I hardly expect to see the names of Ron Chisholm or Brooke Taylor on the membership roll at Mensa. And I would hardly expect to find them relegated to the “Stupid Row,” a designation old time teachers often used to inflict shame on struggling students.
What is Mensa, you ask? It is an organization founded in 1946, the largest, oldest, and most well known high IQ society in the world. A non-profit organization, it is open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardized, supervised intelligence test.
The key word is “intelligence” something that has not been on display lately at Province House during one of the House of Assembly’s rare sittings. Say what you will about John Buchanan’s governments, when they called the members to the House of Assembly, it was for two and three months at a stretch. It wasn’t a peek-a-boo affair.
Today, you are lucky to pin them down for three weeks. And guess what folks, I don’t hear too many complaints from the Official Opposition or from members of the Third Party.
Back to the not so smart. First it was Brooke Taylor who, during a debate with Education Minister Karen Casey, heckled the member from Glace Bay, Dave Wilson. Taylor, who later explained it was just part of the “cut and thrust”, taunted the Glace Bay member and, suggested that maybe the government, of which he is a Cabinet Minister, might take back the new junior high school that is to be built in Wilson’s constituency. “Cut and thrust”? No, it is more like typical Tory mean-spiritedness.
Let me confess to something, right here and now. When Rodney MacDonald was elected leader of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party and became the Premier of the Province, I was thrilled. Thrilled because I truly believe in the generational change, and recognize that individuals in my age group have had our turn and need now to pass the torch.
That belief carried over to the ballot box, and I cast a Tory vote in the last election, an act that sent my soon-to-be 96-year-old mother over the moon. A lifelong PC, she viewed it as the return of the lost lamb to the fold. If Brother Rob Smith, the quintessential Tory and noted hymnologist had been aware of it at the time, I’m sure he would have broken into “There Were Ninety and Nine …”
That was then. Today, I am beginning to wonder. Rodney may represent a new generation but he is surrounded, for the most part, by political dinosaurs, from T Rex to Parasaurolophus (I threw that in so they’d have to break open a dictionary)
Right on the heels of Taylor’s “cut and thrust” (is that anything like a stab in the back?) comes Ron Chisholm, the Fisheries Minister, with another veiled threat. “I’m not sure we’re going to give any money to the lobster fishermen in the areas that the NDP represent,” he said. Chisholm made the remarks while talking about new loans programs.
Chisholm, who had to eat a huge serving of crow and apologize in the House, said it was in jest. Yes, I’ll bet it was. But it is said that the truth is often spoken in jest.
If Rodney MacDonald wants his party to continue to govern, he might be well-advised to have a long chat with members of his caucus, and remind them if they haven’t anything nice to say it is better to say nothing at all. And I am not jesting.
(Al Hollingsworth is a retired journalist and broadcaster)
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