t leave me behind, cobber,” Aussie troops would often call to their comrades in distress.

The individual, recorded and marked reburials, reuniting many of those 400 Australian troops with their lost identities will begin later this year.

The same day on this recent tour, my tour group travelled to Passchendaele, east of Ypres, where from July to November 1917, members of the Canadian Corps and other Commonwealth regiments had attempted to smash through the German front lines (as they had done successfully at Vimy in April 1917). For one member of my contemporary tour – Yvette Rumple, from Kelowna, B.C. – the Passchendaele area known as Polygon Wood held particular significance.

During the offensive on Oct. 8, 1917, Yvette’s father, Frederick Owen, was hit in the leg by shrapnel in a shell hole. There he lay bleeding for 24 hours, nearly dying before two sympathetic German soldiers (using a flag of truce) pulled him out and delivered him to a British first-aid station.

“My father lived,” she said. “The rest in that hole died.”

That afternoon this past week near Polygon Wood, Yvette and I stepped off the tour bus into what is now an early spring planting of corn. As she took pictures of the area where her father fought and survived his last battle, I walked out into the rows of corn, filled a plastic vial with damp earth from the field and presented it to her.

For Yvette Rumple, Frederick Owen’s now senior-citizen daughter, the moment had closed the circle, connected her with her father’s remarkable wartime story, and restored a piece of that wartime battlefield to one of its victors.

Meanwhile, just outside that same In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, a ceiling-to-floor piece of art, called “Martyred Cities,” reminded visitors such as us North Americans, that while they are restored on the outside, places such as Ypres, Coventry, Rotterdam, Dresden, Hiroshima, My Lai, Jerusalem and Srebrenica, still bear the unhealed scars of war inside.

Lessons in Canadian patriotism

The lunch seemed more elegant than it really was: jambon, fromage et tarte framboises. My dining partners, enjoying ham sandwiches with cheese and strawberry tarts, were fellow travellers – a retired public servant, a photographer and a D-Day veteran – in the Normandy region of France. Suddenly, however, the lunch became secondary, when a stranger approached us. She spotted our Canadian pins.

“Do you know about the ceremony today at l’Abbaye d’Ardenne?” she asked.

We nodded. We told her our group of 47 Canadians – on a tour of Normandy for the 65^th anniversary of the June 6, 1944, invasion – had included the ceremony she mentioned. We knew that on this day – D-Day-plus-1 – members of German commander Kurt Meyer’s 12^th SS Panzer Division had captured and executed 20 Canadian soldiers and then hurriedly buried their bodies in the garden of the thousand-year-old Catholic chapel.

“It’s the most important thing in my life to remember the murdered Canadians,” she said on the verge of tears, “and to make sure the story doesn’t die.”

Her name is Joelle-Lise Perthuis. At 56, her lifetime occupation has been as a teacher of French, Latin and Greek at a Paris high school. But her more recent life’s preoccupation has been the murders at l’Abbaye. She described the shame she felt when she first came to the chapel near Caen, a decade ago, to find just a cultural centre and no acknowledgment of the SS atrocity (she called it “crime de guerre.”) She trembled with emotion, trying to articulate her anger both at the Hitler youth soldiers who shot the Canadian troops and equally the French government for ignoring the gruesome deaths.

“I come here every year without fail,” she said. “It’s impossible to forget these liberating Canadian soldiers.”

Just hours before this extraordinary encounter, D-Day veteran Don Kerr, HR retiree Neil Moodie, photographer Paul Alexander and the rest of our group had visited Juno Beach where the first wave of Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada assault troops had stormed Hitler’s Atlantic Wall near the famous tutor-styled house seen in all those D-Day pictures of Bérnieres-sur-Mer. By coincidence, while there, a Royal Navy veteran – visiting from Britain – approached us to meet the veterans in our tour group. We all noticed his chest was laden with medals.

“The French keep giving me these awards,” said 85-year-old Ted Emmings, “but the Canadians who landed here on D-Day deserve the credit … They suffered so much.”

