Whenever someone says to me, "I have some good news and I have some bad news," I choose the good news first. People with a deeper understanding of the human psyche’s complex workings could probably explain all the subtle nuances of this predilection, maybe even trace its roots back to unresolved issues during toilet training, the discovery Santa wasn’t… I still can’t say it, or the pony I’m still waiting for.
I tend to see it as an outward manifestation of my basically upbeat, positive nature. Discerning readers have, I’m sure, a well-developed insight into my bright, cheery outlook on life. I’ll always choose the good news first. Who knows, I might drop dead before I get the bad news. The teller might forget the bad news after seeing my unrestrained glee at hearing the good news. The bad news might actually be for someone else.
So the good news is the election’s over. More or less. Kinda. The better news is we’re ramping up to the holiday season, peace on Earth, goodwill… yada yada ya. Time to leave the contentious issues behind, embrace people for whom we have no respect the rest of the year, real National Brotherhood Week stuff.
The bad news is the election’s not quite over. It’s six-sevenths over. Let’s face it, if you were doing a really unpleasant job, washing dishes after a big turkey dinner for example, you’d be feeling pretty good by the time you reached the six-sevenths mark.
But there’s still work left to do. The devil’s in the details. I guess that makes it the devil’s work.
There’s a tie. At least there was when I wrote this. Improbably 1,057 voters cast votes for each of Dave Kirk and Marianne Wade. The odds of the same 1,057 people having voted for each of them is even more improbable but I like to think that’s what happened. What I’d really like to think happened is that 1,057 people were undecided, read this column two weeks ago and dutifully voted for both Dave and Marianne on my say so because they know in their heart of hearts I’d never lead them astray.
For you 1,057 people, I have one more favour to ask. What I’d like each of you to do in, oh say the next week, is slip five bucks into an envelope, put my name on it and mail it or drop it by the Pique offices. That oughta cover the rent increase I’m facing for the next two years. Otherwise I have to either leave town or eat Zippy the Dog.
On the other hand, if the remaining 2,000 of you who voted and didn’t heed my recommendations – possibly because you have fundamental, unresolved issues about my credibility or soundness of mind – would like to slip a fiver by the Pique in my name, I’ll be happy to leave town or eat Zippy the Dog. Just mark the outside of the envelope accordingly.
But I digress. We have a job to do and procrastination won’t get it done.
The courts or election officialdom might decide our tie. Seems there was one ballot the machine choked on. Someone voted for six councillors but made a "random" mark close enough to another name to trick the voting machine into thinking he or she was trying to pull a fast one and vote for seven. I have a different theory. Having to hold the marking device in one hand, that left only one hand to count with. Five fingers, six votes, you see what I’m getting at. Obviously the marks in question were just that person’s running tally of how many votes they’d cast, marked next to a name they knew they weren’t interested in voting for.
If the tie isn’t broken on a technicality – and what better way to break a tie – we’re in for a runoff election. I think I can safely speak for all of us when I say no one is interested in a runoff election. We’d all like to put this sordid affair behind us and move on to more important things. Skiing for example.
Some municipalities in British Columbia have bylaws covering ties. They’ve opted, apparently with the blessing of the Local Government Act, to resolve ties by employing the time-tested democratic method of drawing lots. Drawing lots was invented during biblical times – ironically to choose scapegoats who would be cast into the desert to bear the sins all the townsfolk had accumulated since the last scapegoat – and was viewed then as a vast improvement on the process it replaced: eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Of course, it has long since been replaced by much more sophisticated, modern methodologies: rock, paper, scissors being perhaps the pinnacle of man’s achievement in the area.
But Whistler has no such bylaw. I think it’s time to consider one. Like so many other things, we should craft a bylaw more reflective of our unique place in the world, our roots. Drawing lots, in a town where lots cost a million bucks, seems profligate. The money could be better spent on consultants or a host of other things.
Such a bylaw could also help us get back in touch with our core values. I’m not comfortable with the attempts to recast our happy mountain home as a Mountain Resort. Maybe it’s the reactionary in me, but I still like to think of this place as a ski town.
Skiing – all inclusive term embracing our boarding brothers and sisters without whom we’d have even less to complain about – is our core and it will always be our strength, assuming we can figure out some way to actually get more people to take it up since most of us are dying out and the folks who run the show keep setting prices out of reach of any sane person who hasn’t already been plagued with the addiction.
Clearly, the only ‘Whistler’ way to settle a tie is with a ski off. A GS down the Dave Murray Downhill or, reflecting the declining popularity of traditional ski racing, an all-mountain event showcasing the contestants’ ability at powder, moguls, speed and air.
Some would say this unfairly handicaps non-skiers who find themselves in a tie. Tough. Anybody suffering the deprivations of living here who doesn’t ski is obviously insane and shouldn’t be governing us anyway.
And this runoff
