Vancouverisms and Morbid Parlours

In the Parlour of the Dying 

Recently, I was sidetracked with a free ambulance ride. St Paul’s in Vancouver took receipt of my body and after I borrowed their bucket and toilet for blood-filled evacuations, my stretcher was shipped by elevator to the 10^th floor for an operation. The only thing I recall about that was a doctor awakening me to tell me to open my mouth wider… so he could insert his instrument down through my esophagus.

The next place I awoke was on the fifth floor in the parlour of the dying. There I was visited by specialists and teams of students all agog.  I spent three days in this ‘holding cell’ listening to the long-winded death throes of a man in particular who pretended to be so disoriented that he thought it was fine to holler all night and attract attention to himself while keeping the rest of us awake. Healing requires rest. Maybe somebody should have mentioned that to all those nurses endlessly fussing around him, and the doctors and students rambling through.

One fellow was shipped elsewhere and replaced by another curmudgeon who couldn’t stop pressing his nurse call button to everyone’s chagrin.   The third man needed ‘help’ with his gown, “down there” by his crotch every time the prettiest nurse showed. Being the father of a hospital board member may have indeed helped his member chances.

So there lay the four of us. Waiting for Godot I guess. I was strung up with two IV units, one in each arm and plastered tape over my hands to hold the needles in. Try going to the bathroom with that configuration. I got tangled in wires every time. My only visitor turned out to be my schizophrenic boyfriend who dutifully brought me some clean clothes and a book to read. I met a few doctors who were working on their impersonation of Goebbel’s bedside manner. Apart from that a volunteer brought me Ladies Home Journals and National Geographics to thumb through. 

After blood transfusions and a infusion of white blood cells I survived and returned home.

My General Practitioner, who’s usually out of the loop about my health anyway, did manage to comment after seeing the hospital file, “You would have died if you didn’t get to the hospital when you did.”

Interestingly, at least to me, I had earlier that week received a visitation from my father’s father, long gone now but whose last breaths I witnessed. I was there in his modest room again, there in New Brunswick, listening to his slow rattling.  He seemed so present in this visitation. This grim reminder of my own mortality. Within the week there I was in the parlour of the dying.

The most disappointing discovery in that room of imminent death was the behavior of my neighboring bedridden fellows. They were worse than brat-like: ignoble, frightened, faithless and hopelessly inconsiderate. So much for whatever theology they misspent their lives on. Boy Scouts are better prepared to light a match. All these guys could manage was to darken my day and keep me awake at night.

If, as Hindus believe, we become in our next life that thing we think about last in this life, I shudder to imagine what they are crawling about like now.

I followed up all this attention from specialists with a visit to my general practitioner. He seemed alarmed and I couldn’t help sense that he didn’t feel adequate to the task of being my caregiver. Then it dawned on me he never really was; more of a pharmaceutical delivery agent operating revolving doors. This suspicion was pretty much borne out when I called for a quick telephone consult (thirty seconds please?) to sort out a question re my prescriptions. After I called over a week pleading with his secretary/traffic manager to get him on the line, he won out by not returning my call, forcing me to visit so he could hear that precious chah-ching.

I’m going to include him in my Last Will once I’ve googled what is an appropriate gift for a pig in a sty.

*   *   *

VANCOUVERISMS

Some American outfits (Conde Nast mag etc) recently selected and congratulated Vancouver for being North America’s most ‘liveable’ city.  Most resistant. Most this-and-that. And now a buzz word Vancouverism is making the rounds of urban plights everywhere.

Allow me to introduce my own Vancouverisms – O.K? Ready?

THE ROADWAYS

Drivers throughout this beautiful gem of a city choose to gun their way through, clipping at pedestrians (offering involuntary pedicures), running red lights even in Go Slower districts like the downtown eastside; honking horns and flipping birds indulging their rage at every opportunity.

Very disappointingly the vast majority of these drivers are oriental Asians (according to my daily head count). If they’re importing the driving habits of Hong Kong or whichever other ditzed out, mean-spirited war zone, maybe they should take a refresher course in where they’ve landed. Traditional Canadians are polite, sometimes even meek and obsequious but overall just harmless and civil. Stop targeting us. Should we examine the ethnic stats of whoever is generating this new wave of hit and runs? Might that examination be telling?

It’s always gratifying for me to see the speedsters held up at the next light while I stroll past them from that corner where they almost clipped me.

This Vancouverism will find its genesis in the wild-eyed and underplanned promoting of ‘multiculturalism' – opening of the Pacific Gate and all being “good for the economy.”

