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Well the weather here in the Maritimes is gradually getting colder but it is still not the average / normal temperature for this time of the year, the weather guy is reluctant to call it climate change but says it is not good. Which is about the same as not being positive without not wanting to alarm the population. People have other worries, one being the pandemic and the other a possible national election and the economy.

In Parliament we have spent 5 long years now with the Conservative aping the GOP in the USA and constantly attacking the Prime Minister and now attacking his elderly mother, his brother and his wife, all private citizens who have no role in public life. All the while never mentioning the Pandemic as a source of concern for them as a party.

Today Tuesday 21 October we will find out if the Opposition Parties in the House of Commons force an election on the minority Government of PM Trudeau or not. The Conservative are proposing an investigation into alleged corruption and want to set up yet another committee. So far we have had 3 months of investigation and much defamation of family members of PM Trudeau and innocent bystanders but nothing proven and this frustrates the Opposition. The Government shot back that this is a Confidence motion and the Prime Minister is willing to go see the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and go to an election now. Confidence of the House in the ruling party is everything in our system. No confidence no government, it’s that simple, however the Conservatives are aware that Canadians do not want an election now in a second wave of the Pandemic. Polls also suggest the Liberals would probably win a majority this time around. It is all discouraging because this is a ploy for power and naked ambition by the Conservatives to win power at any cost, voters are taken for patsies. Sad state of affairs all around, I have no confidence in the Conservative party given the type of white extremists they attract and the failure of their leader Erin O’Tool to denounce them.

On another topic all together, after Will made his green tomato pie last week. Mrs Lori Brown in Imboden, Arkansas came up with her own recipe yesterday on You Tube. I liked her recipe a lot, the results according to Mr Brown is like a Granny Smith Apple Pie, a little tart but good.

LINK: https://youtu.be/fALXq1hc_Ak

This month of October is the 50th Anniversary of the FLQ Crisis in Quebec which saw martial law imposed and the Canadian army march and occupy the city and surrounding areas and the Capital Ottawa. The British Commercial Counsellor in Montreal, James Cross and a senior Minister of the Quebec Government Pierre Laporte were kidnapped in broad daylight. The FLQ had been for many years prior to those events on a bombing campaign around Montreal targeting mainly Mailboxes. The events had a dramatic end with the murder of Pierre Laporte and the release of British diplomat James Cross. The FLQ cells were dismantled and the culprits exiled to Cuba at their request. The most dramatic moment was when the Government of Canada allowed the reading of the FLQ manifesto on television. Many French speaking Canadians agreed with the claims of the FLQ. A few years later the Parti Quebecois would become the government in Quebec and hold a referendum on separation from Canada. As for the leaders of the movement they returned to Canada a few years later and some found public service jobs. It was a dramatic period in the history of Canada which changed the dynamic of the country forever. My family was living in Montreal at the time and I remember going through army check points every day to go to school. We were too young to understand or appreciate what was happening. All this seems so far away now.

Montreal, October 1970

BREAKING NEWS!!! The nail-biter 146-180 vote in the House of Commons came down in large part to the NDP. Its 24 representatives voted alongside the Liberals and the Greens’ three-member caucus in defeating a Conservative motion that would have precipitated a snap election amid the second wave of the pandemic. So the Prime Minister J Trudeau and his government will continue to govern, no elections for now.