Minerva's Ark,the Ship We Sailed in at Jarvis Collegiate in the "60s

Regular readers know that there is a group of guys –proud alums of JCI from the 1960s - who hold a Golf Tournament & Reunion/Revival each year. Benita has often asked about the people involved. When I sent the details of the 2013 event to The Diary the other day an interesting thing happened!  Lady Minerva calls and says: “If I’m going to promote this event, I want to know who these people are. What are they like? What keeps them interested in getting together? What have they done for the last 50 years or so?”

In deference to Benita and particularly Lady Minerva, this short piece is offered. It is not about any specific alum, but about us all.

By “all”, I mean a group of about 50, a number we grow a little each year. We share a fascinating Jarvis experience, and are all about the same age. To a man there is a respect for Jarvis, many of the teachers and coaches and each other. We enjoy golf and love to tell stories. We like to play and participate in the broadest sense of both words. Most important, we are good friends. How we got to be is not a simple story; we came from very different places and backgrounds, but we’ll try to explain. 

Reach Out; Don't Preach Out!

Mr. Kevin Deveaux wrote recently for a CBC podcast about the need for Parliament to become better at reaching out to the public. (http://fw.to/CftGONX). 

Deveaux makes a good point, and he’s certainly not alone. As reported in the Toronto Star (November 24^th) Stephen Lewis recalled the respect that existed in the Ontario Legislature during the William Davis years which he attributed (in part) to the attitude of the Premier. Lewis was quoted as saying: “Vitriolic nastiness in debate does not breed respect…nor does the spectre of …exercising authoritarian control.”  

I served as Director of Research for a Select Committee of the Ontario Legislature on the Highway Transportation of Goods. It sat during a time of minority government (1976/77). The members of the Committee represented 3 parties and became a cohesive unit in search of reason as they reached out to the public, industry groups and other government bodies. It traveled to every corner of Ontario and examined regulatory systems in the US and parts of Europe. As noted in the Final Report, the Committee went to great lengths to ensure that its inquiry would be open and fair and would consider all the views of all who wanted and should be consulted.  The Chairman said in the final report: “…the Members of the Committee approached the task with vigour and a sense of purpose which enabled them to ...report on time and with unanimity…I congratulate them for their ability to work well together…”

There is need for our politicians and governmental systems to reach out and not preach out; my experience suggests that the Multi-party committee philosophy & model can be extremely useful to this end.  We know that people of different political persuasions can work together (and often enjoy doing so). We also know it creates better public policy…and that is what we need…public policy, not policy.

Getting Back to Keeping On

I am becoming sadly cynical about people who don't follow through with their undertakings to "get back to others." Sure, I've missed or forgotten a few deadlines, but despite the constant to and fro via Twitter and Facebook and other social media, it shocks me that people who say they'll get back on a subject, very often don't. It seems to me that it's trending. Is it that there is just too much noise out there for people to remember what they said they'd do? Or is it that today's tweets are more important than what we said we'd do yesterday? I still prefer voice-to-voice (if not actual face-face) communications. I sense that with the dwindling use of phones as phones the "etiquette of replying" is dying. Any comments?