Rose's Cantina

View image | gettyimages.com I nearly wept this morning reading Robin Sears' scathing analysis of the current state of politics in Ottawa and Ontario. Sears used two examples to demonstrate why voters, old and young, are so cynical. Example A: Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's chief of staff is fingered by the province's Chief Electoral Officer for trying to bribe a hard working Liberal to stop him from running against the preferred candidate. (Criminal charges pending.) Example B: The well-coiffed son of a former revered prime minister accepts sloppy seconds from the Prime Minister. Mucho gusto! As a voter, I'm loving it. I find day-to-day politics exceedingly boring, and I frankly don't care where John Baird hangs his hat. I'm here for the dirty stuff. Ontario never, ever, disappoints. And we have David Peterson to thank for all of it. Peterson is the Canadian version of Kevin Bacon. All the shenanigans -- and people -- can be all tied bac...

#183580963 / gettyimages.com For the first time in my life, I've actually thought about NOT VOTING in an Ontario election. In my four decades of voting, it's always been pretty easy to separate the squirrels from the actual eggs. There were clear choices. In my youth, I veered to the left-ish, liking the NDP but voting Liberal because I believed there were too many wackjobs in the NDP. I could never stomach the Tories. Even the youngins reminded me of my crazy Uncle Ivan who would rail against the gov-ment while he was chain-smoking roll-your-owns. Like most women, the Liberal party seemed reasonable and progressive. So like a reasonably well-educated fembot, I've put the Liberal tramp stamp on my ballot each and every election. Hell, I voted for Dalton McGuinty three times, even though he looked like a psycho killer. Maybe it's because I'm tumbling into the geezerhood vortex, that awesome time in a person'slife when television tells us...

#108150436 / gettyimages.com For the past six months, I've been sitting in a chair with the ailing pug Gordie. He's blind, incontinent and has separation anxiety, so if I don't sit with him he cries. Sometimes, I feel like I'm in a black-and-white movie, and I'm Baby Jane watching over Blanche. Sometimes, I want to push Gordie's damned wheelchair down the stairs and be done with it. I wouldn't do that, of course. I love the little bugger more than life itself, but I'm starting to resent all the time I have to spend in front of the tellie watching the CTV News Channel. He may be going to Heaven soon, but I'm living in Purgatory, the place between Heaven and Hell, called the Ontario Election. This election sucks the big one. There's not much to choose from. It's kind of like watching TV Land reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies , Beetlejuice and The Facts of Life . Hey Blair, the Eighties are calling; they want their hair...

I was so damned excited that the Ottawa Farmer's Market was opening this weekend, I nearly wet myself. Going to the market has become one of the great rituals of each summer. Scott and I have a route. We start up the left side of Market (which is located if you don't know across from Carleton University, which does its part by trying to gouge visitors for parking even though there is free parking in the neighborhood). We like to compare prices and produce, chat up the farmers, ask them about their winters. Then we veer left talk to the Yak lady and Carleton the Jamaican sauce guy. Along the way, we buy eggs from John the egg guy and some wonderful Lanark cheese. On the right side, there is hot sauce and honey, baby booties and dog biscuits. By the time we're done, in past years, we've dropped $65 on a wonderful variety of colorful gnarly carrots and weird vegetables. The big treat is always, come June, when my homies from Niagara boot down the 401 to deliver lu...

I was sitting outside, enjoying the first blush of spring/summer, considering the fact that Premier Kathleen Wynne was being brave enough to venture deep into the riding of Ottawa South, the former fiefdumb of Dalton McGuinty. I remember last election, I heard this great story about a guy who came to the door to find Premier Dad and his brother David on this doorstoop. "You can stay," he said to David. "You," he said pointing to Dalton. "You, get off my lawn." For years I've lived in Ottawa South and I've always voted for the Liberal Party because old habits die hard. I cut my political teeth working on the Hill for National Liberal Caucus, just a wee girl in search of quality employment, not realizing the experience made me something of a Philip Roth character. I still wear the Human Stain of liberalism even though I haven't been an active Liberal for two decades. It's hurt me workwise, no question, particularly over these many ye...

#165505423 / gettyimages.com A lot of you have been waiting for the Liberal government to fall and the election to commence. Some of you. A few of you. Okay, anybody who belongs to a political party other than the Liberals. The rest of us hate elections. They cost a lot of money. They take up valuable time during the Big Bang Theory . We get to see too much video of ugly people kissing babies, surrounded by immigrants. Except Andrea Horwath, she's sort of pretty like Blair on the Facts of Life, except for that insane haircut. Nobody wants a premier who has to spend an hour every day ironing her hair. Anyway, like it or not, with or without the leader of Ford Nation disrupting the proceedings, we are going to have an election. Ready, set, yawn. First thing, first. There's nobody good to vote for. A vote for Kathleen Wynne is a vote for the Liberals who have completely fucked up everything. They squandered your precious tax money on a billion dollar boondo...

If you live in Ontario, by now, you will have seen a commercial warning parents to lock up their kids because the government is loosening the monopoly held by The Beer Store on the sale of ales and lagers. Should this go forward, the commercial warns, kids will surely turn into angry mobs, all liquored up. In a dramatization, the commercial shows a shifty-eyed fat fucktard behind the counter chortling as youngsters, obviously too young to purchase hooch, slam down a two-fer and a big bottle of liquor, in anticipation of a night of mayhem, hurling and date rape. The clerk sells to the kids anyway. No I.D. is checked. It's a scene straight out of Superbad. I live next to a convenience store and near a park. I should be afraid for my life and my windows as these hooligans, according to the commercial, will roam the neighborhood, like slobbering zombies, drunk out of their blasted mines. We don't see that now, right? Nope, mostly all we see, to be fair to The ...

There's no place like home. Right Ontario? You can sample fine wines, jump into hot tubs, go parasailing on Lake Ontario, eat in cool restaurants, shop in neat stores. Huh. I can't do any of these things because I have to pay my Hydro bill which is now over $700 every billing cycle. Four years ago, when we moved into this house, it was around $300, which meant we had $400 to go towards our other bills: phone, Internet, heating. Now we have to find that extra $400. We've done everything we could to reduce our spending. We cut right back on our discretionary spending, things like cable and Internet. We renegotiated our cell phone plans. We never go out anymore, either. But right now, the cost of Hydro -- along with a 100 percent jump on our water and sewer bill -- has meant we're having to cut back on food. Splurging used to mean a night on the town or a terrific holiday. Today it means paying full price for meat at the grocery store. The thing about it is, t...

Boy, the NDP is looking pretty good of late. Dick Wolff should give Tom Mulcair a call should he decide to resurrect his franchise as  Law and Order: Special Senate Unit. Frankly, though, it's hard not to look good in Ottawa when you don't have any Senate seats. And now the Ontario Liberals have given the NDP another gift. This gas plant thing is a hot mess that's getting positively nuclear now that it's been revealed that McGoo's crew and staff in the energy ministry have been pressing the "delete all" buttons on all of their computers hoping that they won't smeared with the shit that the ex-premier left for Kathleen Wynne to clean up. His stall is mighty dirty. She's going to need an extra pair of rubber boots. Again, the NDP haven't been in power in Ontario for decades, so none of the manure will stick to them. My kids were tiny tots when Bob Rae was premier, when Rae Days were all the rage. Look it up, children. His complete debasi...

Columnists like Margaret Wente are shouting from the editorial pages about the fact we have now have a person with a vagina in the Premier's office in Ontario. They point out that the provincial club of living dolls has grown to six and we'd better watch out. There are a bunch of new bitches in town, warn the wags. It's like the Dixie Chicks invaded the White House. Meh. As a long time journalist, I've covered my share of "firsts". First female rowing coach. First female cop. First female construction worker (I'm not kidding). I was sick of it back then and I'm sick of the whole business now. I've been around long enough to remember Iona Campagnolo, Judy Erola and Monique Begin at the federal level. Sure they weren't the top dogs but they were a tough bunch of old broads with hefty portfolios back in the Trudeau cabinet. And Joyce Fairbairn was running things behind the scenes. You could have asked Bert. (The nickname Joyce gave ...

I have a slight political hangover this morning, kind of like the feeling you get just after Christmas when the presents are delivered and you realize that you have no idea  how you will pay for them. I've always been a convention junkie from the time I worked at the Tory leadership way back in the mid-seventies as a volunteer VIP security officer. It was the weekend Joe Clark got elected when we first saw the evil genius that was Brian Mulroney who was paying delegates off with hooch, hot pizza and hookers, with a side of Ginette Reno. Since then, I have travelled the country in search of serious political tail. I have eaten from lavious seafood buffets while being screeched in by John Crosbie. I have taken the bus with life-sized cardboard cutouts of my favorite political characters. There are convention memories I hold dear, and some I'd rather forget. I often found myself fighting off, or succumbing to, the advances of men twice my age. I once got into a nea...