I got a call from Premier Don Pennell last week. I barely had recovered from celebrating the upset victory of the Family Coalition Party in the recent Ontario election that reduced the NDP to enough members to play a game of chess.
I offered my congratulations to Don and reminded him that I supported him dutifully (and every other off-the-wall pro-life initiative as well) all these years but I wasn’t the kind of a cheap hanger-on who would support a party in order to get a soft job.
Don offered me a soft job. Don offered me the job of Chief Justice of the Ontario Supreme Court! How could I turn down a good friend? Anyway it’s nice to start at the top – it saves a lot of bootlicking getting there. Those justices that Don hadn’t been able to fire (after reading their confidential files) he pensioned off summarily and there was now a vacancy for the top job.
Don reasoned that if the NDP could have a bumbling kindergarten teacher, Marion Boyd, as Attorney General of Ontario, why couldn’t the Family Coalition Party have a “bumbling newspaper hack” as Chief Justice?
I took this as some kind of reverse form of flattery and hurriedly accepted his job offer. After all I reasoned – a hanger-on has got to eat too. And the pay sounded like the receipts in Canada from the GST.
I raced into Osgood Hall and asked a uniformed cop where the office of the Chief Justice of the Ontario Supreme Court was and was directed upstairs. When I opened the door of the spacious office previously occupied by the chief justice – it looked like a bomb had hit the place. There were overturned chairs and empty whiskey bottles all over. The filing cabinets gaped open – empty as NDP promises. The walls were bare and there were pictures scattered all over the floor. I picked up an autographed picture of Bob Rae and got it into the wastepaper basket with the first shot.
There were also big pictures of Stephen Lewis, Marion Boyd, Margaret Sanger, Jack Layton, Henry Morgentaler, Clayton Ruby, Judy Rebick, Morris Manning and others of their ilk. I took a great joy in drop-kicking the pictures all over the office.
Unfortunately, the crown prosecutor Ms. Flora Flathead, burst into my office and caught me in the middle of this performance but chose to ignore it. Flathead said that I was wanted immediately in courtroom number three. A young police officer was appealing his conviction of five years in jail for trying to prevent a young couple from having an abortion. According to her – it was a serious charge – the abortion had been delayed for 90 minutes.
The couple had gone ahead with the abortion anyway but they were still upset about having to watch “The Silent Scream” twenty times. Flathead said that officer had been fired on the spot and a lower court had also fined him $100,000. I was to hear the appeal.
I hurriedly put on my robes and rushed to the courtroom. On the way down, Ms. Flathead cautioned me that she was aware that the new government was rumoured to be strongly pro-life but she hoped I would be impartial. “Yes,” I said, “as partial as Marion Boyd.” She became hysterical and I had to get her a glass of water and an aspirin.
You may have read the outcome of the case. I dismissed the case against the police officer and ordered the government to pick up the legal costs. (I’m sending the bill to Bob Rae). I also ordered that he receive a full pardon, back pay and a police apology. And if you read the paper recently, you would see that he is now the new Deputy Chief of Police for the City of Toronto – David Parker.
I also fired the crown prosecutor, Ms. Flathead. The last I saw her she was pulling a rickshaw up University Avenue.
And I’ve arranged to hear an appeal of a stiff overnight parking fine by somebody named Morgentaler. He doesn’t realize the seriousness of what he has done. If he gets away with overnight parking – God knows what he might end up doing.
I see a long trip up the river for him.
