Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Rinse, Wash, Repeat


In my previous post I mentioned that if you aren't reading Skid Crease's local blog, then you should be.  Skid's latest installment a few days back really struck a nerve with me. I found myself remembering that this is how it all starts.  People would often say to me "I don't know how you have the nerve to sign your name to your blog. I'd be scared to death."

It starts with highly veiled threats.  Your phone rings non-stop but there is no caller name ID or number, so you don't answer. That's what the Police taught me. The message box on my office phone would be filled, for weeks on end, every single day with hang-ups, which rendered the phone incapable of taking real messages because it was filled.  As a matter of fact, that was done to many of my staff, who acted in the capacity as family support workers in the community.  It was a shameful and disgraceful act of harassment.

I sat there staring at Skid's blog, I felt his vulnerability and it made the hair on the back of neck stand up.  Again my mind wandered, recalling a board person, from my place of employment at that time, telling me they got a call from a woman, who would not identify herself, demanding I be removed from my position because of my political activities. BTW, I know who called.  Yeah, I do.

Then came the late night phone call, answered while I was half asleep, a voice on the other end telling me that when the election was over, they were coming for me and then hung up.  Another chilling memory.  These are crazy times we live in.  You can't take that shit for granted.  It was all very real and very frightening. Some people would say that I brought this upon myself, being such an opinionated bitch, or better yet, the tact that two guys, standing next to me at the meat counter in the grocery store took.  One of them whispered at me, under his breathe, just loud enough for me to hear
"You fu*king c*#t".

Excuse me? 

I looked at him and I thought to myself, you are a son, maybe a brother, a husband, a father but you are not a man.  No way, no how.  Not now, not ever.  I stared at him hard and asked him in a very loud, stern voice "Do you kiss your wife with that mouth?".  He looked away because that is what cowards do.

I'm a Canadian woman. I thought I was allowed to have an opinion. As long as I remained inside the guidelines of slander and libel laws, I was entitled to write about my opinion. I don't think you'd even find an f-bomb dropped in anything I had ever written. I was simply sarcastic, in a confectionary cupcake kind of way.  I just wanted people to think for themselves and not be sucked into the hubris of the politicians, the wannabes, the engines of minions, those reprehensible lackeys, the holders of the silk purse strings and the hateful, more than likely paid, henchmen. I was also of a mind, that there would always be people who were ardent haters to those who chose to take a stand. It comes with the territory.

I was followed frequently.  Now I understand why the previous Mayor bought an innocuous little car to travel about in. She blended. It made it harder to find her car in a crowd. Then again, she lived in a house with bullet proof windows for a reason.  I've often wondered how many sets of slashed tires she went through during her time in office.

I never took the back roads in Caledon, ever.  I learned to always have a cell phone at the ready. In a conversation with my lawyer (yes, I had even received legal threats) I finally confided that I was in a full drawn episode of panic and fear.  It was fight or flight moment at its worst.  My only child had come home to visit.  She's works on the other side of the country as an Urban Planner. She had borrowed my car to go and visit around town.  Then it sunk in.  Someone could be following that car, thinking it's me.  I became paralyzed with fear and couldn't breath. I broke down in tears, crying to him.  It was the first time I was ever really broken. If anything happened to her, I couldn't justify taking those risks.  All of that fear, all of what could be lost, just over a political opinion and because I'm a sarcastic cow.  It was a heavy burden.  It also made me realize how far people were willing to go to win an election.  This was my Stephen King "It" moment.

I can appreciate Skid's blog.  He makes no mention of any one specific news journalist (I use that term loosely here) but we all know who is being talked about.  The clock is ticking down to a local election and what do we get?  A silly local news dude, who acts like he's an affiliate to Fox News, short of going full on Sean Hannity.  It boggles my mind. Peel Region wants to increase Caledon's population by a half a million people and all this Tucker Carlson's doppelganger wants to do is swat a beehive by writing about is locked doors out at the Town.  What a maroon.

One last thing. Read Skid Crease's blog. I'll make it easy for you.  Just click on his name.

Skid, get our your chicken hat.  Use it like a super power. Whatever you do, don't stop writing. What happened to me was just a few short years ago but it would appear that players remain the same in this game.

#AintNobodyHereButUsChickens #MayTheForceBeWithUs #CaledonProud #CaledonStrong #HennyPennyWise