Ditch Doc

Among the huge variety of eccentric people in the hostel where I stayed in Edmonton last week were a hopeless romantic middle aged Newfie and the Platonic form of a hippie conspiracy theorist. The three of us carried on a fairly heated discussion about ‘they’ and their plans to control the whole world with an enormous biometrics database and microchip implants. The Newfie made a fair bit of sense, the hippie made none, and I spent most of the time smoking at the ears. Here’s the conclusion:

Newfie: “Well, I’ll be gone before that all happens.”

Hippie: “Oh it’s coming sooner than you think.”

Newfie: “No, I’m dying sooner than YOU think!”

The words of Steve Smith, the actor who portrays Red Green, on his residence in Hamilton:

“If you’re going to be pretentious in Hamilton…boy…you must be really good at it.”

My mother tells this story from BC’s north coast. She was teaching a class on archives, of which a hereditary chief of the Nisga’a nation was a member. Mom said he had the sort of regal bearing that makes you feel honoured to be in his presence. As the weekend progressed, it came to light that he had once been an alcoholic, but had dried up and become a protestant minister. In casual conversation, another member of the class asked him about Europeans uprooting native religions and replacing them with Christianity. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he bridled. “All I know is what Jesus did for me.”

Doctors up here are a different breed. It seems like half of them are South African. “Why do they all come here, though?” I once had the naivete to ask. “Because they get killed there.” Oh. Right. In Fort Nelson, there are usually two doctors in town at a time, one of whom is often a nomadic locum doctor on the latest stop on the small town medical milk run. Between the two of them, they run the walk in clinic and the hospital, from maternity ward to laughingly-so-called ICU. They even do some veterinary duties on occasion, as the nearest vet is 200 miles south. Our current locum, who’s usually a farmer, was telling me some tales of impromptu animal medicine when he came out with this one:
“The only anaesthetic I have on the farm is my gun.”
[Contemplative, farmerlike pause]
“It’s pretty effective though.”