4 ~ Wednesday, October 18, 1989 - North Shore News ® strictly personal ¢ THE ATTACKS on Dave Barrett in the Eastern press have been quite savage, with a very definite anti-Western bias showing up foud and clear. The Toronto Star portrayed him in a cartoon as a Cub from Vic- toria who'd won the pack’s raffle, so he gets to “‘go outside and beat up on that Girl Guide Audrey.”” The other papers refer to him as a wild man, a throwback, a clown, a spoiler, and, above all, a ‘*regionalist.”’ Anything outside of Central Canada, you have to understand, is considered a region. Anyone from any of those places is a regionalist. But people in Ontario and Quebec aren’t regionalists. They're nationalists. Got it? It’s quite amazing. In the nor- mal course of a media day, the Eastern pundits and editorial writers rake their claws over **Bou-Bou”’ Bourassa’s heron-like beak just as a way of waking up, like having a coffee. But let a Westerner take a poke at the Quebec premier and the Toronto media leaps to Bou-Bou’s defence as if he were one of their own, The Ontario mind-set is hard enough to grasp at the best of times. Insularity is there. Self- absorption is writ large. But when it comes to Quebec, there is an uncharacteristic masochism involved, almost as though they make up for thinking of themselves as the centre of the universe by genuflecting toward La Belle Province. Premier David Peterson, for in- stance, is pushing ahead bravely — or stupidly, depending on your viewpoint — with making Ontario Elan F. A. S. Skis, Look G.P. Bindings, Nordica - 425 Beets Mounted & waxed reg. 5400 SALE officially bilingual, while just across the line, Quebec has become a unilingual bastion, where the English language is thoroughly discriminated against. In Montreal, it is permissible to put up signs in Cantonese or Swahili, for that matter, but not in cursed English. back. Having nearly choked out my beer on the table, ! started to laugh hysterically. But nobody else was laughing. A lot of them, it turns out, stil] think of Trudeau as their once-in-a-lifetime hero. One guy said to me: ‘‘He was like a god to us.”’ There goes my beer again. I tried to explain that he was more like a tyrant, a demagogue, an arrogant closet Commie to y, P -terson) wrings his hands piously, on bended knee, worshipping the deity of bilingualism, rather like an altar boy trying to pray despite the mole- stations of perverted priests.’’ Peterson, in this regard, is rather typically Ontario. He wrings his hands piously, on bende.: knee, worshipping the deity ¢: dilin- gualism, rather like an a.tar boy trying to pray despite the molesta- tions of perverted priests. I do believe it has something to do with the lingering influence of Pierre Trudeau, believe it or not. The other day, although I nor- mally have the sense to avoid these situations, I got into a shouting match with some Toronto people. It we. triggered by some guy actu- ally saying, in hushed tones, that the only way to save the country was for Trudeau to make a come- 248° “INTERMEDIATE PACKAGE. Kneissi Graphiex Skis, Look G.P. Bindings, Nordica 660/507 Mounted & waxed reg. 3475 SALE SALE SALE Elan Team Dynastar 494 Kneissl Graphlex Kneiss! Racing Star Olin Racing Comp SALE oots 99°| ° YEAR ROUND FANTASTIC VALUES A AND D GREAT SERVICE | e SALE SALE SALE SALE SALE Salornon SX50 Nordica 507 Nordica 600 Salomon SX41 Nordica 940 those of us out West, and on top of that he had a Gallic superiority complex a mile high. Apart from nearly wrecking the Alberta economy through the Na- tional Energy Program, forcing metric and French down our throats, looting the country’s treasury to finance Quebec’s take- over of the federal government, setting up a bilingual mandarinate to rule the poor English-speaking slobs, temporarily turning us into a police state, imposing a Constitu- tion which guarantees that we shail be governed forever by lawyers, deballing our armed forces, trying to impose a final cultural solution ‘BINDINGS Tyrolia 403 SALE Salomon 437 SALE Salomon 547 SALE Look XH SALE Look RP SALE on Indians, ducking evey en- vironmental issue in sight, and hypocritically introducing wage and price controls after swearing up and down he never would, | suppose you could say a few good things about Trudeau. I just happen to forget what they are. In any event, listening toa drinking companion in Toronto talk about Trudeau’s resurrection at this time is like hearing rumors of Dracula’s return from the crypt. And for Dave Barrett to be knocked, in the same breath, as a regionalist yahoo or ‘‘yesterday’s man,’ is just too much. The real rub, at least so far as the Eastern editorialists, colum- nists and beer-drinkers are con- cerned, is Barrett’s insistence that Ottawa’s obsession with Quebec and its endless litany of woes and equally endless looting of the na- tional vaults, the stealing of the space program and so on, is un- fair, bad and stupid. It’s strange that in the interna- tional arena, appeasement is routinely portrayed as a political dead-end, with Chamberlain’s at- tempts to mollify Hitler by means of the Munich Agreement being held up as the ultimate example. Yet, internally, the constant at- tempts to appease an insatiably power-hungry Quebec are not seen in the same light — when they should be. In that sense, Meech Lake is Canada’s Munich Agree- ment. Anyone who doesn’t is blinker- ing himself pathetically. As the Eastern press, when it comes to Quebec, invariably does. Go Barrett? Hit ’em againe sa La Driving lands = o as man in jail A 43-YEAR-OLD New Westminster man was sentenced Oct. 12 in North Vancouver pro- vincial court to 10 days in jail after he pleaded guilty to contravening a court order by driving while he was prohibited from doing so. Pekka Tapio Pasanen was origi- nally charged in connection with a July 31 incident on the Upper Levels Highway. Appearing before Judge R.D. Grandison, Pasanen was also fined : [BRAKES, ‘GLUTCHE f i ALTERNATORS, STARTE! Dynastar © Gourse SLS Skis, i Look GX Bindings, s Nordica 955 Boots 7 Mounted & waxed s reg. $4,000 » SALE 698” ‘ Dynastar 494 Skis, | Look 8.L. Bindings, s Salomon SX !] Boots Mounted & waxed SALE i reg. $350 Js. 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