The latest polling data, drawn from a sample of 2,645 Canadians from across the country, show Cameron Duff, the opposition leader, with a significant lead over the Prime Minister in seven provinces, including Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Quebec. This is a boon to Duff and troubling to Meach. Experts have attributed this change in fortune to the patronage scandal in parliament, and Duff’s Christmas Eve promise to end the practice of appointing former party friends to plum positions in various government agencies.
Thea Ce, a polling analyst with the polling research agency Treiserd-Wiss, said, “In a follow-up question asking why people had changed their preferences to being warmer to the opposition leader, the patronage scandal was the leading reason for the change in opinion. I can cite one respondent, who said ‘If the taxpayers were to fund somebody’s retirement, it should be done so upfront, with no back-door sneaking money into people’s pockets’. This sentiment was widely echoed among all respondents, whether or not they had changed their views.”
Mario skipped to the end of the article, on page four:
The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty.Looking for a diversion, he flipped ahead to the editorial pages, where the cartoon greeted him. On the left was Shakespeare’s Macbeth, saying, “Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with fear”. On the right was Meach, saying, “Not until Duff’s people come to Windsor shall I lose this election”, Windsor being a supposed stronghold highly enamoured of Meach. On Christmas Eve, however, Duff himself had held a rally attended by 50,000 people there. “That does not bode well for Meach,” said Mario to himself.
“Good morning, beautiful,”
It was Eunice, who risen from bed; she started making coffee, poured herself a bowl of cereal, and joined Mario at the dining room table, where she took the business section of the paper, and started reading.
“Good morning, Eunice.”
“I’m glad to hear that Clarissa’s doing something to pick her spirits up, don’t you? I was thinking we should also take her to a comedy show.” Eunice was actually considering doing substantially more than that; it was distressing for her to see a close friend so sad, and she wanted to do her part. This involved staying in the city for most weekends, rather than skiing in the hills to the north or at Mont Tremblant; she would not be so busy, and had told Mario as much. He, also desiring to help Clarissa, agreed. They would still go to Tremblant, but just once or twice, and when it wasn’t so brutally cold; on this particular day, it was reported to be minus twenty at the resort, which neither Mario nor Eunice found comfortable. He suggested they take her on some weekend in March, and Eunice agreed, even though she had no idea of Clarissa’s skiing ability.
“That would be a very good after-Christmas present.”
“So,” said Eunice, spying the editorials, “what are the talking heads saying?”
“They’re saying that Meach had it coming with the first patronage appointment. Do you remember Xavier Nolen four years back? He was appointed to Environment Canada to be a consultant, and he did no work; it was essentially an elaborate retirement scheme. The thing is, if those former politicians had done some actual work, this scandal would not have happened; it would only have been noted in passing, and then only by the most dry and boring hack around,”
“Maybe there should be some sort of competitive process for hiring, like the ones our nephew had to endure when he was in the hiring process for The Bank of Montréal, you remember that? This is all rather boring anyways; gossip seems so shallow, and this scandal has been fuelled essentially by gossip; a low-level policy analyst at Industry Canada blew the whistle on the fact that no work was being done for the pay Cathi Ness was receiving. That was followed by a whisper campaign, and then people found out there was something similar being done by others; Xavier Nolen, Neville Dunac, Angus Ross at Human Resources and Social Development, and what was so remarkable was that these people thought they could get away with not doing work for so long. Xavier Nolen lasted three years. But as I said, this was boring; talking about science is much more interesting. What do you think of the new planet discovery?”
“That’s interesting.”
“You know what? I think I’ll call Clarissa.” With that, Eunice went to the phone, and dialled Clarissa’s number. She heard two rings, and then Clarissa picked up.
“Hello,”
“Hi Clarissa, it’s Eunice. I just wanted to know how you’re doing.”
“I’m doing okay; the parents are as healthy as ever, and so are Ryan and Patricia. I think they’re bearing the impact of James’s death better than I am. All of us loved him, but even though I had only known him for eight months, I seem to be bearing the brunt of the grief. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”
“I don’t know, maybe they have experienced more deaths than just James’s, and they know how to deal with it somewhat; don’t forget, though, they still have each other and their daughter Kathy. Incidentally, Mario and I want to take you out to go see a movie or a comedy show, or something.”
“That would be very nice; my sister Mary and her husband Andrew just took me to a movie yesterday in Toronto; it was a slapstick comedy featuring Will Ferrell; you know, something not too deep, with a lot of the physical humour that he’s known for.”
“That sounds like it was fun. Well, I’ll talk to you again sometime soon.” At least Clarissa sounded happy on the phone, and she would take happy over many other things, such as tired, or bawling her eyes out and she had seen Clarissa in both of these conditions.
Eunice had also been meaning to tell Mario for a week that she was pregnant. Her period was late, and she had waited nearly two months, but it failed to come, so she had purchased a home pregnancy test on Christmas Eve, and that was how she found out. She was lucky that Mario wasn’t the kind of husband who noticed what was being thrown out, as she preferred instead to tell him at the perfect time; that was something Belinda had complained about, and it had been cited as a reason for her divorce from Kale.
His reaction to the news was much better than James’s had been: “Awesome! Thank goodness we had a teetotaller Christmas this year,”
“Now we have to plan for all sorts of things. I’m due in late June, by the way. For instance, where is the baby’s room going to be? And of course, we will have to do a lot of shopping,”
“We have a spare room upstairs, next to ours, but I would be more comfortable having the baby sleep in our room for a while, when you give birth,”
“Oh, there are all sorts of things to think about,” said Eunice, and she rattled off a number of things for fifteen minutes, ranging over almost everything from the bathtub, crib, food, how she was going to eat, to which daycare would be best, and to which school they should send their child, all the way up to contributing to an RESP; Mario found all this mind-boggling, considering she hadn’t written anything down.
“Would you like a pen and paper to keep track of all that?”
“Good idea,” and she went to fetch a post-it. “Oh yes, there’s the comedy show we
promised Clarissa,”
Mario wondered where the “we” came in, but agreed with his wife in the opinion that Clarissa needed cheering up; he purchased tickets the following day.
Previous Next
So sad
ReplyDeletefdjakl;
ReplyDelete