Dear America,

Time you Yanks woke up and understood what we puck-chasers figured out years ago: that you don't live in a democracy, but (in your case) a petro-dynastic dictatorship of the same stripe as Saddam's former regime, or Saudi Arabia's current one. Chensfeld's 9/11 'attacks' kicked it off, followed by the Homeland Security diktats to protect America from its 'enemies,' but allowing your autocrats to keep an eye on any libertines getting wise to The Plan. Then the terror alert system to re-remind everyone that they're eyeing you always; the fake-reason Iraq invasion; the Deibold voting machines all riggable to keep the multichinned in power; the NY Times revoking its self-respect for a suck on the presidential ringpiece, along with all the rest of the bought media, the Apocalypse-ready Christians all making you feel ungodly and Hellbound if you don't support worldwide butchery, and so on.

Well dudes, now that the bloggers and splinters of remaining honest media have re-stoked the nearly-dead embers of truth, and you can see that it was all a way to keep the same good old fat bastards owning the world, there's a sudden realization that you just might've been fibbed.

Duh.

The only difference between us two is that Canada's autocrats are raging Leftists. Hey, maybe our despotically ruthless Liberals should teach your metrosexual pantywaist liberals some tricks. Then at least all of North America could be ruled by a cabal of tyrants with their hearts in the right, sorry Left, place.

Paul Fenn

Toronto

I was born in '59, my sister in '62. My mom smoked a pack a day of Craven "A" and drank dry martinis ('martins' she called them) through both her pregnancies. My dad, Victor, (who's called Victor anymore?), left school at 11, flew Spitfires, Mustangs, and Hurricanes for the RAF over Europe and Asia, emigrated to Canada from London in the late 40s. He ran his own ad agency downtown, smoked cigars and pipes and drank Ballentine's when he'd walked home from work at 6pm each night. I loved the smell of booze on my parents' breath. They talked about the Russians and the Bomb, and the Pill, while my mom cooked spaghetti, the most exotic food in Canada. I remember seeing my dad reading books like Portnoy's Complaint, Soul On Ice, On Agression. My parents went to art galleries, bought paintings of Toronto streets and of naked ladies. My dad brought a bag of pot back from Jamaica (Jamaica Tourism was an account) just to see what the fuss was all about. We lived on the fringes of Yorkville in Toronto, the hippy district. I remember hippies stoned on acid, painting daisies on Yorkville sidewalks -- I was scared of them. But only Yorkville was wild. Back then, Toronto was so dull people drove to Buffalo to see live jazz. Buffalo was a boomtown -- chemicals & plastics. Now it's barely alive. I walked to school by myself in kindergarten. My parents both drank and drove, and well. We had my dad's clients over for dinner -- one from Japan, Alan Fujiwara, so exotic. I was the only kid who knew a Japanese. When I was five, we moved to a dead-end street with about 50 kids all the same age on it. My dad bought the house, his first, off the owner and paid him by cheque monthly, no mortgage. Summers, my mom, Kay (who's called Kay anymore?), kicked me out onto the street, expecting me home only for lunch, for dinner and for bed. I was so hungry from playing outside I ate massively -- peanut butter-and-salami sandwiches for lunch and 2-3 cheeseburgers for dinner. There were no fat kids. No allergies. I knew one girl with asthma, but it didn't stop her climbing trees, and playing goal in street hockey. We built plywood bike jumps on our street, huge ski jumps in the park come winter. Helmets for anything other than getting fired out of a cannon had yet to be invented. I got hit in the back of the head by a baseball bat once, had X-rays. Someone on our street always had a broken arm or leg. Everyone always had at least one huge scab on the go. Boys fought till blood flowed, the other kids in a circle, screaming, "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" We went home filthy at night, bathed against our will and slept like death. Cars had big V-8s. We drove our red Dodge convertible through the Rockies one summer. Pretty much everyone you saw was white. Coloured people (that's what they were called then) were so rare here they were a charming curiosity and we'd point at them and say, "Look, chocolate people," and get quiet parental admonishments for our rudeness. We had a spinster babysitter from Ireland called Nelly who took no shit. We had jolly Uncle Michael from Montreal (then Canada's business city) who wore a captain's hat and blue suits with brass buttons, spoke with a vaunted British accent and dated my mom's sexy best friend, Francis, when she wasn't dating William Shatner.

Fenn