The landing craft on which Emmings served, he said, delivered 36 Canadians to the beach in front of Bérnieres on D-Day. He couldn’t believe how many never made it to shore. He mentioned a Canadian sergeant with whom he’d spent 14 months training for the invasion, but “he didn’t get two yards up the beach before he was killed.”

Two days earlier, a Normandy-area dentist I know, took time from his busy schedule of attending patients, assisting the planning of D-Day anniversary observances, and chauffeuring veterans around, to speak to our tour group. In addition to the drama of the wider invasion story, Dr. Jean-Pierre Bénamou reminded us that Canadian troops had paid the highest price during the liberation of Normandy (between June and August 1944.) While the U.K. had suffered one casualty for each 30 men in its forces, and the U.S. one in 17, Canada had sustained one in five casualties.

“These young Canadian soldiers helped turn the tide on D-Day,” he emphasized.

Then, to our amazement and in the midst of his dissertation, the unassuming doctor answered a cellphone call. He began searching the nearly cloudless skies above us as he spoke into the phone. He nodded, turned to the east and pointed just above the horizon.

“In a few minutes, an RAF Spitfire from Le Havre will arrive overhead,” Bénamou said. For us, we asked? He nodded and smiled. “A special aerobatic display for you Canadians in honour of your veterans and what your country did for France.”

The sleek, vintage fighter plane did not disappoint. It roared at low level over our heads, then climbed, rolled and dove past us again. The sighs of awe and delight from our tour group reminded me of those at the best of the CNE air shows or after the finale at a May 24 fireworks display.

“It was the stout-hearted Canadians,” Bénamou said, “boys just 18 and 20 years old … that won the day 65 years ago.”

Three separate encounters with three non-Canadians had given us more reason to be proud Canadians than many of us had been in years. It’s a pity we had to travel halfway ’round the globe to experience it.

Scouting the local park

There were plenty of telltale signs: 

Pup tents and tarpaulin lean-tos set in groupings around the park. Planted staves crowned with wildlife insignia. Backpacks and rucksacks neatly arranged around the picnic tables. The inviting scent of wood smoke wafting through the trees. And everywhere the playful chatter of boys and girls industrious in their Saturday morning activity. And at the entrance to my local park, a sign proudly identified those inside:

“Owasco Area Scouts,” it said.

When I snooped a little further, I learned what I had stumbled into was the annual “Camporee,” a weekend gathering of about 70 youngsters actively involved in the latest regional edition of the century-old scouting movement. Patrols (groups of roughly 10 scouts each) represented youth from Ajax, Pickering, Uxbridge and even an American group – Troop 67 from Catawisa, Pennsylvania (Uxbridge’s official twin community in the U.S.) Guiding the scouts – ages 10 to 14 – were about 35 adult leaders. 

I spoke to Les Siddall, an assistant commissioner for scouting in the Owasco district.

“The annual jamborees go back 50 years,” he said. “The young scouts get a chance to learn skills – tying knots, giving first aid, building campfires and learning water safety…They’re doing canoe relay races on [Elgin] Pond.”

The scouts had transformed the park into 10 event locations, where teams with adult leaders, recognized problems, worked out collaboration duties and then completed tasks for points. I spotted one group administering a splint to someone in the role of an injured camper. Another bunch lashed poles and lines to build some sort of structure. And others learned canoe or campfire etiquette. 

As I walked around the park and took in the activities engaging the youngsters, I thought about all the negative media their generation receives. Politicians, church leaders, police, business and media (yes, from time to time, I’m just as guilty as the next editorialist) tend to look for and find the vandalism, foul mouths and attitude of entitlement, without recognizing the upside of such positive youthful activity.

“Is it really competitive?” I asked Commissioner Siddall.

“Sure, but the main objective is fun,” he said.

For the record, the scouting movement owes its origins to a former lieutenant-general in the British Army, named Robert Baden-Powell. Serving in uniform from 1876 to 1910 in such parts of the world as India and Africa, among other campaigns, he assisted in the successful defence of the city of Mafeking in the Boer War. He wrote about 40 books on military history, adventures in the wilderness, life-skills for young men, and, of course, “Scouting for Boys,” published in 1908.

