Wendy and I have just returned from a week in London – we try to do that once, hopefully twice a year and it usually happens when Wendy comes up to my computer to which I’m attached by memory stick and says, “Love – time for London so you can take off the 10 years put on since we were there in January”.

This time I was forbidden to bring my laptop or in any way make contact with news from home so that last Friday I came home to just under 500 emails most of which were concerned about my sex life. But I did get three emails that struck home, all three of which dealt with the constant question I hear: Rafe (sometimes the appellation isn’t as polite as that) why don’t you quit?

My stock answer is that I missed 50, 55, 60, 65, 70 and 75 so it’s too late.

But back to the three letters.
#1 asked “Dear bleep, why don’t you (international term for go away) and give yourself and us a permanent break?”

#2 informed me of my new American Express card and # 3 was my new disabled parking card, both of which expire in 2013, forcing me to ask myself what were the odds of me not expiring before they do.

#2 and #3 seemed to me as making the answer to #1 obligatory which I beg leave to make right here.

I was born cantankerous, which I learned as I went was a rejection of accepted wisdom and a lifetime disagreement with the “establishment” – of which my family were definitely a part. For as long as I can remember I questioned things like the Monarchy, racist policies, treatment of the poor, and the unlucky and rejected the notion that the poor were lazy louts looking for a societal hand-out. I was a child of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, when great social upheavals were taking place all over the world. Oddly enough, I never became a CCF/NDP supporter because they always seemed to me to be long on recognizing and reporting societal ills and short on practical solutions.

I grew up in Vancouver when there were still trout streams, dank woods with semi-lakes that held salamanders and oceans full of fish. This made me an easy target for environmentalism though I admit this happened over time – a time when, like everyone else, I threw cigarette packages and the finished cigarettes away where I happened to be when finished, lobbed beer cans out of the car window, and killed far more fish than I could ever use. When now I moan at environmental desecration there’s a healthy dose of uneasy conscience involved.

My epiphany (for want of a better term) as  an environmentalist coincided with a learning curve that exposed an unalterable truth: the establishment, including the business community and the people they bought and paid for, and sometimes even trade unions, will lie through their teeth if it suits them and the older I get, the more obvious that is.

I realize that this is scarcely a new phenomenon but it clearly continues to grow until we’ve reached the state where a Premier and his government lie as a necessary strategy for the way they rule us and a media which, because of the way they conduct themselves, aid and abet this lying by ignoring it.

I think my anger became white-hot and remained so with the Charlottetown Accord, an issue I had been deeply involved with in its spawning years during the Trudeau regime’s patriation of the constitution. (I thoroughly agree with the result but I learned a great deal about government deception as the issue moved along). The Charlottetown Accord was deception practiced by the entire Canadian Establishment en masse. One large media company, MacLean Hunter, even registered on the “Yes” side for God’s sake! Capital, Labour, academics, the artsy-fartsy put their own interests ahead of the national issue and fortunately the public found that out.

I got involved in the Kemano II issue and saw how a conspiracy of industry and government could cover up the hugeness of their calamitous policy which was only thwarted when the DFO scientists, who had been eased out of their positions by a compliant DFO, blew the whistle and Premier Mike Harcourt had the guts to do the right thing.

Then came the issue of a gravel pit in the Pitt River system – which again was industry not giving a damn about the environmental consequences – and was stopped in its tracks by Premier Glen Clark.

This takes us to the fish farm debacle and the courageous fight led by Alexandra Morton in the face of a government that wanted to put her in jail for exposing the rape of our waters by offshore companies which knew, because of their experience elsewhere, that siting fish farms in the path of migrating salmon would spell death to the salmon. We saw and continue to see a government, elected by the people of BC, lying, obfuscating and burying evidence – all of which they continue to do to this day.

Then came the 2002 “Energy Policy” where in each and every manifestation depends upon a coalition of greedy capital and dishonest government to continue to destroy our environment to make multi billions of dollars for the likes of General Electric and Warren Buffett as they sell off our electricity, extorted from BC Hydro by sweetheart deals imposed on it by the Campbell government.

Over the past 2 years it has become obvious that the Energy Policy is a tissue of lies which, far from helping BC get new power, in fact sends that power elsewhere potentially bankrupting BC Hydro, our company, in the process.

The acclaimed filmmaker, Damien Gillis, and I will be travelling around the province this fall informing people of the truth about what Campbell & