Rose's Cantina

It's now been a week since Jian Ghomeshi told his fans he was taking time away from CBC Radio, six days since the CBC said it was distancing itself from the great man, five days since the CBC fired him for his lifestyle choices, four days since the Toronto Star let loose a can of whoop ass on the host of Q, three days since the first woman put her name forward claiming he choked and hit her, two days since nine women came forward to say the same and worse. The scandal started slowly enough but quickly resulted in a white squall of outrage from women -- and right-thinking men -- who took to social media to express their disgust that the CBC allowed Ghomeshi to walk their halls for even one day after a woman complained about him cupping her butt and promising to fuck her with his Angry Inch. Boy, it must have been some week at the CBC, which is now so blown apart by this scandal that it's bringing in outsiders to talk to all the women who have been threatened, leched at, fon

#108274487 / gettyimages.com What is happening to this staid old nation of ours? First we had the crack-smoking mayor, then Justin "The Egg Man" Bieber. Now we have the King of Kink. Merde. Have you seen all the blogs about sweet little Jian Ghomeshi who got bitch slapped by CBC for his love of all things BDSM? Oh my . We thought he was just a creep. Now he's a creep with an attitude. He doesn't fight fair, according to the Toronto Star who interviewed four women who said he punched them and strangled them without their consent. Is he guilty? Not according to him. He told Facebook lovers on Sunday that he's into the scene -- nothing wrong with that -- and this is just a silly prank put upon him by a jilted ex-lover. Then he went on to list all his perversions, like any of us want to know, kind of like a 4-1-1 in case some young ladies on The Facebook might want to, you know, look him up. Got to hand it to Jian. He never met a twisted op

#82635875 / gettyimages.com A lot of people were making fun of Stephen Harper hiding in a broom closet being guarded by MPs with hand-fashioned sticks last week. There are memes all over the Internet about it. Where was he supposed to go? Have you been in that room? There are no windows to jump out of, like in the Parliamentary Press Gallery's hot room. There isn't even a bathroom. This was not a cowardly act, as some have suggested. You know what the flight attendants say. The big person should always put the mask on first in order to save the country. That's what Harper was doing, making sure the big person would still be alive if his loyal foot soldiers with sticks had been unable to protect him. Most of us would do the same thing. He's our Prime Minister, for Goodness Sake, one of our great symbols of democracy. So stifle yourself, Harper haters. There was no need for him to come out of the closet. Besides, I have no doubt the caucus would h

#146374231 / gettyimages.com When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on that bright and beautiful September morning, life as I knew it changed. I'd been struggling for five years to adjust to raising three kids on my own, keeping up with car and mortgage payments and finding part-time work to supplement my child support payments. It was as if I lived on a hamster wheel (my friend Suzanne calls it the ferris wheel of shit) running as fast as a I could, never having a break. My kids were teenagers and two of them were already deeply into drugs and skipping school, and my eldest son had threatened suicide. Nick had taken to the streets for a time and nearly died from refusing to take his thyroid medication, which had kept him alive and thriving since he was a toddler. Every time I tried to take a full time job, something happened, from cops coming to the door to cuff the boys to endless meetings with school officials over truancy. I was living a single

      For many of us in Ottawa, Parliament Hill is more than a place of political wrangling and policy making. It's our home.   And the people who work there are more than politicians, bureaucrats and scribes. They are family.   It's been years since I toiled there, but like most Ottawa Hillbillies, I left a piece of myself in those hallowed halls.   My husband, Scott, spent nearly 30 years on Parliament Hill as a cameraman for CBC. He knows every corner, every entrance, every tunnel, every political escape route. Scott stood for hours most days, in the hall beside the very steps that the gunman tore up yesterday, doing the job of all good camera guys -- scrumming politicians and cooling his heels waiting to catch the eye of seven prime ministers.   I worked as both a journalist and a political staffer on the Hill for nearly two decades. I had an office in the Langevin Block steps away from the War Memorial where the gunman took the life of a brave y

#165066088 / gettyimages.com

#463047935 / gettyimages.com Watching W5 on Saturday, and its fawning hour-long profile of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, I was brought back to a time in the 1980s when Tom Hayden was running for state legislature in California. Hayden was a famous 60s radical, then married to Jane Fonda, who was trying to rehabilitate his image, to make himself seem more palatable to voters. Getting him elected wouldn't be easy -- Tom was a bad guy in his youth -- so a gaggle of Democratic political consultants were enlisted to undertake a renovation of sorts, putting putty in the cracks of the foundation, giving him a new high gloss coat of paint. The media campaign included television ads, and a glossy brochure entitled Tom Hayden, Growing Up in America. The brochure featured sad images of racism, segregation, shootings of presidents and preachers. It was meant to explain how Tom Hayden and his politics had been shaped by events in America. Not his fault. He was a product of his envi

