Rose's Cantina

As expected, many of us are already getting tired of Justin Trudeau. Already, his words have come back to haunt him. Anybody who has any sense of this country knows that if politician  wants English Canadians to vote for him, he shouldn't go around dissing them. Albertans are fine, upstanding , hard-working people who deserve your respect. There are just as many fine, upstanding, hard-working people in Alberta as there are in Quebec. Maybe more.   In Alberta, you don’t see half the politicians going to jail for fraud, do you? Corruption is part of the political process in Quebec. That corruption bled into federal politics when Quebecers were in charge. The whole sponsorship thing – remember Chuck Guité? – was all about Quebec politicians and bureaucrats funneling money into the slimy pockets of Quebec ad executives. So, Justin, stop bad mouthing Albertans. Stop talking up Quebec. The rest of Canada doesn’t want to hear it. There are ot...

Rob Ford is an idiot. He roughs up reporters. He reads while driving. And now, he’s been punted from office for blatantly ignoring the rules. If politics were a work shed, Rob Ford would be the biggest tool in the box. Where do we get these guys, the Rob Fords and Ottawa’s Larry O’Brien, the self-professed “swinging dick”? And why on Earth do the good people elect them to office? Once, I heard, the City of London ran a dog for Mayor and he almost won. The problem is people don’t take municipal politics seriously because they don’t consider most of the issues earth-shattering. Mayors don’t declare war. Mayors are preoccupied with light transit and garbage, right? No exactly accurate. The fact is mayors and councils have more control over your life than the Prime Minister. That’s because everything they touch – roads, garbage, welfare, libraries, police services, fire services, care for the elderly and those with disabilities – is local. So it’s about time th...

My life has changed in the last few weeks. First, I lost my Kindle. Then my computer caught a virus. Then I saw the dreaded red blink on the printer – no more ink. And finally, my iPhone started dropping apps. I found myself in a technological dead zone. It’s as if God gave me a time out. If that wasn’t bad enough, the high-priced coffee machine my son bought me started exploding and then died. We sent it along to a Wall-e style graveyard where all the old Cuisinarts and Kitchen Aids go to die. The coffee machine isn’t that big a problem; the fact is, I don’t really like coffee, if I were to be perfectly honest, so I’m back to tea, and not the expensive kind, either. The kind you buy at the ethnic food store, two dollars for three hundred bags of Darjeeling. In past days, I’ve realized I’m in need of a complete technological retrofit. I need a new phone. Will it be an iPhone 5 or a Samsung Galaxy? I need a new computer. Will it be a Mac or a new PC with Windows 8? T...

This year, I decided to do Christmas on the cheap and not feel guilty about it. So we'll be putting up a tree, making nice food, hauling in some stomach-warming bevvies and giving the finger to Santa Claus. Nick and Shyla have a baby on the way, Marissa and Jeff are in a very pricey wedding party and Scott and I are broke -- as usual. Stef has money but Stef can afford to buy his own presents. So we've arranged it so that one couple or a Stef will give another couple one present and that will be it. Before you blurt it out, let me stop you right there. There will be no secret Santa, no present stealing. Our Christmas will be transparent and will level the playing field for the "have nots". For the past few years, I've felt guilty about the lack of great and expensive presents. Even when I was a single mom, there was always a Playstation or an iPod under the tree. We were pretty poor but I wanted to make sure the kids got what everybody else was gett...

For as long as I can remember, I spent Sunday mornings drinking coffee surrounded by newspapers. When I couldn't afford the Sunday New York Times , I would save the Globe and Mail , and savor it. And there was always the Sunday Citizen or the Sunday Sun as a back-up plan. Ever since I was a wee girl learning to read by devouring the  St. Catharines Standard , I loved the smell of newsprint, the way you had to clean yourself up after reading it. And I adored The Star Weekly with its long articles written by real Canadian writers with odd names like Silver Don Cameron. These are bleak days for people like me. The Sunday Citizen is gone and the cost of the Sunday New York Times is prohibitive. I gave up my Citizen subscription when I got a Kindle for Christmas. Kindling was cheaper but it was never the same. You couldn't save the crossword because there was no crossword. You couldn't even pour over the obits to see if you were still alive. The Kindle edit...

