Harvest is in, leaves are falling, snow in Calgary this week - it’s Canadian Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Cana-Dopers!
Here in Regina, we lost a talented political humourist this year - died too young of cancer. Here are some extracts from his Thanksgiving column from 2007:
[QUOTE=Ron Petre]
Where I am is Saskatchewan. Thank goodness. With the possible exception of the Maritimes, nowhere in Canada can be found folks with a keener feel for the absurd, with a more grounded sense of purpose and place, the confidence to enjoy the gift that is a good laugh at one’s own expense. The job description calls me a Saskatchewan humour writer. Hardly. I am a stenographer. I simply take notes.
…
Chances are that in the coming weeks and months [of 2007-2008], Saskatchewan will be called upon to install both a provincial and federal government. Unlike in too many other parts of the world, this will be accomplished through words, not blood. I am thankful for our British system of parliamentary democracy, for its long-standing tradition that holds my role, political satire, as an indispensable safeguard against the threat of pompous and overbearing authority.
I give thanks for my home. Droopy eavestroughs, cracked driveway and ill-fitted door jambs notwithstanding, I live in comforts unknown to three-quarters of the people of the planet and with conveniences unimagined before the 20th century, not by even kings, emperors and czars. A hot shower, on tap, every morning, remains, for my money, one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind.
…
For those moments I spend with my kids at our favourite fishing hole, at dance and music recitals, in hockey rinks or on the golf course, I am beholden. It is fashionable among experts in child-rearing to lecture that parents ought not to live vicariously through their children and shouldn’t derive their own happiness from the activities of their sons and daughters.
I am thankful my kids do not read books written by child-rearing experts.
I am grateful for the wherewithal that allows me to provide my children with everything I know they need, if not always for everything they think they want. Putting a child to bed with an empty stomach, and with nothing humanly possible to dry the tears, must be a parental nightmare beyond all scope of the Canadian imagination.
…
As a professional bellyacher, perhaps I should be most thankful that, on this rare occasion of listing what’s right in life, not wrong, I’ve run out of space.
There’s too much. Here and now, there’s just too much.
[/QUOTE]
Have a great weekend, everyone!
