William Bedford

Peace, Order and Goodies from the Government

Politicians, no matter which party they hide out in, are forever taking polls to find out just what they have to give us to insure their continued life of privilege at the bottomless public trough.

Christmas is in the air

CHRISTMAS IN THE AIR When December days turn dark and bleak and the snow begins to fly and the icy winds howl over hills and dells,

Memories of Yuletides Past

The swirling snow makes whirlpools In the moonlight the tree is all-aglow at Eventide The sounds of home come calling down the years

Words to live by

Pin this adage on your fridge door: It's not what you eat between Christmas and New Year,

Yonge Street Then and Now

Only old folks would think of calling Yonge Street Toronto's "signature thoroughfare," in fact, it's been a long time since it was Toronto's main drag. The great landmarks of old Yonge Street are long gone. In those good old days you could shop at Eaton's and Simpson's, have a top steak in Lindy's, grab a hot dog at the lunchcounter in Ford's drug store, have a cocktail in any of the fancy bars From the Pilot Tavern, "way up north" at Bloor, to the Town Tavern, downtown, ( which featured jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman) You could take in a movie in opulent theatres like the Imperial, and Lowes (both up-town and down-town).

UTOPIA

In Ontario life is tough, but there is a place to shed our woes, beneath the balmy, western sky where the wind-of-worry never blows.

Hamilton: A lunch pail town, not

While Toronto and Niagara Falls are recognized far and wide as the top tourist attractions in Ontario, there’s a place about half way between these two tourists Meccas that few people ever consider visiting even for a day-trip. They don't know what they are missing. The place I'm referring to is the city of Hamilton and its environments. All that most Ontario people know of Hamilton is that it's the steel-making center they glimpse from their cars as they speed past it on their way to Niagara Falls.

The Begging Game

Once upon a time in an Ontario far away there were so many charitable organizations fighting for our hard-earned dollars that someone, or, this being Canada, probably a committee, came up with the bright idea of lumping them all together into one big United Appeal. Alas, just as the merger of Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists into one big United Church of Canada resulted in four churches instead of the one that was visualized, so too, the United Appeal succeeded in adding one more charity to the long line of solicitors. And over the past few years that list has gotten to be as long as a politician’s promises list.

Dave and the Dragon lady

When I came across her name in the obituary column, I wondered if there would be anyone to say a few kind words about her, but somehow I doubted it. She and I had lived in the same apartment building for a time, where our paths first crossed at a tenants' meeting. The tenant gathering had an almost festive air about it, with everyone enjoying coffee and cookies, until she showed up with the chill of the November evening on her pinched, angry face. The young woman I was chatting with asked me if I knew her. When I answered no, she whispered: "She's an awful bigot, and so vile tempered that we call her the Dragon Lady".

Senior Citizenship

In order to become a Canadian citizen you are required to know a number of basic things about the country you are going to adopt, and rightly so. However, when, and if, your turn comes to take out senior citizenship you will in all probability find yourself a stranger in a strange country without a road map.

Paradise now

The morning mist hanging eerily on the remote Ontario lake completely shrouds the small pine-covered isle in its midst. As I sip my morning coffee on the cottage verandah, I watch the mist being slowly burned away by the waning October sun, revealing the Ontario fall in all its flaming glory.

Warning signals!

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month. If Eliot were alive today he might see things differently. August, according to the history books would appear to be a lot crueler than April. The roaring guns of August 1914 opened up the carnage that became World War I. The" Devils Pact" in August 1939 between the Nazi Germany's Joachim Von Ribbentrop and Communist Russia's Vyacheslav Molotov laid the groundwork for World War II.

Holy Hockey

When Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the first Canada-Russia hockey series the whole country went on a high the like of which no drug could induce.

Restoring Toronto’s glory

Somewhere between the old, but solvent, Toronto of beer parlors and closed-down Sundays and the current Toronto of littered streets, homelessness and a strapped City Hall, there was a Toronto known far-and-wide as “The City that Works.” A city that the late, great raconteur Peter Ustinov called “ New York run by the Swiss.”

Super Canada Day

As we enjoy Canada Day at cottages, beaches, backyard barbecues and in various other activities, we could do worse than reflect for a minute or two the great country we are celebrating. In fact there are so many complaints about just about everything these days that we are apt to forget how well-fed, well-shod and well-housed we are compared to most of humanity.

Canada’s Big Train

I was watching an old movie recently on TV about the legendary American athlete Jim Thorpe when it struck me that Canada once had an all-round athletic champion who would have left Thorpe in the shadows.

An Adult Maturity Test?

The current debate on whether 16–year–olds should be considered mature enough to vote, while at the same time urging the government to lift their drivers licenses if they refuse to stay in school until they are eighteen, is causing us, once more, to ponder the definition of adulthood and the appropriateness of treating juveniles as adults, especially in the law courts.

Newspeak

It's a true fact that a language would wither and die if it were not kept well fertilized with new words and phrases. On the other hand, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when words like gay are given new meaning and nouns like parent are used as verbs, we tend to use them ad-nauseam.

The Game of the Name

The two guys ahead of me at the food court counter were discussing a friend of theirs whose name I recognized as that of a local politician (let's call him Buddy).

Coping with the Rat Race

The 50ish looking guy sitting next to me on GO train looked like any other frazzled commuter who had put in a hard day's work. "If only I could score on the Lotto," he said to me, "I'd get the hell out of this rat-race so fast they'd never know that I was here in the first place."