It was exactly 100 years ago that Baden-Powell staged a rally at Crystal Palace in London – it was the first time boys and girls assembled to support the scouting movement. It became an immediate world-wide phenomenon. Oddly, although Baden-Powell was a vocal anti-communist (who admired Benito Mussolini among others), during the Second World War, the Nazis proclaimed their distrust of scouting and labelled Baden-Powell a dangerous spy. A mountain in Nepal is named after him and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a number of times. 

When Baden-Powell died, he was buried in Nyeri, Kenya, today a national historic site. On his gravestone is an inscription only boy scouts understand – a dot inside a circle, which means, “I have gone home.”

I remember my own experience as a Boy Scout back in the 1950s. We held our sessions in the local public school gymnasium. We spent most of our weeknights trying to master the basic tenets of scouting to earn badges and stripes. It seemed awfully regimented and competitive back then. And when we did get the chance to participate in outdoor jamborees, I recall mostly the smell of damp canvas, muddy boots and our staple meal – burned wieners and beans. 

Les Siddall set me straight on present day scouting, however. It’s not so competitive, more open to cultural and religious diversity, and the wieners and beans are long gone.

“Later today, we’re staging the ‘Iron Chef Competition,’” he said.

This friendly contest pitted the best cook from each patrol being given a list of cooking ingredients – including cheese, eggs and greens – and coming up with the most interesting and delectable meal as a result. It seemed a fitting statement about a tradition that has learned how to keep up with the times.

“Scouting is all about teamwork and life skills,” Les Siddall said.

I’m only sorry I couldn’t stay around to sample the cuisine that resulted from the cooking contest. I’m sure I would have learned something about survival in the kitchen, if not in the woods.

More than good taste

When invited to a luncheon sponsored by a wine company, one might expect a predictable event – a variety of wine samples and an extended commercial for the company’s product.

Last week, a travel agent friend invited me to a 75th anniversary tribute to an Australian winemaker. The sample tasting was pretty straightforward. But when it came time for the guest of honour to be interviewed in front of the guests, a stout gentleman in a dazzling bow tie leapt onto the podium.

Simultaneously, someone at the back of the dining room cracked a joke about the man’s diminutive height. The vintner immediately stood on his chair and came back with a crack of his own.

“I used to be this tall,” he said, “but the wine industry cut me down to size.”

From his entrance, right down the very last mouthful of his wine samples over the meal, Australian winemaker Wolfgang Blass made it clear that this would be no ordinary luncheon. And he would leave no ordinary impression. I attended the Toronto stop of a cross-Canada promotional event – celebrating his 75th birthday and his nearly half-century as the namesake for Wolf Blass wines, formally established in 1966 at his vineyards in South Australia. The man, I learned, is a wine-industry icon.

In fact, when Wolf Blass finally sat down to be interviewed by Globe and Mail wine critic, Beppi Crosariol, it became clear just how much the man is responsible for putting Australian wines on the tables of the world – selling up to 65 million bottles of his “Bilyara,” or “Eaglehawk,” label produce annually. And he has been applauded constantly: the International Winemaker of the Year trophy (1992), the Maurice O’Shea Award (2000), three Jimmy Watson trophies, and the Order of Australia (2001), for service to the development of the Australian wine industry.

We learned during the podium conversation, however, that Blass began his career, selling product from the boot of his Volkswagen bug. At that time he was marketing a rather modest wine known as “Pineapple Pearl,” or as critic Crosariol was quick to point out, “the Australian equivalent of Baby Duck.”

Above and beyond his wine-making prowess, I thought, were some noteworthy observations from a seasoned entrepreneur. Among other things he has learned about his industry – and I didn’t know this – is that the table-wine business did not exist until he and others targeted women. When he chose the label colour yellow and focused on women as consumers, his cabernet sauvignons became nearly a staple with dinner.

In a biography of the celebrated man, Blass has also talked about the problems winemakers, and all modern businesses face, particularly in the marketing of product. He couldn’t understand why so many of the young marketers – even in his enterprize – are so adverse to getting out of the office to meet customers, clients and distributors.

