doug Coll

9 - Friday, August 4, 1989 - North Shore News

ins stirred up readers

with Get This Straight column

IN THE SECOND of a two-part tribute to Doug Collins’ five-year career as a thrice-weekly columnist with the North Shore News, the following excerpts from his controversial Get This Straight column highlight some of the issues he wrote about that could be counted upon to raise community awareness — if not blood pressure.

The Reform Party’s harsher stand on immigration was one of the policies that attracted Doug Col- lins to the fold — but the romance was short-lived.

The truth is that in B.C., at least, the Reform Party is in 2 state of disarray, not because 1 am im- portant but because people can see that in denying me the nomination Manning was jettisoning his par- ty’s overriding principle of consti- tuency democracy.

Manning's effrontery was un- bridled. In refusing to sign my nomination papers, he broke every rule in his own book. Party policy has it, for instance, that the wishes of a constituency should be para- mount. In the Collins affair, though, the wishes of the largest constituency nomination meeting in Western Canada were not only not paramount, they simply didn’t count...

As you may recall, he wanted me to sign a document to the effect that I would be a good boy and not make “‘racist’’ or ‘‘extremist’’ noises. In other words, he wanted me to go easy on the immigration issue.

ae Politicians were common targets of Coilics wit and wrath, starting with Brian Mulroney...

You are a hopeless case. Even worse than Trudeau, because al- though he destroyed a Canada of which we were proud, he knew what he was doing and stuck to his principtes. So with him we knew where we were.

You, on the other hand, have no principles. You go where you think the wind blows. Your teeth may sparkle but your brains don’t. You have no more savvy than a scarecrow.

Mary Collins...

My scaly eye began to tune in on Mary about a year after she was parachuted into’ Capilano and subsequently sent to the Meshpots of Ottawa...

What we had there was a lady who knew how to please Brian Baloney, and there was no limit to what she would do to make Brian happy.

Joe Clark...

As a friend of mine observed the other day, “If Joe Clark’s brains were made of dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to give him

a headache.” ka *

Collins’ opinions on homosexuaii- ty sparked a flood of letters to the North Shore News.

I am a serious student of morali- ty, and J say that homosexuality is not only abnormal according to natural law but also filthy and conducive to disease.

From simple tolerance of homosexuality, which I do not op- pose, the body politic in Canada has gone to approving and pro-

moting it, and Sodom looks for recruits. Mr. Svend Robinson, the

sodomite member for Burnaby, has been complaining that homosexuals are being discriminated against. Again. On the radio, Mr. Pat Burns asks why

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they shouldn't be discriminated against. Wouldn't it have been a good idea to discriminate against the eight Catholic priests facing charges of assaulting children in

Newfoundland?...

eek Doug had plenty to say about diverse topics, such as alcoholism...

It has been Doctor Collins’ belief that drunks are made, not born, and that the ‘‘disease’’ of alcoholism is a fiction designed to help the v-eak-willed to jump their self-created fences. No booze, no disease. Goodbye.

My diagnosis, freely dispensed to a disbelieving world, is based on years of watching drunks in action. Freedom of Speech...

. 1 was a bit surprised to read that a petition had been circulated in the Wimp’s newsroom demand- ing my removal from the North Shore News...

Journalists demanding the silencing of a journalist? What is this, the Soviet establishment press in the days when only Samizdat dared challenge the Official Truth?

Environmentaiists...

Yes, this great mugwump (Brian Baloney) who cut the environment department’s budget after winning the last election, has undergone

another change of heart. There is to be more money for keeping Canada clean.

Why this about-face? Because news about the environment has bocme: since the last election and Brian is out to embrace any bird who can utter a liberal yaffle. It wouldn’t surprise me if he offered free tennis shoes to little old ladies.

Surprising though it may be, I too am for clean living. I have no more desire to wake up dead from poisoned Jungs than you do. But Baloney’s move is another plate of hypocrisy, and from David Suzuki on down, most professional en- vironmentalists are a pain in the ass.

Soviet glasnost...

It is not to be denied that changes are taking place in the U.S.S.R., of course. It has to mean something when men like Grim-Grom Gromyko are criti- cized in public, when the stupen- dous crimes of the Stalin era are acknowledged, when the Russians may confess to having murdered 15,000 Poles in the Katyn Forest, and when Old Joe is once again being denigrated as the bastard he was. But I'll believe the ‘‘full- blooded democracy’’ that Gor- bachev talks about when I see it.

Democracy is more than talk. Abortion...

What I think is that the Slam must be off his rocker to say that incest and rape are not proper causes for abortion. But I also think that abortion on demand is an atrocity. Especially if I have to pay for it.

The CBC...

Every time the CBC suffers a “budget cut,”’ the country’s liber- als and leftists organize a concert of yowling and yawping. It is as if bread were being taken from the starving, or as if the country’s children were being sent down the mines. In fact, though, the cuts aren’t cuts. They are merely a brake on increases...

As a friend of mine who follows these things put it: ‘‘With the CBC you get choice, all right: left wing opinion and ultra-left-wing opi- nion with perhaps just a dash of Marxist-Hippie-Kounter Kulture thrown in for flavoring.’*

All it costs you is about a billion bucks a year.

The Conservatives...

The trouble with the Tories, you see, is that few of them are Tories. They disappoint mightily. DINKs (Double Inceme, Kids)...

In Dinkland, there isn’t much sex. No time for that, either. He either falls to sleep over work he’s brought home from the office, or

No

is still at the office when non- Dinks are doing what comes natu- rally.

She’s the same way. So it often happens that when one Dink is home, the other isn't. In short, it’s difficult for Dinks to get together, just as it’s difficult for certain species of whales to get together. This applies even though Dinks prefer the company of other Dinks. When they come up for air, that is.

The more Dinks there arc, the lower the population will be. If it depended on Dinks having babies, the race would die out.

Seniors...

All in all, seniors in this country (i'm one of them) are the most pampered on earth, and every dollar paid out in old age pensions and supplements comes out of general revenue. In the U.«. and U.S., and every other country I know of, you have to contribute. No pay, no get. No wonder we are

broke. eee

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