#463047935 / gettyimages.com Watching W5 on Saturday, and its fawning hour-long profile of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, I was brought back to a time in the 1980s when Tom Hayden was running for state legislature in California. Hayden was a famous 60s radical, then married to Jane Fonda, who was trying to rehabilitate his image, to make himself seem more palatable to voters. Getting him elected wouldn't be easy -- Tom was a bad guy in his youth -- so a gaggle of Democratic political consultants were enlisted to undertake a renovation of sorts, putting putty in the cracks of the foundation, giving him a new high gloss coat of paint. The media campaign included television ads, and a glossy brochure entitled Tom Hayden, Growing Up in America. The brochure featured sad images of racism, segregation, shootings of presidents and preachers. It was meant to explain how Tom Hayden and his politics had been shaped by events in America. Not his fault. He was a product o

#79365416 / gettyimages.com Lately, the manager at my local Loblaw store has been avoiding me. Every time he sees me, he suddenly remembers an unattended problem and does an about face. He's not the only one. All the other managers and stocking clerks head for the hills when they see me. That's because, like a growing number of shoppers, I have become addicted to PC Plus points and I spend hours harassing the staff looking for my deals. For those living without cable, PC Plus is the brainchild of the scion of the Weston family, Galen, who has replaced old Dave Nichol as the pitchman for the companies owned by the family of Ontario's former Lieutenant-Governor. He is on television about every thirty seconds pitching expensive Black Label products and Ontario fresh farm produce in his cashmere sunflower blue sweaters and rich boy goggles. Most of what he's selling is harmless enough, some is even good for you. But the PC Plus points are downright danger

#119134944 / gettyimages.com I've had garbage on my mind, and my floor, lately. Yesterday, I came home from the gymnasty to discover that the rat, disguised as a pug, Sophie, had upended the garbage pail and there was smelly crap everywhere. I held my nose, imagined myself on a beach someplace and cleaned up the festering slimy mess, then went out again. When I came back, she'd upended the garbage again and spilled what I had cleaned up. Clearly, she has a taste for it, as I've found little bits of meat packaging in my chair, my bed and under my feet. My mood wasn't helped by Gordie, the Jurassic Pug, who became agitated over all the yelling and pooped himself on the carpet in front of Scott's Lazy Boy. So let's just say, yesterday, I was knee deep in shite. But there was good news. The good news is it could have been worse. Worse, I say, because we do use the City of Ottawa Green Bin faithfully, trotting out all our organic material, and we h

#485221623 / gettyimages.com One of the toughest parts of being Little Orphan Rosie is that there are so many questions left unanswered.  What's worse is that the only reference points I have, come from long ago, as a child. I once had to bath my ailing granny and noticed she only had one breast. Clearly, she'd had a mastectomy, so she'd had breast cancer. I was too young, too timid, too shy to ask my mom at the time and now that she's been out of my life nearly as long as she was in it, that ship has sailed. I knew the medical history of my mother's side of the family, having lived with them. Most died of old age, of heart, of stroke, due to bad social habits. My granddad had everything but the kitchen sink: heart issues, diabetes that gave him "spells" and my mom died of a bowel blockage, though she also had undiagnosed emphysema. Until recently, I had no clue about the health history of my dad's clan. He died when I was small an

#146516481 / gettyimages.com I saw something primo nasty this morning and I wanted to share it with two of my former colleagues on Facebook. I couldn't find them. It didn't take long before I realized that they were no longer fellow travelers on the Facebook trail. I had officially been unfriended. What was weird was that it took me three months before I even noticed, ninety days since our last meeting in a downtown bar where we traded gossip about our old bosses, made fun of singletons wearing silly costumes and nearly drank Ottawa dry. It was fun for all of us, especially when a couple of their lounge lizard buddies ambled by to hit on them, as these lizards probably had done every week for the past year. One of the guys was particularly repulsive -- one of those guys who is too old to hit on chicks, and was still using the moves he developed in 1985. I've met many of his kind over my years as a bar fly, and my bar-dar tried to warn the chickens

#166265243 / gettyimages.com A few years back, when I was single, I was out on the town and waved down an Ottawa taxi. Like a lot of people who use taxis, I'd had a few too many to drink so I was happy just to roll into a car and get home as soon as possible. It wasn't three in the morning or anything, it was maybe about eight o'clock, after I'd met some friends in the mid-afternoon at the press club. The taxi driver was friendly enough, and I was perhaps oversharing. as I get when I've had a few. He seemed like a nice guy, and even flirted with me a little bit. I got home, paid him and thanked him for the chat. I opened my door and was just about to go in when he appeared right behind me. He obviously had more things on his mind than retrieving a lost purse or scarf. He became aggressive and actually tried to push through the door over my objections. Fortunately, I lived with a very big black Lab at the time who was also at the door to mee

#149264186 / gettyimages.com The old man sat in his favorite easy chair cradling a glass of vodka, neat, and stared ahead at his big screen television, the one that his son had bought him for Christmas, the one he could no longer see. He loved this pocked old chair in the screened-in porch overlooking the par three golf course. For years, it had been a place of great joy for him, for his wife, for the family on the occasions when they came to visit.  There were snacks enjoyed here, Sunday barbecues, board game contests with the grandkids. Not anymore. His only company these days was the wind whipping around the autumn trees and the occasional mosquito drunk with the season, unable to fly, weaving around his head. He could hear a mosquito; alas, he could no longer see one. The day had been difficult, he had railed at the children who somehow had become his parents, telling him what to do, how to live. When had this happened? It seemed like only yesterday, he was chi