Not Encouraging Signs

I have a Lost Cat ad in the Free Press, right now; I got a call from somebody near St. Vital Park letting me know that a friendly black cat had been around the neighbourhood for the last few days. So I drove down there, searched for it, tracked it a bit, picked it up when it cheerfully came over to me, thanked the callers for their help, and took it out to the Humane Society to be checked on.

Naturally this wasn't my cat, of course, after all of that. Quite a similar cat, yes, but I'm not lucky enough for things to work out that easily. It did have a tattoo, and it's already safe and sound at the Humane Society, so its owners will have no trouble finding it -- and I guess it's nice to know I can at least find other people's cats and get them returned home safely. Lucky me!

I take my meager comforts and my silver linings where I can get them, I guess. A man's got to keep his morale up somehow. Which must be why this Free Press article made me chuckle a little.

My Double Honours was in History and Political Studies, as you'll recall; if you wait long enough, just about anything eventually falls under one or both of these categories. And I always enjoy thinking about how people in the future will look back on us folk here in the present day; for example, they will probably assume we as a generation had no taste in music whatsoever. (And they'll probably be right to think so, depending on what songs are eventually held up as defining the decade.)

One game that can be played in this exercise, and one I never seem to get tired of, is considering how our leaders or icons of today will be remembered in the tomorrows to come. I bring this up because of that article. Because years from now, when people look back on Sam Katz and his tenure as Mayor, this is something they will genuinely and truthfully be able to say:

"It was after people started stabbing each other in the neck downtown in broad daylight that Mayor Katz promised better police coverage for the area, not by hiring more cops, but by making the small crop of existing cops work harder."



Boy are we ever going to get laughed at by future generations.