When I aw half-empty bottles of beer, half-finished bags of potato chips and spilled glasses of Coke on the coffee table recently in the Queen’s Park press lounge, I knew that someone must have yelled: “Bomb,” “Fire,” or “The boss is coming!”

Something scary has happened to cause this kind of panic in the press gallery because in all the years that I’ve been there__ I’ve never seen anybody leave half a bottle of beer.  Maybe it’s some journalist code of honour.

This was the scene that greeted me when I was let into Queen’s Park late in the afternoon after Bob Rae’s Commandos has failed to storm the building.

It was the opening session of Parliament and the cabinet was being swon in.  About 2,000 NDP losers turned out to complain (I think it’s called sour grapes) about the new and freely-elected government of Premier Mike Harris..  In a democracy—rioters may have forgotten—we don’t “attack” parliament because “our side” lost.  It would have just as foolish as if scaled the walls at Queen’s Park to attack the Premier Bob with their croquet mallets.

Security is very difficult to maintain at Queen’s Park at any time and I have to give the police and security staff a lot of credit for handling of a difficult situation.  There are so many doors leading into the maize like legislature.

The building was being stormed by Bob’s Commandos and the good guys defending the building were being pummeled by the people who were trying to get to the printing press they thought was hidden in the basement where all the government cheques  are written.

It ws then that security announced they had received a telephoned message that a bomb had been planted in the building and they ordered it closed.  This cause a bit of panic—the elevators were immobilized and everyone had to reace downstairs only to find no one was allowed out or in.

There have been so many bomb threats at Queen’s Park over the years that somebody had circulated a sheet detailing what to say when someone phones in a bomb threat.  We were to ask him/her:

  • How big is your bomb?”
  • “When it is set to go off?”
  • “Where approximately did you place it?”
  • “What group are you seeking publicity for?”
  • “Is this your first bombing attempt?”
  • “Could I have your name and phone number—in case I have to call you back for further details”

Eric Dowd, a veteran journalist at the Park, usually ignores bomb threats and looks out his window with a wry smile at the people scrambling away from the building.  I think Eric would rather chance being blown to bits tan run down the equivalent of six flights of stairs and risk having a heart attack.

When no bomb was discovered in the building, people were allowed to leave using a tunnel under University Avenue to a government building a short distance away and then some of them returned to Queen’s Park to see what was happening.

The mob they saw didn’t represent the people of Ontario.  Instead, they represented a lot of pressure groups (taxpayer-financed for the most part) performing for the media.  This is only the beginning of these demonstrations, they claim.

I noticed there was no group there complaining about former Attorney General Marion “pro-abort” Boyd blowing over a million dollars of taxpayers’ money chasing 18 pro-lifers around.

That was just another Bob Rae boondoggle—in a long list of tax-funded boondoggles that was creating a spending has a habit of adding up. (Just ask me.)  The international bankers are slobbering at our doorstep and will show less mercy than Mike Harris.

But to attack the fireman who is trying to put out the fire that started in earnest some ten years in a building called Ontario is, I think, short-sighted.