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All The World's A Circus 'Page 5; News, Tuesday, April.30,.1991 Life, According To "Baba" Malcolm a After a recent column I wrote on the Cat Fancier's Association CAT SHOW I received a flood of letters to this newspaper (Editor's Note: He received two letters, his was addressed to "Wilham" Thomas and Malcolm's letter did not have a postal code number) inquiring why I did not enter my faithful house/yard/shed cat Malcolm in the show. Well, to be honest, I did attend the cat show after hearing about the big bucks involved in showing and breeding felines and wondering how I might get Malcolm involved. After talking to the organizer, my hoped were dashed when she informed 33a me there was no "Over 15 and Up" category for show cats. Much like a professional athlete, Malcolm's age is an increasingly negative factor. Malcolm will celebrate his 17th birthday in May, which in human years (using the standard multiple 7 factor), makes him the same age as Roland Michener. When I met Devon, the fourth- ranked male Chartreux in North America, I knew Malcolm's chances of getting into a cat show are about the same as a Canadian cabinet minister getting a big laugh out of airport security people with a really funny gun joke. Devon, a gorgeous grey/blue specimen. of the Chartreux breed: and owned by Marcus Click of Concord, North Carolina, could be Malcolm's identical twin brother. That is, if living things could be airbrushed. (Writer's Note: Technically, Malcolm used to be classified as a Russian Blue, but according to the World Cat Breeders International Registry, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, he is now officially a'French Chartreux. Similarly, since the Gulf War, Elbash Persians have been William J. show cat? upgraded to Long Hair Patriots. Believe me, cataclymic world events cause upheavel in the pet world as well as the real world. Just ask a penguin in the Falklands or camel in Baghdad that once had two humps.) Actually there's not a great deal of difference between Devon the purebred and Malcolm the pauper, except that Devon is 105 human years younger than Malcolm and still has all his own teeth. Devon flies all over the continent to win grand prizes at adjudicated exhibitions and I once Iet Malcolm live after hearing him crying in my suitcase on the way to Pearson Thomas International Airport somewhere around the QEW and Dixie Road. That's not to say Devon and Malcolm have nothing in common. Far from it. For instance Devon, this regal, statuesque creature is worth about what I paid for my '88 Honda Civic Special and Malcolm has ridden in this car several times on trips to the veterinary clinic after having a bad reaction from cating "rottcd-beyond- recognition" rodent. To put it bluntly, Devon is worth so much that, when it's time to be groomed, his owncr pays a mixed- breed commoner cat to come into his cage and lick him. After carefully reading the- rules and regulations of the Cat Fancier's Association I have found numcrous areas in which they discriminate against cats like my Malcolm: * Biting the judge is basis for disqualification. * Cats found to have fleas or parasites are automatically disqualificd. And...and there's not even a special acheivement award for a cat who manages to have both. continued on page 14 Eliza Dolittle in the musical "My Fair Lady" sings a most poignant song entitled "Wouldn't it be luverly?" and then goes on to list all the things lacking in her poverty-stricken life in Victorian England. What about all the things lacking in our modern lives here on this North American continent? I ask, wouldn't it be luverly if... - children had better manners and more respect. - adults had better manners and more respect. - children were taught something about morals. - adults knew something about morals so they could teach them. - children stopped watching sex and violence on television. - adults stopped putting scx and violence on television. - children stopped screaming, shouting and fighting. - adults stopped screaming, shouting and fighting. - children stopped lying, cheating and stealing. - adults stopped lying, cheating and stealing. - children stopped using filthy gutter language. - adults stopped using filthy gutter language. - children weren't cxposed to pomographic material. --adults stopped publishing and rcading pomographic material. Yes, wouldn't all this be luverly indeed and wouldn't this be a vastly different kind of world in which to live, work and bring up children. How can we possibly expect them to grow into mature understanding, thinking, kind mannered adults when they are faced with the evils and horrors promulgated by adults who, by their actions or non-actions as the case may be, appear not to care a fig for the Olga Landiak Wouldnt it be luverly children they have