Your blogger with the King, in livelier times. Below, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (“Old Dickery”), at left, meets with his majesty. Kings and prime ministers may not be exactly as illustrated.OTTAWA
With our Canadian government’s new emphasis on all things royal, I’m deeply regretful to have to report that in the excitement of keeping up with current events I have missed an important royal birthday – that of The King himself, no less, which took place yesterday, Jan. 8.
Unfortunately, as I am sure is well known to readers of this blog, the King has left the building. Nevertheless, thanks to our prime minister and his oddly named Republican Party of Canada, we now have put the Royal back in Canadian Air Force (FARC in our other official language) to remind us of his majesty’s mellifluous tonality.
Indeed, here in our nation’s capital – located so very far from the major areas of population and commerce in order to make it difficult for American invaders – one can hardly fail to be heartened by our government’s recent celebration of our proud royal heritage, not to mention the War of 1812.
One wonders, however, if our prime minister knows with whom we Canadians and our Crown were fighting in that war? Presumably he does – so we must assume that what he is really celebrating is the 200 years of continual happy intercourse between our two great nations since the British stopped a’ comin’ in 1814 in New Orleans – the one in Louisiana, not somewhere across the river hereabouts.
This is timely, very timely. Now our prime minister – Old Dickery himself, as he shall no doubt be fondly recalled – has warned us that we face another grim invasion from the south, this time by a horde of radical American environmentalists bent on thwarting our great national imperative, which dates to November 2011, to diversify our national energy market away from our bitter foe of 1812-14.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Surely this is the greenest threat we have faced since the Fenians came in 1871.
Long Live the King!
4 comments:
Is that really the real "King"?
FARC, eh? I know Harper concluded a free trade deal with Colombia (wow! even before the US could), but they gave us their Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, too, as a new arm of our military?
I guess they didn't check out the acronym before they reinsinuated the "Royale" in there. That could make for some interesting confusion.
As for the "radical" environmentalists, I guess people who want breathable air, drinkable water and edible food must be a little crazy. What kind of a vision is that for the future?
Would the Cons and UnEthicalOil.Con defend the right of their next door neighbour to burn tires in the back yard because it was his property and he could do what he liked with it?
Probably not, but they'd defend to the death the right to burn tires themselves.
Just so's I'm not accused of intentionally misleading Filostrato, they were going to call it FARC, but then they changed it to ARFC or something when they made the unfortunate connection. I'm just being mean, like I am to all those law-abiding gun owners. As for the question asked by Anonymous 8:23, the answer is yes, of course.
An afterthought: I did a little date checking and found that the FARC (Colombia version) were formed about forty years ago, just about the time that the RCAF became both no longer "Royal" and no longer an independent group but instead amalgamated into the Canadian Armed Forces. That was. of course, until the Harper regime went forward to the past a few months ago (instead of back to the future) and became they became Royal once more.
I don't even know if the RCAF had equivalent French initials way back in the sixties before official bilingualism became the law of the land - and not a moment too soon, either. It's possible that the RCAF never had to think about the FARC problem before.
And whether or not that's the "King"? Absolutely. No doubt about it.
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