While the world waits with baited breath to discover what Donald Trump will do as the President of the United States on January 20, 2017 and forward, I look back at Ronald Reagan’s election and see similar wonderment of the electorate. Look how Reagan turned out, it wasn’t the end of the world during his tenure.
Of course time will tell what happens with Mr Trump as President. I think Mr Trump is results driven. He is being given incredible power and authority. Let us hope that his advisors give him the kind of input he needs to draw the right conclusions to give him the kind of result he is looking for.
Lets take a look back into the 1960’s, during my junior and senior high school years, when Mr. Dave Pugh was elected as the MP to represent the Okanagan/Boundary riding in Ottawa. I checked out Wikipedia which said that Mr. Pugh was first elected in 1958 after being defeated in 1957. I remember Wally talking about the coming election. I think Wally was a conservative and voted for Mr Pugh. He was re-elected in 1962, 1963 and 1965, but was defeated in 1968 when the Liberals lead by Pierre Trudeau, took the seat.
When I looked at the elections of 1957, 1958, 1962 and 1963 I was somewhat mystified and thought that the dates were wrong because they were so close together. Then I remembered that there were a series of minority rule Parliaments. The 1958 parliament was the only one with a majority during those four election dates.
It has been said that minority governments can get a lot done. The only thing that sticks out in my mind is the great flag debate. In 1964, Lester Pearson was the one who wanted to get Canada a new flag and get away from the Canadian Red Ensign, a flag which was basically imposed upon Canada by the British but never adopted by the Canadian Parliament. The debate went on for months, I suppose that is why I remember it because I kept hearing about it.
I don’t remember a great deal of other political conversation in our house or even on the streets. I do know that Wally and Auntie Kay’s tenant, Rene Liboton enjoyed conversing along those lines, but I think Wally liked to avoid those kinds of discussions. I do remember Rene getting quite loud and excited when it came to certain topics of discussion. Rene occasionally came to our house at breakfast for coffee and a chat. I enjoyed Rene’s company because he had some habits that I too had.
At the age of 16, I began to smoke. During the summer I slept outside in the empty sawdust shed. Some of you may wonder what the sawdust shed was about. We heated our house by burning a course sawdust which came from the sawmill blades which cut up the logs. The Oliver sawmill delivered the sawdust with a 3 to 5 ton dump truck to our sawdust shed twice a year. By spring most of the sawdust was burned so the shed was nearly empty. I put a mattress on some apple boxes which stood on the dirt floor, and with a sleeping bag slept comfortably and dry away from the night dew.
I bring Rene into this because when I was supposed to be sleeping after 11 pm, I strolled down to his house and watched the TV series called The Untouchables with Elliot Ness as the hero. At the same time I had a smoke or three while watching the show. The show was always on during the late evening. Rita, Rene’s wife was usually in bed for she was working in the packing house and needed her sleep. Meanwhile, the men watched the late show and smoked. After all was said and done I returned to the sawdust shed and my bed.
Rene was a hobby farmer. He had white ducks, domesticated geese, golden pheasants, bantams, peacocks, pigeons, turkeys, and a couple of goats. He also ran a gem shop and was interested in Paleontology.
One year he had a mink come by for easy pickings. The mink took a few birds, ducks maybe? Of course that left Rene frantic. In the mornings I took the shotgun when I went to change the sprinklers near his house. One morning Rene informed me that the mink had struck again. I went upstream and prepared to put an end to its activity, there was no suffering, and all Rene’s flock was spared to live another day.
ruralreportwithlairdsmith@gmail.com