February 08, 2010

It is the week before the Olympics and Vancouver is standing up straight, good intentions, public art and proper signage in place. There are buds on the trees, which is worrying many people, and plenty of public dissent about the inconvenience of road closures and money expenditure.

Wandering around downtown on the weekend with two teenagers in tow, teenagers who, in case you haven’t got one lying around or have forgotten your own jaded teen years, are notoriously hard to impress, was a bustle of language and a press of curiosity. It was difficult not to be caught up in the energy and magnitude of the Olympic impact, Canadian pride, and the tide of enthusiasm in the downtown core.

There have been a great many voices raised in concern over any number of Olympic issues: How to deal with the Downtown East Side which is indeed a Gordian knot of drug addiction, mental health issues, and homelessness which presents the kind of painful, ugly and tenacious problems VANOC and Vancouver’s city councilors might prefer to sweep aside lest the Olympic spotlight turn into a global glare. The allocation of funds to various Olympic projects and how those projects will be used by the City in the future. Accusations of vast over-spending of tax dollars, environmental impact concerns, all sorts of groups lobbying for their self-interested slice of the Olympic pie. The warm weather, the trucking in of snow, the road closures, the bike lanes. The new and improved with your dollars and mine, Olympically motivated, Sea to Sky Highway.

Vancouver being a place filled with social, environmental and civic minded people there has been a great deal of public “conversation” about each of these, and while many are indeed worthy of consideration, the debates need to end now. Take down the placards and put away the megaphones. That highway has been built, and it is going to save lives for years to come, lives which cannot be measured with a Olympic logo or a dollar sign.

The Olympics are happening and we can let our kids see our goodwill and pride in Canada, we can participate in an imperfect but landmark international event in our city, or we can stay home and sulk.

We are hosting the world, and like a visit from far-flung cousins once removed, good manners are in order. Inevitably, meals will be bigger and the budget might be stretched, room and enough blankets to go around must be found, you might even have to sacrifice your regular routines, your car, even your bedroom in the name of hospitality.

Walking downtown this weekend felt a bit like the last days before a wedding: the out of town family has begun to arrive and everyone has come to realize that like it or not, these two shall be wed, and it just might be a beautiful thing.

Vancouver, the time has come to forever hold your piece.

And to wave that red and white flag for all you’re worth.

January 28, 2010

There are aspects of St. Valentines Day that I fully embrace – like hot chocolate in mid-February, there is nothing objectionable about some midwinter warmth, a little homemade sweetness, or a tray of freshly baked sugar cookies.

However, with each passing Valentine’s Day I find myself growing more and more ornery. I boycott the hearts and flowers portion of Valentine’s Day. After two shacked-up decades of auditing at the School of Manhood I can guarantee that if men were not told to, advertised to, cajoled, nudged by friends, mothers in law, and their wives, if they didn’t think that there were other areas of marriage which might suffer from the not-buying of them, men would not march out en masse on Feb 14 and buy flowers for their wives.

With every new ad, device, or bit of frippery invented and released into the world in honour of Valentine’s Day, I feel my heels digging further into the deep soil of truculence. I will neither purchase a power tool, a saccharine token of plasticized sentiment, nor man-roses as a gesture of my love. Nor do I require mandated expressions of love. In fact, I prefer expressions of love when I least expect them. They are much sweeter that way.

Worse, to me, are the Valentine’s cards that our kids are meant to buy in packs – have you noticed that the packages come in numbers just short of most classroom counts, thereby necessitating the forking out of another bundle of cash for a second and mostly extraneous package? – of cards trademarked by the industries which make it their business to study the best ways to exploit our children into buying crap? Harry Potter and his crew have featured prominently in recent years, the Disney poster boys and girls, Barbie and SpongeBob of course… you know the lineup. Trademarked friendship. Copyrighted sweethearts.

Turns out the parent councils and school policies are inadvertently in cahoots with the Trademark Goons. There are classroom guidelines around holidays and fairness. Equality. Sharing. All good, in principle. However, the St. Valentine’s Day outcome is that in the name of not hurting anyone’s feelings, of excluding no one, we teach our kids to be disingenuous. They must make a Valentine card for even the kid who stole their snack, and the girl whose gang is responsible for recess ridicule. This might work in Kindergarten and Grade 1, but by Grade 4 our children understand that we are asking them to be hypocritical.

Perhaps most beastly of all, there is money to be made from, and Valentines given based exclusively on mother-guilt. The Trademark Goons know that mothers are bound to this new inclusiveness code; they know that you will feel guilty if all the other mothers went to the trouble to buy, and what’s more, stood watch over their children while each Valentine card was laboriously filled out. You had better step on up to the stationary aisle or the candy display lest your failure to nag be noticed or your child’s loot bag be lighter for your negligence.

Here’s my homemade Valentine’s recipe for families, guaranteed to celebrate the sweetness, assuage any mother-guilt while managing the Inclusiveness Mandates and not alienating your spouse:

Frothy mugs of cocoa & heart shaped marshmallows to start the day.

 A tray of cookies in the correct classroom amount to hand out. (Too many classes/ kids? Too much of a hassle to bake that many cookies? Buy a bag of chocolate kisses for each child so they can give, with an egalitarian smile, a “valentine” to put on each classmate’s desk.)

 A homemade coupon for an Out To Dinner date, just the two of you, on any other night than Valentine’s. You win; a night out, no dishes, no cooking. He wins; no loaded Valentine’s Day expectations.

Spontaneous expressions of love will abound.

Photo Credit, plus cocoa & marshmallows at: tasteandtell