THE BUS DRIVERS

Witnessed!: Four runners in a downpour charging to a bus stop out in Port Coquitlam on a highway. They were easily seen by the driver well in advance of the stop. They arrived on time to slap the back of that bus to alert the driver. The driver ignored them and pulled away, leaving them to get soaked for a half an hour on that unprotected stretch of highway. I phoned to register my complaint and heard a recording advising me to write a letter. I did and heard nothing back – not even an offer to reimburse my bus fare. Go Translink Go! (Keep going and going and going, then disappear with your heartless Translink cops.)

Other patrons at bus stops being driven right by. Bus was not loaded. Lots of room. Patrons got bus-splashed.

Drivers threatening broke welfare recipient trying to get to his hospital: “I’ve got your picture on record now!”

Barrelling through red lights (witnessed on many occasions).

THE POLICE

Too often police can be witnessed bullying the mentally ill or addicted on Hastings Street. Sneering.

The police are charged with our protection and the enforcement of the law. They have chosen not to enforce the law when it comes to drug dealing one block away from their headquarters in Vancouver. They blame that (from what I can surmise) on the system which permits these poison peddlers to get back on the street the next day, including the illegal immigrants. Their job of enforcement does not entitle them to make these kinds of decisions that find them turning a blind eye to the crack trade downtown. Let the system work itself out – but they have an enforcement job to do. Citizens want their sidewalks back – not to be obstructed and bullied by cretins barking “Rock, powder, down.”

By cutting off the dope solicitors, they will have made a significant negative impact on the gang leaders who control the traffic of these unearthly drugs. How would the cop feel if it was his 14 year old daughter who was becoming the crackhead?

Witnessed!: Driver standing next to his parked vehicle waiting on driver of other vehicle to swap insurance papers re teensie wrinkle-fender while parking. No visible damage whatsoever. When the two female cops show up in a screeching blaze (thanks to some rat), they breathalyzed the standing-by ex-driver, impounded his vehicle (which he relied on for his work) and handed him a “regulatory prohibition” (new vague law) preventing him from driving for three months and ultimately costing him his job and $7,000. Next time the gals are not getting enough of each other, maybe they can pick on some real criminals – like the gang members selling all that crack a block away. No amount of their cackling can hide their ineptitude (they screwed up the ticket twice) and poor attitude. 20 years ago, a male cop would have said, “Go home, fella. Leave the car here. Sleep it off.”

As to all the accusations of police brutality, I have personally witnessed none of this aberrant behavior but given these overkill attitudes expressed when dealing with extremely minor cases, and their collective sheepishness to take on the gangs, I suppose it wouldn’t take much of a stretch to suggest that they have some unresolved issues to work out, and sometimes under the cover of darkness in alleyways.

Check out their new choice of car design. And the design they’re fazing out. Looks like Darth Vader rolls victorious over Bambi. 

This new design should accompany their new recruitment ad for which I happily submit the following text: Bullies Wanted. Wear a dark uniform with an array of weaponry. Be licensed to kill. Leering and gum-chewing allowed on duty. Camaraderie over drunken pool games in public bars encouraged. No high school diploma necessary. 

Depicted above: Darth Vader aka ThugMobile

For possible daily quenching of bloodthirtsiness, apply today. Get to put siren on hood! (No graduates from Sensitivity Training Programs Need Apply.) 
                                                         Below: Bambi

THE VANCOUVER STOCK EXCHANGE

(Closed due to corruption. Need anyone say more? Well, O.K. go ahead and ask the pump-and-dumpers; and maybe check in with Nelson Skalbania, Murray Pezim and cronies.)

PRACTICES OF NEW CANADIANS

The port trucker strike had an interesting genesis. The New Canadians (this time mostly East Indians) undercut the traditional drivers so seriously that these drivers just quit in disgust. These New Canadians went on strike to force new wages – those same wages to which they undercut themselves, in order to shaft the traditional drivers. To our shame, they won some points after capitulation by the feds.

CONDO KINGS AND THE HOMELESS: Other New Canadians who bought their citizenships through the now defunct federal program of selling Canadian citizenship to the rich for an amount which of course was “good for the economy.”  Well the birdies have come home to roost, except not to live in all these Condo investments. These architecturally sterile shrines remain empty shells not generating one iota of social activity: grocery shopping, community centre memberships, coffee shop chatterbugging etc in the respective neighborhoods while these glassy monoliths loom over the blankets of the homeless sleeping on heat grates below.

Job placement activity is alive and well for Filipinos. Just ask the young Canadians who have left resumes at fast food restaurants lately. Coming to a Mac near you: MacFlips. Now MacDonalds restaurants and Yes, even, Yegads! that bastion of Canadiana - Tim Horton's - are being investigated nation-wide for possibly abusing the foreign worker program. Wave a flag for Filipinos forever becoming New Canadians.

