There’s no friend like a Good Stick by Gerry Warner

Bull River Rumble

NOTE: Thanks to Gerry Warner for agreeing to launch the "Good Stick" stories. If you would like to participate, please email me at mj.morris@live.ca with Good stick in the subject line. MJM

By Gerry Warner

My “good stick,” which I’ve carried faithfully for almost 40 years, started as a birch sapling growing on the banks of Carpenter Creek near the ghost town of Sandon in the West Kootenay. Its bark was red like cherry wood because birch trees don’t develop their distinctive, peeling white color until they get a bit older than my wooden companion which was probably only a few years old when I cut it.

It was a handsome stick, unlike its owner, and I did some carving on it to give it a square grip, which made it even more distinctive something like its bearded owner. Now this was back in the mid-1970’s when few hikers carried sticks or even poles like so many do today. So I was a bit ahead of the curve in those days unlike today when you see hikers and walkers that seldom stray from sidewalks shuffling along—not with a beaten up, old, organic stick – but but with a gleaming, set of space-age, titanium or steel poles in case they get blown over by a summer breeze or a butterfly lands on their shoulder causing them to fall down and break a leg.

But I digress.

No, I’m not kidding about the age of my stick. I’ve probably had it more than 40 years and it’s showing its age. Most of the gleaming, scarlet – it really was scarlet – bark has long since peeled off even though I used to wax and varnish it on occasion. A short section also splintered off the lower end of the old birch wood stick and the wood left now is a dirty gray color far from the translucent red. But oh, the places we’ve been.

I carried and leaned on that stick for more than 200 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail, starting in Manning Park and going as far as Snoqualmie Pass in the Washington Cascades. I still dream of taking it, or it taking, me, all the way to the end of the Crest Trail in Mexico, but that will probably remain a dream. On another occasion, I used my trusty, old stick as a mast to hold a sail as I canoed down Lake Laberge on my way down the Yukon River to Dawson City. It shortened that long northern trip by at least a day.

Moyie Falls

Oddly enough. I didn’t take it with me when I walked the 400 miles or so along the El Camino Santiago in Spain because I was afraid its trail-worn character wouldmake it a likely target for a thief or it might have ended up as lost plane baggage on the trip over and back. Nor did I use it when I hiked into Everest Base Camp for largely the same reasons.

But I’ve hauled it almost to the top of Mt. Fisher several times, but abandoned it temporarily when I reached the exposed section of the peak where I needed both hands more than my faithful stick. And yes, I always hide it under the boulders and crevices of the saddle because it has been with me for so long I get more paranoid about somebody stealing it every year. And don’t knock paranoia. It gets worse with old age.

Summit Over Kindersley Pass

As I reflect back on the history of my “Old Stick,” I can’t help but wonder, who’s going to be around the longest? Tempered by all those hiking trips and being banged around from hither to yon. that stick, if anything, is stronger than it was when I rudely cut it down in the leafy, wilds of Carpenter Creek. As for me, I’m doing pretty good for a septuagenarian, a new septuagenarian I might add. But I’m not kidding myself. You only get so many years on this mortal coil. The flesh, if not the soul, is growing weaker and my day of reckoning is coming.

And you know something? If that damn stick outlasts me, I’ve just decided to change my will.
I want to be buried with that old hunk of Kootenay wood.

Duffy trial reveals ugly truths about Canadian democracy

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

A “Great Senator” and “one of my best, hardest-working appointments ever.”
None other than Prime Minister Stephen Harper scrawled this effusive piece of puffery in silver marker on a picture of Mike Duffy just five months after the PM appointed the now-disgraced senator to his job.
An enlarged copy of the photo was introduced as an exhibit in court Thursday on the third day of Duffy’s trial on 31 criminal counts of fraud, breach of trust and bribery.
And there are 39 trial dates to go in what is shaping up to be an unvarnished look inside the seamy underbelly of federal politics in Canada and when it’s over there will be bodies stacked outside the courthouse door. Three in particular. Let’s begin at the top.
From day one of this tawdry affair, Stephen Harper insisted he knew nothing of the potentially criminal machinations going on in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) much like Manuel in the great British comedy “Fawlty Towers” whimpering “I know nothing.”
Dear reader, in your heart-of-hearts, do you believe that? Does this sound like the iron-fisted, micro-managing Prime Minister that for the past 11 years has been running Canada off the corner of his desk? The peerless leader renowned for his anal-retentive control of the PMO and the entire Conservative Party. If you believe that, I have a Mike Duffy Bobble Head doll I’ll send to you.
Of course, we may never find out, because unlike our American neighbors to the south, who on occasion impeach their presidents and bring them to trial where they’re submitted to cross-examination and other nasty things to protect their
democracy, we don’t do things that way in Canada. We just take our leaders at their word and wouldn’t embarrass them by calling on them to testify.
At least that’s how it appears so far, but that may change before this trial is over.
Then there’s poor Nigel Wright, Harper’s former, ever-obliging, chief-of-staff who would take a bullet for his boss, and did in fact, a $90,000 silver bullet that he used to shut up a recalcitrant, now suspended senator, who believes in his heart-of-hearts that he never did anything wrong – and his trial may prove him right – but was damn determined not to be the scape goat for what he believed most of his fellow Senate colleagues were doing.
And who says Canada can’t produce juicy political scandals with the best of them?
Then there’s our much, maligned, in-glorious Senate, our supposed “Sober Chamber of Second Thought,” which every Prime Minister in Canadian history has appointed members to, who promptly engaged in partisan political activity on behalf of their benefactors. But none did it better than Mike Duffy, who raised thousands, if not millions, for Conservative coffers much to the delight of the Conservative Party and its latest glorious leader, Generalissimo Harper, our great war time leader. (You know this stuff just kinda writes itself, but I digress.)
And which of you dear readers out there think our glorious, unelected Red Chamber will still have the support of Canadian voters when this tawdry trial is over?
Remember there’s more trials to come with pillars of rectitude like suspended Senator Pamela Wallin, who faces numerous charges of having her nose in the trough right beside Duffy and suspended Senator Patrick Brazeau, who was suspended from the Senate after being charged with domestic assault and sexual assault and now runs an Ottawa strip club called the BareFax. Honestly, I’m not making this up.
Dear Canadians, we’ve been had by this crew and thank God we still have a legal system that’s hopefully capable of getting to the bottom of this sleazy affair that is an insult to our intelligence and the credibility of our soiled democracy. And when it’s over I hope we can rebuild a strong and credible democracy but it won’t be with the likes of the politicians and apparatchiks mentioned in this article.
Especially the prime minister.


Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who once tried politics himself.