First, let me apologize for my server issues today. It’s all related to the events of the day, and the traffic coming in from Steyn Online & Five Feet of Fury. Shit happens.

Great days like today don’t happen very often, so let me try to get it all out.

As you know I began the day in Standing Committee for Government Agencies as the Ontario Legislature. Topic of discussion being the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Not the Commission, and not the Legal Support Center - the Tribunal. This is very important, since whatever question the OHRT chair was asked, he deflected by saying it was the remit of another faction of the Human Rights racket. Typical.

The Committee broke at noon for lunch and I hooked up with Kathy Shaidle and the other Cool Kids like Dr Roy and Rick McGinnis. We retired to the basement cafeteria, where I dropped Mark a note on where to join us. He later did, and held court to a passel of his adoring public. Those of us who were in the morning session briefed him about who he would be dealing with inside.

We went upstairs in time for the afternoon session, where Mark was due to speak. This much you already know from my BlackBerry blogging (which is a pain in the ass, by the way, and not recommended except in cases of dire Steynian emergency). Here’s the link to his transcript, thanks to Denyse.

When his part of the hearing was over, Steyn and his Steynettes (us aforementioned Cool Kids) headed out into the hall where he did a small media scrum.

After about an hour of idle chit-chat in which my back began to kill due to the heels I was wearing, I determined myself to be an under-represented minority (one of 4 women in a group of easily 20 men) and insisted we retired to the bar down the street. Our gaggle of right-wing news junkies walked a couple of blocks to an Irish pub aptly named Pogue Mahone. I had passed it earlier in the day, on my way to Queen’s Park, yet I couldn’t place why the name meant something to me. It was Mike Brock who reminded us that Richard “Bravest Man Warren Kinsella Knows” Warman has used the alias Pogue Mahone when he used entrapment on the Stormfront Website. Heh. And yet there all us haters sat having a beer (or in my case a very tasty dirty martini) with Mark Steyn, in a bar called Pogue Mahone. Poetic justice.

We were about halfway through our little drinks-and-idolatry session when I realized that none of us had a clue who t he man was sitting opposite me. Had he accidentally fallen into step with us and suddenly found himself in a bar surrounded by right-wing zealots? Or had he meant to join us and none of us had bothered to get his name beforehand?

Turned out it was the latter. He muttered his name - I didn’t really catch it at first, but I sure as hell placed it later on. Shy and in awe of The Steyn, he was pretty quiet. Whatever - it takes all kinds. Mark had to get to meeting back a Queen’s Park, so our gaggle walked him back to College & University. 99.9% of us piled onto the subway at that corner, but I planned to walk back to Yonge Street.

I turned around and there was “Mutter Something C-y Something Guy”. We began to walk back to Yonge, both of us in exceptionally good moods given the day we’d been having. He began talking more openly, and we decided to pop into Fran’s to continue the conversation. Blah blah Steyn rules, blah blah Conservative government, yada yada 9/11… the typical comfortable Toronto Conservative Underground conversation. He was great fun to talk to. We exchanged business cards and I finally knew his name. Not that my clearly-not-working brain processed the information, but hey - at least I wasn’t just calling him “You There” anymore. It was an improvement.

So, a couple of beers and a club sandwich later, my new friend tells me how he ran in the 2006 election against Taliban Jack Layton in the Beaches riding. Oh, right. I thought I recognized his name. Something… something about the guy who ran against Layton. What was it? Axe murderer? No, that wasn’t it. Something…

“Even my own brother didn’t vote for me! Then again, he’s a poster child for Canada’s liberal entertainment elite, so I didn’t expect him to.”

Something…

“Entertainment? Who…?” Something… the name…

“Yeah, have you ever heard of a band called Blue Rodeo?”

At which point I spritzed Diet Pepsi halfway across Fran’s.

Holy sweet tap dancing Jesus!

Heard of them? Every break up and break down for almost 20 years, every road trip, every solo bender with a bottle or three of wine… Heard of them? Have I ever heard of one of North America’s most prolific songwriters? Jim Cuddy’s voice is as much a part of my life as my own, or my ex-husband’s or my dog’s. My relationship with Blue Rodeo’s music has actually lasted longer than the relationship I had with my late mother, who was only with me for 14 years.

So yeah, that was my afternoon with Loftus Cuddy.

What a day, ladies and gents. What an awesome goddam day. I know I’ve posted this clip before, but it’s my favorite. It’s almost an anthem (though I never thought that part about my house being on fire would ever come true, till it did).

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Freedom of Speech, Personal, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.