Rose's Cantina

Welcome to Rosalita's Friday confessional. So here it is. I smoked pot at 24 Sussex Drive back in the 80s. I smoked it all the time along with a bunch of my friends from the Hill after our weekly softball game -- right under the noses of the Prime Minister's crack security detail. They didn't seem to care. I know we weren't the first to smoke a doobie there. Justin Trudeau's mom always had a pretty good stash. Most Canadians knew that about Margaret. It made her cool. Probably took the edge off. Who could blame her? How could anybody live with Pierre Trudeau and stay sober? Why does nobody remember that? For most of my time on Parliament Hill, I knew people -- MPs, their staff members -- who smoked pot in their offices all the time. Especially the NDP. (Simon de Jong, God Bless 'em, was an avid toker.) Journalists smoked pot on Parliament Hill, too. Ask Hubie Bach. They also drank and fornicated on the Hill, in offices, behind the Centre Block and at ...

The federal NDP deputy leader, Megan Leslie, says she's shocked at the "casual sexism" on Parliament Hill. “The first day I came to Parliament Hill in 2008, an MP told me I had a ‘fine body.’ I was startled and offended,” she wrote in the June 3 edition of Blacklock’s Reporter , an Ottawa-based subscription news outlet which reports on Parliament Hill. Thanks, Megan, for the trip down memory lane. Things seem to have gotten better on Hill, if the worst she gets is a compliment on her bod. Good thing she wasn't there when John Turner was patting bums and the Deputy Streaker was prancing down the halls in Centre Block with a square of towel pasted to his genitals. The Hill has always been an "if I have a nice body will you hold it against me" kind of place. Especially during holiday season. Or after the Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner. Or during voting at leadership conventions. A big part of the issue is the acceptance of public drunkedness as ...