brought into the . world. How else are we to understand or make any sense of the children of today with their. ill-mannered, screaming, rude, crude ways who are supposed to be the "saviours of the future". Not all of them, thank goodness, but there are too many of these 'others' out there for onc's peace of mind. Onc looks into their hard, calculating, too- knowledgeable eyes and faces, and one shudders at the short, brutal lives they are fast growing into, and shudders with the hopelessness of turning them around before they reach their bitter, depressed ends. Who's responsible? The adults, the parents, who have allowed the so- called educated libertarians among us to brainwash them into accepting all the lowest degradations as being a hallmark of sophistication. "Let it ALL hang out and we'll ALL be the better for it" is their motto and it docsn't matte how pervericd, it all gets thrown out into the public garbage trough. All in the name of 'freedom' - freedom to be as evil as we like cither in private or in public. Then we wonder why the children of today are as they are. How can they be any different given all the evils and perversions surrounding them which the adults have allowed to take place to satisfy the evil perversions within themsclves. Wouldn't it be luverly if adults truly became adults in their thinking and reasoning, and cricd out with onc huge voice, "STOP, that's cnough! Let's stop perverting our children, our socicty, our world!" Yes, wouldn't it be luverly indeed if it was a different, better kind of world. Police officers in a democracy are-in a tough position. We expect them to protect us from physical harm and wrong doing, but they must enforce our laws within the letter and the spirit of those laws. We demand professionalism. We condemn officers like the ones in Los Angeles who violently beat up a black man, seemingly for sport. Police officers have human emotions and values, but we expect those raw human characteristics to be set aside, as any professional does, in carrying out official duties. The principle is clear - police officers don't make the rules, civilians do. In Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada has made the principle of who's in charge clear once again through a recent ruling. The court threw out a confession by a suspect in a drug case, because the arrested person didn't clearly understand that he had the right not to make such a confession, or to talk to police with a lawyer present. The court ruled that an arresting officer must not just "mechanically recite a statement of rights" to the person being arrested - the police must COs need leadership from the top made a convincing, logical argument. They must go out alone and cnforce game and fish lows, somctimes confronting people with beer in the belly and guns in the truck. Yct we weren't paying the conscrvation make sure NORTHERN officers like that the INSIGHTS other police. arrested per- ---- $= The con- son clearly {fl by Larry Sanders servation off- understands his or her rights. This reinforces the principle that all of us - even suspected drug offenders - have human rights. These rights are absolute, and our willingness to respect them distinguishes us from nations like Iraq or Communist China, where human rights are given second place to the wishes of the state. In Ontario, conservation officers shave now gained the status of police officers. Over the last five years, they lobbied hard for reclassification. They icers stopped short of going on strike, arguing that they "wouldn't put the resources of the province up for ransom". Instead, they pressured the government by refusing to work overtime. They eventually convinced the government last ycar to reclassify them so they were paid nearly the same as the OPP. Many conservation officers received thousands. of dollars in retroactive pay, as part of this settlement. Up to that point, their moves were ones I could support. But now they've taken their new-found powcr, and gonc too far. In a letter to Bud Wildman, the Minister of Natural Resources datcd March 15 1991, Allan Farrer, the President of the Ontario Conscrvation Officers Association, questions the minister's interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling known as the Sparrow case. The ruling was the first clear recognition by the Supreme Court of an absolute aboriginal right to hunt or fish for food for personal consumption or ceremonial use. Previous rulings had mercly interpreted treaty rights - the rights of status indians to hunt or fish within their own treaty area, on specified lands. The Sparrow ruling recognizes any status Indian's aboriginal right to fish or hunt on crown land. Such aboriginal rights are not extinguished by treaties, according to the court. Rather, the government only has the right to enforce continued on page 14 |