The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
OTTAWA ? It is 8:15 p.m. and the first buns are starting to fly. This would be the annual Parliamentary Press Gallery black-tie whing-ding and the lads are getting into it early. It being the major social event of the year in the town that fun forgot, the rules are quite strict. Each working member of the Press Gallery ? now stretching to some 400-plus, is allowed to invite one guest. Prime cabinet ministers, favorite MPs, influential swivel servants, one's own publisher (so as to secure employment.) Everyone who is anybody in Canada is here. (Those not invited phone around and tell their intimates that they had to go to Florida this weekend.) The cocktails start at 6:00 in the National Arts Centre (recently removed from the Centre Block on Parliament Hill because it could no longer house all the sycophants desired) and so the lubricated lads are merrily heaving buns across the room at someone else's wine glass, much to the amusement, of course, of some classy lady who has spent her whole year and her spare change to purchase the most expensive ball gown in the room. The Governor-General leads off, dressed as back-packer, to mock the recent criticism of her new reputation as a taxpayer-paid world jaunter. Adrienne, who after all first made her fame as a television star, makes a wow as a trouper and then brings on Margaret Atwood, resplendant in what suspiciously looks like a blond wig. Ms. Clarkson then strips down to a slinky sweater decorated with fake jewelry and they sing the old standard, Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend ? these rocks don't lose their shape ? and for the first time the buns stop flying. Next up is the prime minister of the nation, and it is clear ? wisely ? that he has a speech writer worthy of the occasion. It is now 10:21. He slyly refers to Madame Clarkson as "Her Majesty." He sez he has just four words of advice addressed to the Press Gallery mob he detests: "I poisoned your food." See 'Wowed' P.# Con't from P.# P. Martin informs us that he has a love-hate relationship with Sheila Copps. "I love me, and she hates me." He tells of how he has agreed with Washington to send the next satellite into space and has offered a Canadian volunteer, "Caroline Parrish" ? his own backbench MP instantly famous for her "American bastards" blurt. Best performer, more than somewhat surprisingly, was the assumed-stiff Stephen Harper, who had been rumoured that privately was very good at imitations. He absolutely wowed the mob ? all buns stowed away safely ? with his Broadway-proof imitations of Brian Mulroney's baritone phone calls, of P. Martin's waffling Question Period meanderings, of Gilles Duceppes' pomposity, of smiling Jack Layton, even to his own disastrous wandering into Belgium. (It might be inserted here, re: Duceppe, his silly and childish refusal to attend this jolly bun-toss, where everyone of importance in Canada makes fun of one another. He wants to break up the country? Then show up and prove that you are an equal.) It is now 11:15 and Layton, the low man on the totem pole, is finally given the mike. Unwisely, unlike the others, he has not hired a speech writer. The mob, tired, starts to bang their tired glasses on their brandy glasses in an effort to shut him up. It's a cruel world in Ottawa. What he doesn't know is that this gang, as is the tradition, wants to head for the National Press Club on Wellington, below Parliament Hill, where they serve, on this evening on this night, ham-and-eggs breakfast at 5:00 a.m. X X X AND ANOTHER THING There is a confession here. The Press Gallery bash was always off-the-record. This scribbler was shipped by Southam News to Washington for five years. Where the White House press had a similar do, the Gridiron dinner. Which was all on-the-record, the presidential insults and all recorded in the papers next day. Returning to Ottawa, I reported on the Gallery drunk ? and was suspended for two years. It is now filmed by CPAC and open to anyone on the idiot box.
