The Fifth Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

They finished eating their turkey, which was particularly delicious; Clarissa saved the potatoes for last. Alice wondered how widowhood was treating Clarissa; it was quite tragic to have that happen so young. I wonder if it would be any different had he died a violent death; at least that way some sort of blame could be assigned, but no; she doesn’t even have that recourse, which would be wrong if it were thought of as a form of revenge. Thank goodness Jacob is as sturdy as a rock, and still skinny; we wouldn’t want another death in the family. Thinking herself fortunate for having married an apparently healthy man was rather selfish, she thought, and it made her the tiniest bit uncomfortable; but was it really selfishness to think this? Perhaps not: it would certainly be selfish to want a better husband, or more money, or more fame, not the acknowledgement of her husband’s own health vis-à-vis her sister-in-law’s husband, deceased of a heart attack. It wasn’t that Jacob was skinny due to how he ate, either; she thought that Jacob ate as much as any other man, although his weight had not seemed to change since they had first met. It’s odd, she thought; some people are lucky that way: mom and dad––Alice thought of Margaret and Hyram as a second set of parents––are looking very well-preserved; they are both well into their sixties, and neither of them are fat, and dad even looks trim considering his sixty-seven years.

“What do you think of Duff?” asked Mary.

Jacob answered his sister. “I don’t think his forestry policies are particularly good. He was talking about the need to promote forestry products like pencils and paper, but I don’t see why the government needs to take over the role of marketing that. That should be the job of the logging companies, not the governments. The federally mandated minimum stumpage fee that a province can charge is a good idea, though. Trees have been undervalued for too long, and I think that contributed substantially to the denuding of a considerable part of Canada, particularly in B.C. I’m sure you’ve seen photos of the logging, it’s on Google Maps. Hopefully it will boost forest conservation, and we simply cannot have too much forest.”

Clarissa, who knew more than everyone else about the economy, was dominating the conversation.

“Duff’s oil policy, on the other hand, is purely playing to key constituencies in Alberta. He was saying that oil sands extraction is a clean source of energy, when almost everyone knows that is simply not true. It completely negates the very real photographs of those very real ducks that were covered in very real waste when they mistakenly landed in a settling pond; he can’t explain that away. Then there’s the significantly higher cancer rates among people living downstream of Fort McMurray on the Athabasca River.”

Jacob replied, “I don’t know why he’s pursuing that policy, and it sounds awfully close to pork to me; there aren’t even that many people in Fort McMurray,”

Mary said, “All this is very interesting to be sure, but political gossip is far more interesting,”

Alice inquired, “Didn’t Clarissa say that gossiping is wrong?”

Jacob jokingly said, “And what is she, a moral arbiter?” Clarissa ignored his comment.

“Yes, but that was personal gossip. When the gossip is about public figures, it’s much more complicated. Too much gossip is bad, and the Bible does warn against it––not that I have ever read the Bible––but politicians like Meach put themselves in the public eye. It’s almost like we were meant to discuss the minutiae of their everyday lives.”

Hyram remembered something he had read in the previous day’s Globe and Mail. “Speaking of which, there’s talk about misappropriation of funds from the public coffers used to pad expenses for consultants. I just heard this morning on an Ottawa gossip site that politicians are recommending that departments hire ‘consultants,’ which are really patronage appointments in disguise. Specifically, I heard that a close associate of the Prime Minister, Neville Dunac, was hired on his recommendation to be a consultant for Heritage Canada, and Catherine Ness, the former Minister of Finance who lost her seat in the last election––remember? ––Was hired for something similar at Industry Canada. These were both high paid jobs, and high fees were charged for supposedly very expensive work.”

Andrew said, “And I suppose that we, the taxpayers, got value for that money,”

Hyram answered his son-in-law. “It turns out, there was not much work done, and donations to the Prime Minister’s election campaign were claimed as business expenses. You simply can’t get away from corruption when it comes to politicians and money.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

As amusing as the story may sound in the history books, indeed––Mary and Jacob were both laughing––Hyram was not amused. The nerve, he thought. Here we are, all working very hard, and those people think they can coast on the milk of our labour!

Margaret was wondering about Clarissa’s affairs in her neighbourhood. “Say, Clarie, do you know that bitchy person you didn’t invite to your wedding? What was her name, Belinda? I heard about her from that nice couple, David and Pia, who were at the wedding.”

“Right now, the latest that I have heard of her, which I have heard in conversations with Eunice and others, was that she had been fired from her job for being too loose-lipped about her boss’s love affair with his secretary. I wasn’t paying attention to names, which is perhaps fortunate, as the whole affair seems rather sordid. Eunice said that Belinda was distraught, but she was idly interested in Jim’s death for some reason; thought there was some darker story, apparently. But you know the whole affair and can see it for what it is.”

“Why is she so interested?” Inquired Jacob.

“It’s in her character to be the town gossip. If I really want to make something well known, I can simply tell it to Belinda and tell her to keep it a secret. That’s where she primarily fails. I can get no shortage of information simply by listening to others, but I don’t pass it along that often, which is how I see it; indeed, I kind of view myself as being almost as well informed of people as Belinda is. Maybe if she could learn to keep her mouth shut, then she would find more things out. That’s the key difference between Eunice and her: Eunice knows when to stop.”

“I think that what you describe as gossip may be ill-fitting; I take it from our correspondence that you view gossip as talking about anybody doing something that you have not witnessed yourself; on the one hand, that may be too restrictive, as you might also include the perceptions that people have of others; on the other hand, it may be too broad, because much of the Prime Minister’s patronage of his friends was uncovered, essentially, by a form of sanctioned gossip.”

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