“Even my young sales staff have their hands so attached to computers or their heads so buried in their cell phones, that they’ve failed to recognize the most basic form of selling – face-to-face,” he said.

He even cited a specific example of the need to reach out to his consumer. He recalled a time in the company’s past, when some suggested that his product had a short shelf life, in other words, that his wines didn’t maintain their quality if left unopened for a long time. Blass said the critics’ comment shook his company to its roots, until he personally invited a cross-section of the wine world’s most respected reviewers, consumers and even competitors to prove that the opposite was true.

“Face-to-face contact,” he repeated, “did the trick.”

As I said, the man and his life’s work are recognized around the world today – his wines have racked up over 3,000 international awards. But one of those at the luncheon asked which award meant the most to him. I was fascinated with his answer. Blass said his father’s generation was populated by academics, but during the Second World War in Germany there was no school; consequently, Blass never earned a degree.

“That’s why the Honorary Doctorate of Applied Science [from Charles Sturt University] was so important to me,’ he said. “My father would have been proud.”

Awards mean a great deal to anybody investing one’s life in the creation of something unique, sure. But I was most impressed by so much contemporary understanding coming from someone with such a long history in business. He’s proof that a master entrepreneur is one who knows his product, his buyer, his own sales force and how to deal with adversity.

Experience is his ultimate taste test.

Sis-boom-bah!

About 5 o’clock last Saturday night, I stepped into 1962.

I didn’t feel any different at that moment. I don’t think I looked any different. Neither did my wife. Except that for her, last Saturday night brought together alumni of Ancaster High School (in Ontario). And for her it was a chance to see and hear the impact of nearly 50 years on some of her former classmates, as more than 400 ex-students and faculty gathered to celebrate the school’s golden anniversary. At one point, one of her former classmates summed up the general feeling of the reunion.

“Too little time,” she said, “to remember so much.”

The weekend-long gathering actually attracted about 2,000 former students of the school. And the organizers of the 50th anniversary celebration kept those attending busy with the kind of fare that’s often associated with events such as these – a golf tournament, a reception of current and former staff members, several pub events and a fun run led by some of the school’s former athletic coaches and encouraged from the sidelines by, you guessed it, some of the school’s former cheerleaders shouting some “Sis-boom-bah!”

But the high note of the weekend was a dinner and dance inside the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Hamilton Airport.

“At the very least, you’ll feel very much at home next to all those vintage aircraft,” my wife kidded me.

Actually, I found the people-watching much more interesting (at least on this occasion) than the airplane watching. There was a former high school football star, his former girlfriend (they had different spouses), a high school thespian who went on to become a doctor, a number business course grads who built enterprizes with their names on them, and a woman who became an ER nurse. There were guys who had no doubt been nerdy back then, and gals who were had no doubt been knockouts in those yearbook photos. And then there was the high school’s perennial gym teacher, who my wife suggested “hadn’t changed a bit.”

I remember my own high school reunion from a number of years ago. My former secondary school was Agincourt Collegiate Institute (outside Toronto). As I recall, the reunion took place during the school’s 75th anniversary celebrations. So, the reunion weekend re-assembled men and women who had graduated from the place as early as the 1930s, and others as recently as the ’80s. Naturally every grad gravitated to his/her own time period, looking, listening and wondering “if that’s who I think it is.”

I had actually become involved in the event planning, volunteer recruiting and display set-up at my reunion. Because it seemed appropriate back then, I sat with as many graduates as were willing to be interviewed and video-taped their recollections and reminiscences of life at ACI.

I think what struck me most about the recorded comments was the angst most felt about being in high school: What would my peers think of me? Would I be considered cool or uncool? How would I ever survive frosh year? How well would I do in this or that subject? Would I make Ontario scholarship? I hadn’t expected to find as much uptight-ness among my fellow students as I did.

I certainly felt that kind of tension in my first year of high school – Grade 9. But after that, I managed to make friends with peers who had many of the same interests and aspirations as I did. We turned out to be the school’s “artsy” types. We staged variety shows. We pushed for annual school musicals. We incorporated cheering the school teams from the sidelines into nearly Vaudevillian entertainment for all.

