Ditch Doc

Moral discourse would go much more smoothly if there were public floggings for those attempting to use the principle ‘virtue lies in the mean’ in the consideration not of virtue, but of truth. Some think life starts in infancy, some at conception, and some, hearing both extremes and having read a line or two of Aristotle, assume the truth must be somewhere in the middle of gestation. When they meet someone who thinks personhood begins at seventy, they’ll have to conclude it’s really thirty-five. This is tool selection equivalent to peeling an orange with a hammer, and should be punished accordingly.

After a long day in the organic chemistry lab, I hopped off the Edmonton city bus and began the walk back to the hostel with only one thing on my mind: food. I’d barely eaten since breakfast, I was slated to head back to the old culinary desert of Fort Nelson in about 30 hours, and I was going to enjoy a big city cultural treat, dammit. Out of the darkness loomed the K_____ tandoori joint, and my decision was made. I shuffled in, met the host’s inquisitive glance, and guiltily mumbled “Just for one, please.” I was seated at a table elaborately set for two, uncomfortably close to a cheerful double date of middle-managers, there to contemplate the sitar player across from the enormous decorative tandoor in the middle of the floor. Some time had passed when a plate of roti with two sauces appeared, and both water glasses were filled. I leafed through the menu several times over the next half hour, reluctantly assembling a meal woth more than I’d ever spent on myself in one sitting, but none of the waiters hurrying past betrayed any interest in my order. Feeling more and more annoyed and out of place, I shifted awkwardly in my seat, knocking my full water glass straight into my lap. This was the last straw: my hunger had been overcome by the desire to escape. But how? Suddenly it hit me: they were all waiting for my date to show up so we could order together! I began casting worried glances at my watch, then the door. Finally resigning myself to having been stood up, I heaved a sigh, frowned, put on my coat and hoisted my backpack. I munched one more roti, thanked the girl at the door as I sprinted past, and was suddenly back out in the clean cold darkness.

The second verse of the offertory chant for yesterday’s Mass concludes with a single word lasting ninety-seven notes. The word? ‘Semper.’

One realizes soon enough, or one ought to, that it’s ridiculous to expect the government to solve everything. This realization inclines some of us to conclude, with radical capitalists, that all will be well if the government leaves the governed alone. Unfortunately, this conclusion contradicts its own ostensible first premise; it grants the government power to solve everything, just by going away. Of course we never will solve everything, but we won’t solve anything unless we stop whining for someone else to do it for us.

I’ve always been a bit paranoid about waking up for work, but not until this paediatric surgery rotation had I ever had a nightmare about sleeping in until the crack of dawn.

And so it ended. With one goal, Sid the Kid closed the Vancouver Olympics and completed Canada’s record-setting gold medal run, putting the finishing touch on the Games that will define my generation. For my whole life, I’ve heard politicians, TV personalities and beer commercials proclaiming our prominent place on the world stage with that awkward blend of arrogance and nervous self-doubt that haunts all our searching for the Canadian Identity. But this morning, I woke up in a country astonished to discover that it’s really true. Newspaper headlines and radio show hosts all had the same tone of humble pride: “Well imagine that! We did it!” The roaring crowds in roads and stadiums, the tragic heroism of Joannie Rochette, Clara Hughes’ beaming exit from a glorious career, the glut of gold medals, and of course that golden moment that will live in our hearts until they stop, gave an example of excellence fit for the whole world, and finally showed us what it is to be Canadian: We live in this great cold country with three coasts, we are good at what we do, we love one another deeply, and that is enough. I’ll end with a phrase I heard shouted more times than I could count in streets and bars across London last night:
God keep our land, glorious and free.

…is walking through the snow two hundred feet from an eight story apartment building with all its windows closed against the cold, and hearing the walls vibrate with the cheer for an unimportant goal. Go Canada.

7 to 3.
Stick that in your big red machine and grind it!
LLLLUUUUUUUUUUU!

The chief difference between Protestants and Catholics is this:

Protestants wear their religious emotions like women wear scarves: right up front. They show them prominently, they talk about them, they inquire politely about those of their friends. Catholics think of our emotions more like our undergarments. We do have them, in fact we value them quite highly, but we’d be mortified to find them sticking out, and we’d rather chew rocks than discuss them in public.

Those most responsible for the wreck of Catholic liturgy in recent years are fond of the notion of delivering local custom from the ravages of the out-of-touch juggernaut of Roman tradition. In the name of which cause they take the metreless chants of the dusty Meditteranean first Christians, add words here, repeat others there and twist rhythm, mode and instrumentation until the Gloria evokes the latter end of a night in a Northern European beer hall. Not all the pretzels are of the salty and delectable variety.