the daily snivel

On July 1, 1876, the British North America Act came into force, uniting the colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada (which at that time was comprised of what is now Ontario and Quebec), creating the Dominion of Canada, which with the gradual addition of more provinces and territories (and finally a repatriated Constitution in 1982) came to be the country we know and love (and complain about the weather in) today. We celebrate the birth of Confederation each July 1 with a national holiday, replete with fireworks, outdoor concerts, barbecues and, well, we shall see.

I was commenting on this with a friend while out for a few friendly rounds with some Clinic folk and alumni, including the lawyer who used to supervise me when he Articled at the Clinic and I was but a law student -- and who now has a great deal of fame following the extensive media coverage surrounding his now-infamous client, charged with the murder of Jennifer Teague.

Anyway, one person at the table remarked that this would be her first Canada Day celebration in Ottawa. I stated that, while I do enjoy this holiday, there are a number of clichés you can guarantee will make an appearance, to the extent that she could put together a bingo-card marked with them and follow the day knowing they'd soon all be marked off:

1. Canada flag temporary tattoos plastered on thousands of faces
2. Red and white face paint
3. People wearing the Canada flag like a cape
4. People blowing obnoxiously and incessantly on those plastic red horns that are hawked everywhere on Canada day
5. People wearing tall, wonky, cat-in-the-hat-esque top hats marked with red and white and the maple leaf
6. and last, but not least, epic quantities of public urination.

My favourite way to spend Canada Day is with some friends, at a quiet location, with hot coals smoldering in the barbecue and some cold drinks to battle against the hot weather. In this way, you're away from huge crowds, you're not paying a fortune for a beverage, there's a place to sit, you can hear yourself think, and there's a clean bathroom close at hand. Conversely, if you're out and about, it's a basic rule of supply and demand that there are going to be tens of thousands of people downtown, and not nearly enough public restrooms to service them, especially once you add booze to the mixture.

Thus it was this year that I read this article about the revelers out this year who, once the fireworks display had ended, showed their fervent national pride in the people who fought and died for their freedom by taking a big piss all over the memorial tomb dedicated to their memory:


Photograph by Dr. Michael Pilon; as appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, July 3, 2006.

A retired Canadian Armed Forces major, Michael Pilon, took photographs after he found several people relieving themselves on the memorial around 11 p.m. on July 1, after a fireworks display came to an end.

Pilon's photographs of the urinating people were published by the Ottawa Citizen on Monday.

The incidents came hours after Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean hosted a huge ceremony at the site, which honours the country's war dead and holds the remains of The Unknown Soldier, returned to Canada from France in 2000.

I am the last person you could call a jingoist, and don't easily take offence at the sorts of things that people with more time and fewer cares tend to get especially worked up about. For example, I couldn't care less if someone decided to burn the Canadian flag -- I even think it's great that, when the kin of the odious Dr. Fred Phelps came to Parliament Hill to protest the Supreme Court's treatment of same-sex marriage, they attempted to burn a flag and had to obtain the assistance of a Mountie, who was concerned they wouldn't know how to do so safely.

But, and allow me to be blunt: FOR FUCK'S SAKE, what the hell are you thinking when you decide to take a leak on a war memorial, you clueless, drunken, fucktard? On Canada Day no less! Congratulations and welcome to your rightful new rank in life as an IDIOT. I don't doubt that you, and those who followed in your illustrious footsteps, must feel like wankers of the year, with your photos plastered in a national newspaper for all to see and scorn. And I do scorn thee.

People ask lawyers how they can possibly defend a person accused of murder. I could get into a moving discussion of the rights of all free peoples in a democracy worthy of the name, but let me say for now and more glibly that when you spend a few years representing people who clearly made stupid, ugly choices, and leaped before they looked (like an idiot who guns his roaring car down a residential street and gets caught or, worse, into an accident), what is there left that could be more wearying and irredeemable than rank ignorance and drunken stupidity?