Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Happy Sir John A MacDonald's Birthday

Notice the glass? It's in the Robert Harris original, but not the copies!Today is the day we Canadians celebrate our first Prime Minister's Birthday. The records indicate he was born on the 10th, but he celebrated it on the 11th. This is a very Canadian thing to do. We celebrate Thanksgiving in October, we have our Hockey playoffs in late June or early July. Elections can happen anytime. The traditional way to celebrate Sir John A's birthday is to break a New Year's resolution. Perhaps this is because if he ever made a resolution about drinking, he broke it often. Here is what Wikipedia says about Sir John A. MacDonald and alcohol:

Macdonald was well known for his wit and also for his alcoholism. He is known to have been drunk for many of his debates in parliament. One famous story is that during an election debate Macdonald was so drunk he began vomiting violently on stage while his opponent was speaking. Picking himself up Macdonald told the crowd, "see how my opponent's ideas disgust me."
In another version of the story, he responded to his opponent's query of his drunkenness with "It goes to show that I would rather have a drunk Conservative than a sober Liberal." [Wikipedia Entry]
In any case, Sir John A set a different sort of tone for our country than George Washington set for his. {This posting may contain statements that lack support in available evidence.}

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

No comment regarding Sir John A. But I do want to ask when we'll see some movement on the page counter. It's been stuck at 92 words for days now - what's that, the title page?

Your audience wants, no, needs, action.

coyote said...

I don't think ya drew his nose red enough....

ether said...

You draw very well, David. By any chance do you know how to draw rabbits and if yes, then could you please teach me?

David Scrimshaw said...

I'm sorry, fingers, I only know how to draw cats with long ears and puffy tails

Anonymous said...

Oooh baby. Now those are graphs!

Thanks.

ether said...

Thanks David, those are wonderful 'cats with long ears and puffy tails' :)