So a pile of bureaucrats (including Vancouverites) huddled together for a year, spent 1.2 million dollars to try to figure out how to resolve the homeless problem. By gawd! Eureka! They found the answer. Provide the homeless a home. Gosh, jolly! Money well spent.

Before I upchuck I thought I’d lighten this load with a song:

SIDEWALKING

Carts of empty cans pushed along

By wrinkled faces and broken hands

In this place of opportunity

For people of distant lands.

Bicyclists and roller-skaters blow past

Men in walkers blaming life for their latest infirmities,

Scooters, hooters and tooters race by the last,

Of old wrinkled ladies of the little hobbled knees.

Long-leashed poodles whose masters declare

Clear the road! Clear the road!

Don’t for one second you dare, you dare

To think for you I care, care , care.

Not for one second do I care, do I care,

More for you than my poodle dear, my poodle dear.

Lessons in sidewalking

No charges, no charge

To avoid skateboarders from behind looming large,

And everyone else freewheeling to the max,

Forcing the elderly to be watching their backs, watching their backs.

Knots of students studying English,

Hog the whole walk, the whole walk,

While they incessantly smoke and talk, talk, talk,

In Mandarin, Korean, Cantonese and Peckanese,

Talk, talk, talk, blocking the walk, and wheeze wheeze wheeze.

Lessons in sidewalking

No charges, no charge

To avoid skateboarders from behind looming large,

And everyone else freewheeling to the max,

For lessons in sidewalking, make tracks, make tracks.

Feel better? Good. Because now we have to back to shoveling. One must shovel first before one can plant the seed.

Underlying attitudes in Vancouver expose broken moral compasses. To wit: plush neighborhoods organizing petitions to keep half-way houses out of their area. Ye gods! Our property values will plummet! (Not.) 

The stuff of Stanley Cup Rioters still brewing in Surrey and Burnaby. When they get really bored, they come downtown for a round of gaybashing.

Vancouver City is the landlord of many bug-infested, unhealthy living environments. Where are the provincial health inspectors? Try visiting the foot long rats after 2 a.m. any time. The bedbugs and cockroaches are generously non-classist. They’ll infest the west side as soon as the east side. No petitions will help. The new development plans for the downtown eastside refer to providing much more ‘social housing’ – which has nothing to do with what a welfare recipient can afford.  And the slum landlords raise their rents as soon as the welfare pittance is raised. These are the same landlords who cash an addict's cheque (who doesn’t live there) and takes 35 – 40% of that cheques for the ‘service.’

For a stroll through the most pathetically unhappy Chinatown in North America, find Pender Street. Service with a scowl now paying out negative dividends. Chinatown Business associations are appearing at City Hall, spare-changing.  

Waiters and waitresses complain often about poor tipping in Vancouver. What about the waitress (Witnessed!) at the Gastown pub who twice tried to shortchange me in two servings (after catching sight of my minor roll of 50’s). The manager took her side. Both times. Or the waitress who got me barred for complaining within her earshot about how seriously bad her service was. The manager took her side and barred me for years – waiting for an apology from me. They’re still waiting. It’s that pool-playing bar in the Denman Hotel. I only tip when the service merits a tip.

Our two centrally located hospitals are overcrowded and one, St Paul's, is made of old red brick; the kind of brick structure that Big Q’s would just luv to rock and roll.  In any morally wounded environment, social panic is always just under the surface of anxiety and fear. When there was a clean water warning instructing the Vancouver populace to boil its drinking water, west enders (for example) almost trampled each other in-store as they stampeded for kegs of water on sale. All those nicely dressed, creased and sophisticated west enders showing their true colours. I wonder how the petition signers of the west side managed their behavior? Can't wait to play shutterbug during the Big Q.

Millions and millions were spent in the land of the homeless on studying the impact of making our beer, wine and spirits more accessible. After years of navel-gazing and head-crunching they approved a new strategy. Resulting in the opening of two new outlets in all of Vancouver. 

But throughout all this turmoil, one thing remained steadfast and true – the paychecks made out to all those bureaucrats who are likely of the same cloth as the ones connected to the federal government who are charged with dispensing funds to natives and veterans and whose bureaucratic bill in doing so usually tops the amount intended for the original dispersal

So, to top off my little hit list of Vancouverisms, suffice to say that while we all take credit for being members of a pretty city, we each of us must carry that truthiness card in our wallets, you know the one that reads:  The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. That's one for your prayer beads. 

Resolutions to be posted soon.

And, by the way: For a real gusher of obsequiousness, see host of http://wn.com/welcome_to_vancouver__the_most_livable_city_in_the_world!