It was the last straw this morning. I was already frustrated reading my online edition of the Ottawa Citizen . I had decided to try it out for 99 cents and the truth is, it's so poorly organized I cannot find anything. There's old stuff on the splash page. Half the news is hidden in some cyber cranny that I cannot access. When I went to the obit section, I got a "cannot open" notice. It used to take me an hour to read the Citizen's Saturday print edition. Now it takes an hour of clicking just to get anything worthwhile to read. I cannot stand it. So I decided to dump the Citizen's online edition after three days. It's not worth ten bucks. If I want to read a paper, I'll walk over to the Quickie. So I turned to Twitter, which is now my go-to place for all the really important stuff. There I saw what looked like an interesting story by Ian Brown in the Globe and Mail. So I clicked on it. I was immediately alerted to the fact that I'd rea...

  One of the reasons I've been a life-long liberal is that I feel the poor need protection from the rich and the greedy. Take these companies who pray upon the unemployed to re-sell gas and flog other products door to door. They promise big fat cheques paid every week. They give people badges and cool jackets and take them out into the world, only to have their hopes dashed with the first door slammed in their faces. Scott took one of these jobs as a temporary measure this week, trying to sell furnaces to people in the great town of Arnprior. He got on a bus with the rest of his poor colleagues -- all smoking -- and was dropped off in the town and made to go door to door to see if people needed new furnaces and water heaters. He did this for two days, trudging along the street, fending off farmers with shotguns and townies with potty mouths. The reactions from the near hundred houses were all the same -- get the hell off my property. He made not one cent for two 12-hou...

If you're looking for a good deal on a car, don't call my husband. He's finally given up on being that super-successful car guy, the one who brings in $70,000 a year by ripping off consumers. I've never met a car saleman who makes $70k -- most of the really, really successful guys make $40k tops. I've also never met a consumer who knew that. Most people think that car salesmen are lining their pockets with gold, hence they try to get brand new cars for $10,000 taxes in. It's a ridiculous business, a pyramid scheme where the dealers and managers cut the commission down to the bare bones just so they can meet their quota and keep their dealership licence. These same owners and managers make tonnes of money because they take a cut from all the sales guys who sometimes make barely enough money to cover their gas and a Tim Horton's coffee. Like my husband. We had one month recently in which Scott brought home $1,200 for working long days and weekends. ...

I just got back from the Starbucks and it was a friggin'  car wash. It's always busy before 9 a.m. and so we thought we'd wait and go a little later. Didn't matter. The line snaked out the door and if Scott didn't desperately need a Vente Bold Black, I'd have been outta there. Sorry if I'm snarkey this morning, but there's nothing worse than going to the dog park and not being able to find a parking spot. Today, the line was down the road with dog owning SUVs and their precious little red coated foo foo doggies waddling down the road. Today, we saw a couple with two dogs who looked suspiciously like Bernese Mountain Dogs, without all the fluff. Turns out they were Swiss Mountain Dogs, according to the snooty owners. Welcome to Black Monday which really is Remembrance Day in Canada. It's the day when all the federal and municipal public servants get the day off while their kids are babysat in provincial schools which are forced to stay open...

            THE WOUNDED CANADIAN SPEAKS: MY leg? It’s off at the knee. Do I miss it? Well, some. You see I’ve had it since I was born; And lately a devilish corn. (I rather chuckle with glee 5 To think how I’ve fooled that corn.) But I’ll hobble around all right. It is n’t that, it’s my face. Oh, I know I’m a hideous sight, Hardly a thing in place. 10 Sort of gargoyle, you’d say. Nurse won’t give me a glass, But I see the folks as they pass Shudder and turn away; Turn away in distress … 15 Mirror enough, I guess. I’m gay! You bet I am gay, But I was n’t a while ago. If you’d seen me even to-day, The darnedest picture of woe, 20 With this Caliban mug of mine, So ravaged and raw and red, Turned to the wall—in fine Wishing that I was dead…. What has happened since then, 25 Since I lay with my face to the wall, The most despairing of men! Listen! I’ll tell you all. That poi...

