A2 - Wednesday, Oct. 14, 1981 - North Shore News

Like everybody else, I grew up with the idea
that knights were heroes and that knighthood was
an exalted state.

I have probably been
affected at a subconscious
level by the mythology of
knighthood much more than
T realize.

After all, I make my living
as a freelancer, and the
original ‘free lances’ were

/
/
a

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

s? No thanks!

knights whose sword arm
was for hire.

“Have lance, will kill,”
was their motto. It has been
diluted in modern times,
obviously. “Have typewriter,
will compose,” hardly
compares.

Yet the principle is the
same. The irresistable urge
that comes over me every
once in a while to tilt at a
windmill is simply part of the
tradition.

It was therefore saddening
to read Barbara W. Tuch-
man’s history of the 14th
Century, titled ‘A Distant
Mirror’. She makes it quite
clear that knights were
complete nerds.

Aldermen question value
of social planner’s trip

NORTH VAN District's
social planner will be at-
‘tending a conference in
Toronto in November, but
for a while last week it
looked like her council
didn’t want to spend the
money to get her there.

District Council narrowly
approved Lena
request to attend the housing
conference as some
aldermen grumbled about a
lack of feedback from staff
after such conferences.

Alderman John Lakes said
he was “concerned about the
way we're sending people off
to conferences and this
council isn't getting anything
back from it.”

“I just don't see that it's
worth it,”” he added,
suggesting that a member of
council attend the session
instead.

He said he wouldn't want
to go himself, though.

Aldermen Jim Ball and
Peter Powell also opposed
sending Jones to the
“Building towards 2001”
conference, which will cost
the District up to $1,232.

Ball said the issucs slated

for discussion looked too
general and he wondered
whether they were = cven
within Jones’ terms of
references

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Jones’ |

But Director of
Development Fred  Sigur-
jonsson said the conference
topics included some _ of

interest to

District.
Council voted 4-3 to send

Jones to the conference.

North Van

Politically, they were an
elite police force serving the
interests of their own
members. They savagely
crushed bourgeois and
peasant uprisings. They got

into the habit of raping,

pillaging and torturing.
Whenever they fought,
their obsession was with
personal glory. The higher
their rank, the more
mischief they made. Even
their chivalry was shot
through with hyprocrisy.

Those damsels they were
trying to be so chivalrous to
were invariably some other
knight’s wife.

Near the beginning of the
14th Century, there was a
terrific battle between the
English and French at
Poiters, in which King Jean
of France became so crazed
on adrenalin and blood and
honor that he made the
incredibly dumb move of
getting himself captured.

The English, under the
Prince of Wales, took him
home and held him for
ranson, forcing France to
send hundreds of her own
nobility over the channel as
hostages so that the King
might be released. It dealt a
savage blow to France’s
stature in the world at that
time.

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_ leading knights

Near the end of the
century, another major
battle was fought -- and lost -
- at Nicopolis, a Bulgarian
fortress on the Danube. The
Turkish Sultan Bajazet was
able to exterminate a force
of some 9,000 . Christian
crusaders because the
couldn't
agree on a coherent battle
plan. Each wanted the
“flower and honor of battle”
for himself.

In fact, the knights. were
living in a completely insane
fantasy world. Their per-
ceptions were shaped by a
set of imagined truths --
about human aature, the

meaning of life, and history - -

- that were grotesquely
distorted at every turn.

If you wanted salvation
you bought a fixed amount
of it for a fixed price from
the priests. If you wanted
glory. you slaughtered
someone. In the name of the
Prince of Peace, you made
war.

Of course nowadays,
we've risen above all that

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ty,

madness, haven't we?

We do build neutron
bombs in the name of
peaceful coexistence and we
do hear the screaming of
mullahs for more blood in
the name of Allah. Yet
chivalry is dead and there
are no more crusaders. So
we must have made some
progress.

You know what finished
the knights in the end? Their
armor got too heavy. If they
got knocked down, they
couldn't get up. Some of
them died of heart failure
from the weight.

There has got to be a
message here. We need

knights in shining armor
today like we need a hole in
the head.