"The Fun Police are Watching"

Tim Oleson's "parting shot" from Golf Business Canada, Summer 2009 issue.

British writer, G.K. Chesteron thought that to enjoy the indulgences of the flesh, the simple pleasures of life:  "We give thanks for beer and burgundy by not abusing them."  That's probably how it should be, and how it is in most parts of the world with the cruel exception of Canada.

In other places, governments sort of assume that people will behave responsibly.  Here in Canada, we tend to assume that we must regulate people's behaviour down to the last detail.  After all, if we don't regulate how many government-monopolized drinks they may have on the table at a time, in what dark, cold, wind-swept alleys they can smoke their tobacco and -- this is coming soon -- how much and what kind of food they can eat, they will all completely lose control and become obese, cancer-ridden alcoholics.

Canada probably never really had any chance to have any fun.  Its founding people were:  French Catholics--many of them Jansenists, an ascetic sect that does not believe in enjoying anything; and British Protestants -- many of whom were of puritan stock and believed that these sorts of pleasures were downright evil.  Today, 63 years after Chesterton's death, things aren't much better, just different.

When I was young, there was not a single bottle of liquor on display in the government liquor stores; they were all kept behind the veil.  At least today, one can browse before buying a bottle at the government's arbitrary prices, if one can fit one's shopping trip into the government stores' arbitrary hours.

If you don't want to drink at home, you will have to go to a bar where the government has set both the hours it can be open and the minimum price you will have to pay for your drink.  This last is defended as a means to curtail drunkenness.

Those bars will also be completely smoke free; with nowhere for you to enjoy both a cigarette and a "CC water back", because no matter how good a ventilation system the bar might have, the government does not want you to smoke so you will have to go outside to enjoy your tobacco.

The campaign to ban fast foods is gaining momentum so quickly that it can't be long until, if you don't want to order a salad or a tofu sandwich off a government-approved menu, you might as well go straight home, hide in your basement and eat a black-market hot-dog, sip a beer and smoke the cigarette you are no longer allowed to smoke in your own car.  Just hope your nosy neighbour doesn't wise up to what you are doing and inform the anti-pleasure police.

Canada is no longer a country of just Jansenists and puritans.  It just acts like it is even though it is various and cosmopolitan.  Why should that vast majority who "give thanks for beer and burgundy by not abusing them," be punished for their pleasures because of the excesses of a few?

Source:  Abridged.  Original article:  "The fun police are watching you" by editorial writer and columnist Tim Oleson, Winnipeg Free Press, April 25, 2009.

"There's a fun police?" gulps Kia.