To placate some of the school’s stuffed-shirt administrators, we even volunteered to turn the daily school announcements into recorded skits with a cast of zany characters with lots of inside humour thrown in. It was a perfect arrangement: The vice-principal and teachers weren’t burdened with the humdrum of the announcements. And we got our kicks performing blackouts and radio sketches on the school’s PA system every day!

And when we got together at our 75th school reunion, we discovered that our old PA sketch group had become teachers, professors, lawyers, doctors, politicians, ad executives … and yes, the parents of another generation of high school students. But attending my wife’s high school reunion allowed me the luxury of taking in the festivities from a distance. I enjoyed stepping back into 1962 with her.

And just in case you were wondering, I don’t think she ran into any old flames, last Saturday night at the dance. Thankfully, none of them showed up.

Pushing back "the entitled"

These spring evenings have enticed me and my trusty Kerry blue terrier walking partner to the park more often.

On Monday, we arrived just as the sun was setting and the Canada geese were settling on the pond. Two young women runners approached going the opposite way. They sported headbands, high-end runners and plenty of spandex. As she jogged past, one woman took a long last drink of water from a plastic bottle. Then, she tossed it on the grass and jogged on.

“Excuse me,” I shouted toward the two women. They slowed and turned to look at me. “Who do you think is going to pick that up?” I said gesturing to the discarded bottle.

She turned back muttering, “I didn’t realize…”

“This is everybody’s park,” I added, “not your private dump.”

If I had thought more carefully about my outburst, I might have put more bite into my criticism of the woman’s thoughtless behaviour. I might even have challenged her with the township’s anti-littering bylaw. That way I could actually have threatened the woman with something more serious than just my rant about preserving the parks for the public good.

Somehow, however, I sensed even embarrassing her with the threat of citizen’s arrest or potential legal challenge and/or a fine, might not have fizzed on her. My guess is that plastic bottle was not the first one she’s tossed in a public place. Nor will it be her last.

I think it was a day or so later that I encountered the same attitude on the road. I’m sure this is no surprise to anybody, but I was just a few kilometres from home. As I crossed some railwway tracks – used essentially only by the York-Durham Heritage Railway from spring to fall – I slowed partly because the road’s been heaving, but also because it actually requires cars to “stop before crossing.”

As I slowed to a rolling stop, a guy in a two-door sports car blew past me as if I were standing still. For a second I thought he was going to hit my car. I’m not exactly a poky driver. I stay with the flow most of the time. But clearly this guy had no regard for anybody or anything, but himself.

I think there’s a generational thing happening out there that makes people of a certain age feel as if they are entitled to act this way. Whether spoken or unspoken they say with their actions and attitude that they have inherited all of society’s problems and so are therefore perfectly within their rights to react in kind. Or, at least, they think they’re entitled to act with immunity because they sense they are now custodians of the world’s future and can do with it as they please.

It doesn’t end in the park or on the roads either. I’ve encountered it waiting in line – at the bank, the grocery store, the self-service gas bar or the airport baggage check – where they drift past me because they’re in a hurry. And, of course, I’m not allowed to be in a hurry. They won’t hold a door for somebody in need. They talk on their cell phones almost as loudly as I do projecting my voice to a lecture hall full of students. Or, they’ll text message under the table right in front of you when you think they’re absorbed in the conversation. I’m afraid “the Me Generation” is back and it has little or no regard for anyone or anything in its path. So, get out of the way!

By the way, I called the town office to find out how much power the township has to prosecute individuals who litter in a park, for example. The bylaw prohibits “the throwing, placing or depositing of refuse or debris on private property (and) municipal property." According to the bylaw, refuse can mean “rubbish, garbage, domestic or commercial liquid or solid waste.” And here’s the best part: anyone found guilty could be liable to a $2,000 fine.

When I checked with the mayor about actually prosecuting somebody under the bylaw, he said, “You’ve got to catch them in the act … fill out a complaint and take them to court … an onerous process at the very least.”

Onerous? Yes. But one day it just might be worth the trouble to make the point. Bottle-tossing joggers, be warned!