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.
Everybody has their own theory about terrorists. The nutcases who will devote their own lives to blow up innocents they have never met to pursue their cause that no one else understands. We have the nuts who blew up the most beautiful enclave in the world, Bali, to destroy it as the favourite tourist retreat from nearby Australia. And never again will their rugby gangs and the rest go near that most wonderful little place these tired eyes have ever visited. As I tell all my nodding friends, if I were a terrorist, I would pick the two obvious next targets. The first would be Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. The most famous hunk of sand in the world lined by five of the finest high-class hotels in the world. All we have to do, as a terrorist, is to zoom up Waikiki beach at midnight with a speedboat filled with dynamite. At high speed, ram it up the beach beyond the surf andÐbingoÐthe entire tourist industry of Hawaii is destroyed for years on. The second obvious target, if I were a terrorist, would be the most innocent and vulnerable object around: Toronto's CN Tower. Fill a small plane with explosives, fly it across Lake Ontario from Rochester and terrify yet another nation. Now, I think I'm wrong. It's all because of having lunch with Ron Haggart, an experience I haven't ventured for a long time. Haggart is a very unusual character. He went through the University of British Columbia with Pierre Berton and John Turner. And, with them, worked on the infamous campus newspaper, The Ubyssey, the most productive factory of scribblers in the countryÐincluding such as Earle Birney, Val Sears, Joe Schlesinger, Helen Hutchinson, Senator Pat Carney, Lister Sinclair, Peter Worthington and, oh, a few others of lesser fame. (Turner was the sports editor.) Haggart eventually succeeded Berton as star columnist of the country's biggest paper, the Toronto Star. Then moved into television and was a major producer of tough programs for years. He also becameÐand still isÐfamous for succeeding the late Eugene Forsey, the bard of Newfoundland, as writing more letters-to-the-editor than the rest of the land put together. Forsey, when he was in the Senate, would rip out his fountain pen in outrage at any perceived grammatical error or semantical mistake in the Globe and MailÐor the Grope and Flail, or the Mop and Pail as its own columnist Richard J. Needham used to call it. Editors quivered when they got a Forsey missive. Haggart has his own weapon, the e-mail, and regularly peppers the Globe with his omnivorous knowledge of British politics, or Canadian trivia, or the price of porridge in 1932. They print, I surmise, about one-fifth of his output. And so it is at lunch that he demolishes my theory on the next terrorist targets. He explains, in his usual certainty, that the most devastating attack will be on Nov. 4, the day of the American presidential election. It will come from Pakistan, he explains. We all know about Florida's famous hanging chads, the last time around, where Al Gore got more votes from the American public than Dubya Bush but somehow, thanks to the Supreme Court, got not to be the resident in the White House. Such is the magic of cell phones and computers, Haggart explains, learned terrorists in Pakistan will invade the U.S. election results. WyomingÐsurprise!Ð voting one million ballots for John Kerry. While Wyoming has the population slightly less than Moose Jaw. And, thanks to the Pakistan bandits, the computer outputs going to ABC, NBC and CBS will show that Florida had only 20,376 eligible voters. It will be chaos. It's brilliant. It's typical Haggart. And will probably happen. It would be better, I have to admit, than Waikiki. X x x AND ANOTHER THING The reason the Great Unwashed are so cynical about The Establishment is the befuddled hypocrisy. In early March, a thug employed by the Vancouver Canucks was sent on late in a losing game to assault Steve Moore, a Harvard graduate. It is now early April and the Vancouver police say they are still 'investigating' whether charges should be laid. All it would take is nine seconds of a TV replay. Has this world gone mad?
