I was in Chapters with my daughter the other day and as we waited to check out I noticed something curious on a rack near the cash. 

The items that drew my eye were two magazines – National Geographic and Life. Not that odd considering I’m employed in the print industry and would notice what others in the business are up to, but what caused me pause were the covers; Jesus and Lucille Ball. National Geographic’s Jesus cover drew me in for a bunch of reasons, first being the fact that The Herald has had Christ on our cover twice a year since I can recall, but what led to me to pick up and flick through the edition at the cash was the juxtaposition of the magazine and its cover subject. 

Steeped in Science

You’d expect National Geographic might depict king penguins on its cover, but the man referred to as the King of the Jews? It didn’t quite make sense. Skeptical, I had to keep reading. 

“Before Jesus became one of the most famous figures in the world, he was a shepherd and teacher in Galilee living an unremarkable life,” the description read. 

The magazine then explained that its cover story titled, The Story of Jesus, delved into Jesus’s youth, life and work, plus it examined the world he lived in at the time by “following in Jesus’s footsteps from Bethlehem to Nazareth” in a “lavishly illustrated portrait of the life of a profit.” 

How compelling that a publication steeped in science and fact would be filled with a faith-based subject, particularly in these pandemic times. Then my eye was drawn to Life’s I Love Lucy cover. “She was capricious, outspoken, madcap, and never embarrassed. And we loved her for it,” the edition’s description read, adding they were honouring the famous red head’s legacy 30 years after her death. 

Life magazine has had some interesting covers, from presidents to Peanut cartoon characters. Still, seeing Lucy – the woman many attribute to launching the modern day sitcom – in a kitchen setting, wearing an apron and clutching a mixing bowl – kind of threw me and left me with eyebrows raised. 

Were they drawing on simpler times? Or was it something else entirely? Just, for me, seeing the woman who drew more viewers than the inauguration of a president mixing batter made me feel a little bitter considering Life’s motto is “to enable the American public to see life, to see the world … to be amazed … and be instructed.” 

How curious a cover, I thought, but then it wasn’t all that long ago that this country’s Prime Minister was on the cover of Rolling Stone as those across the border asked, “why can’t he be our president?” 

Summing it Up

What ever floats your boat. I went home a little confused. Turning on the news reminded me yet again that these are indeed confusing and curious times. 

Our ‘rock star’ Prime Minister made history that very evening invoking the Emergencies Act in order to address the trucker protest, a movement I’m still trying to wrap my head around. And, as a mother of a lad who will soon be on his way overseas, news that a $500 mil loan and  $7.8 mil in lethal weapons were sent to Ukraine by the Canadian government in order to deter further Russian aggression all left me a tad rattled. 

I turned it all off and did that day’s Wordle puzzle; the world of the day? Cynic. Just about sums it up, I suppose.

Pam Pardy, The Herald’s Managing Editor, can be reached by emailing pghent@nfldherald.com

What is my question to the members of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” that held Ottawa and some other places hostage recently. 

You said you were a trucker convoy, but you became something else and that was a very dark entity. It started honestly enough when a group wanted government to end restrictions imposed in the middle of the COVID epidemic. That is fair.

The right of people to petition government on various matters is CENTRAL to our democracy. It started out as a group representing truckers, but most major trucking organizations were not part of it. As so often happens in protests the idea morphed into something else. That happens a lot.

A ticket to govern?

In the end the group was overtaken by a radical fringe. One faction wanted the government to resign and have the group from the convoy run the country. Like that was going to happen. The expertise the group had was blowing horns and blocking streets. That isn’t much of a calling card or a ticket to govern.

What the group did ultimately was to alienate people. The uprising lost support almost from day one. Nobody ever won over a population to a way of thinking by blowing horns and keeping people up all night or by blocking streets and disrupting the way of life of those people. That’s not how successful revolutions work. 

The Ottawa protest in particular had no “command and control” and that “command and control” is a virtue in any uprising, getting people on the same page. Instead, some people were out of control as in elements that went urinating on the grave of Canada’s Unknown Soldier; someone else flew a Nazi flag; and another group wanted free food from one of Ottawa’s homeless shelters.