As the child of a damaged soldier, I see Remembrance Day differently. My father did not die in combat. He died of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, a brain disease brought on by reoccuring images of war. The sounds and mental pictures of the battlefield never went away for my dad so he tried to silence them with booze. His life ended in a rolled car on a country road in 1957 on a cold November night. Neighbors found him pinned under his car with a six pack of beer at his side. There was no funeral cortege for my father, only a small marker in a military graveyard. No medals or notes from the Queen. He was no hero in the eyes of his community, just a rounder who couldn't keep a job and left his pitiful wife to pay his creditors. Instead of a ceremony, there was an inquest. Instead of a military pension, there was welfare for his widow. Instead of a father, there was a picture on top of the black and white television set...

Everybody stop picking on Diane Sawyer. Okay, she's got a lovely face and honey locks, but she's not perfect. It appears she was seeing hefalumps and woozels on the air during ABC's election special. But the poor girl had probably been up for 72 hours. And she is a pensioner, not some spring chicken like, like, Soledad O'Brien. I don't think Diane Sawyer was drunk. I think Diane Sawyer was punch drunk. Lack of sleep can make a person delirious. If you want to blame anybody, blame Disney which owns ABC. Disney is reportedly amongst the worst -- and cheapest -- employers on the planet. So what Disney does is use its resources to the max to save money. They did this all summer. After the cancellation of The Revolution, ABC/Disney forced Lara Spencer and Josh Elliott to do double duty by working the break of dawn shift then coming back in the afternoon to do another truly awful show. Both of them always appeared drunk. The day of the election, Diane Sawye...

I'm avoiding American television today. And tomorrow. Maybe forever. Like that little crying girl on Youtube, I am sick of Branco Bama and Mitt Romney. Also, Bill Maher. And Bill O'Reilly. Certainly, the ladies of The View. I told Scott the other day that if the Republicans win, I'll have to avoid The View Forever. Elisabeth Hasselbeck will be even more insufferable than she is now. It's occurred to me that every time the Republicans win, it's like a dream sequence in which the nerds from the Big Bang Theory take over the high school from the cool kids. Or maybe the high school surrenders to The Shark Tank . And it just might happen, ladies and germs. Get your health care while you still can. Harvest those crops where the Canada Pipeline is going to be. And you, on the East Coast, prepare to wait for help from the PRIVATE SECTOR. FEMA will be a Democratic wet dream. It's looking suspiciously likely that the 'Pubs may take the Great Stat...

You see this dog? This dog is Public Enemy Number One in my house. Why? I was sleeping last night when Gordon J. Blackstone lumbered onto my pillow and proceeded to take a dump on my shoulder. I shit you not. If you have never had this experience, it's perfectly surreal. You don't see it coming. You see the rear and you hear the plop, plop and then you savor the smell. A shitting can not be stopped in mid, uh, stream. Otherwise it will smear. It's helpful to have a husband to elbow so as not to move even slightly should the turds roll under you. They must be lifted gingerly. There must be a good amount of paper towel involved. Try going back to sleep after that.

There are people in this life who make everything around them sparkle. Peter Morton was one of those people. He just couldn't help himself. Peter was unconventionally handsome, a wiry little ginger all covered in freckles. He was nerdy in a Ronald Weasley way but it was his charm and infectious laugh that made him special. As a financial journalist, he had the ability to take the driest subject matter and lift the words right off the page. He was at the forefront of a movement that turned bean counters into rock stars. He made money talk cool. I met Peter at the place I met most people in 1994, at Dapoe's bar at the National Press Club. Peter walked into the place and decided it needed fixing. So he became its treasurer. We became fast friends, spending hours playing tennis and drinking beer on various patios. We didn't have much in common. He was happily married, I was unhappily divorced. He wrote about numbers and lived in cool Westboro. I wr...