It happens every time. You spend three months in a country where business meetings invariably involve stacks of American cash and Chinese made guns, where sixteen uniformed grade school aged children pile into the back of a pick-up truck, and where taking a taxi is only slightly less risky then not taking one at all, only to return to a place that is even more absurd.

In my absence, it appears that the sterling brain trust who is running Bridgewater’s city council has taken the hysteria that surrounds smoking to unimaginably absurd heights. Never mind the news out of Bali that humanity might well be facing certain extinction if CO2 emissions are not quickly brought under control. According to the wise men and women of Bridgeport’s city council, the future health of their citizenry is gravely threatened from the billows of second hand fumes with which those soulless and weak-willed smokers regularly blanket the city’s streets.

The whole thing, much like the rest of the nonsense that has surrounded recent Province wide restrictions on tobacco, is testimony that Homo Novascotianus has a tendency to worry more about the trite minutia in front of him, rather than the graver, albeit more abstract danger that he will soon be facing. It’s a bit like fretting about a leaking drain pipe while a tsunami is on its way.  

To the smokers in Bridgewater, may I suggest that you should utterly ignore the by-law if it is passed. You might want to strike a deal with city council, offering to quit puffing once all the city’s publicly owned buildings are powered by alternative energies, most roads have been replaced with bike paths, and only electric cars are allowed to grace your highways. My guess is that you will be standing knee deep in some of the Atlantic’s finest before you have to make good on your promise.