The Smell of Trump

Now to me one of the most disturbing images was that of a Donald Trump supporter on horseback waving a flag. That was disturbing because in the end this wasn’t a protest of truckers. It was a group of people that believed government to be the root of all their troubles.  It was a group that included right-wing extremists and in the air was the unmistakable smell of Donald Trump and that which he stands for.

I think the protesters by and large were manipulated. They were a destabilizing force funded in part at least from afar. 

The good news is that Canada is a great nation. It was discovered early on that this wasn’t a trucker’s protest, it was something else. Their high-water mark was getting coffee and sandwiches for their group. They will go home now and will not have learned anything. Meanwhile we ordinary law-abiding citizens did. We who know that there’s more to defeating a pandemic that blowing your horn all night will carry on. 

Dear Editor,

The Justin Trudeau Federal Liberals are determined to call an early election in the late summer, September 20th of this year! But do we want or need another federal election two years after the previous one (2019)? I say absolutely “NO!” This is not the time to have an unnecessary election in Canada! Why? Let me explain the main reasons why we don’t need an election at this time.

Reason #1

Canada, as well as the whole world, is in the midst of the fourth wave of the COVID 19 pandemic. While most Canadians have already received their first vaccine while others have both thus being “fully vaccinated” there is a great number of our fellow Canadians who are unvaccinated and there are cases of a stronger and highly contagious COVID 19 Variants, especially the  Delta variant outbreaks throughout different parts of our country. Even those who are fully vaccinated can still be affected by the variants. And, let’s not forget many Canadians will end up needing a COVID 19 “booster” shot due to their weak immune systems.

Yes, I can see that we are nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re not out of the woods yet. We don’t want to see another Newfoundland & Labrador winter election situation with numerous delays; mail-in voting issues, inaccessible voting, and low voter turnout.

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Reason #2

Our Federal Liberal government has a lot of unfinished business to do. Rather than have an unnecessary election, I would like to see our federal parliamentarians work on the real issues that affect most Canadians nowadays – the current coronavirus pandemic, fully implementing pharmacare, and basic livable income,  dental care, mental health, reconciliation with indigenous communities, investigating residential schools abuse, climate change and so on.

Our current federal Liberal Government ought to be more concerned about these real issues than looking after their own Liberal partisan interests. I do agree with both opposition leaders NDP’s Jagmeet Singh and Conservative Erin O’Toole that this is not the time to hold a federal election.

Reason #3

In 2019, The Federal Liberals were re-elected back into power, this time in a minority government situation. They have received a mandate to govern until 2022 or 2023 provided there is no “non-confidence” motion in parliament. Jagmeet Singh is right there; no non-confidence vote from the political opposition, especially from the New Democrats.

So in other words, our liberal minority government enjoys the confidence of parliament. While our new Governor-General Mary Simon may go along with Prime Minister Trudeau’s wish to call for an early election, she ought to say no.

This isn’t the right time! Canadian and British parliamentary history is full of cases where the reigning monarch or the Governor-General has gone against the dissolution of parliament for the one simple reason that such an early election goes against the nation’s interest.

Moreover, Her Excellency should point out to Prime Minister Trudeau that Parliament in 2007 adopted Bill-C16 which stipulates that a Federal General Election will take place on the fourth calendar year after the previous poll (October 21, 2019). And, she should remind the Prime Minister about parliament’s near-unanimous approval last May of a motion not to hold an election during the pandemic which he himself supported!

As of now, the Trudeau Liberals are up in the polls, but an early election may not guarantee a Majority Liberal Government. Instead, one of the opposition parties may end up winning a minority or even a majority government or we will end up having another Liberal Minority Government.

Justin Trudeau should ask former Ontario Liberal Premier David Peterson and the former Ontario NDP leader and now fellow Liberal Bob Rae what can happen during an early election? Anything in Politics can happen between August 15th and the expected September 20th election day!

So all I can say to my Federal Liberal friends, be careful what you may wish for!

– Edward Sawdon

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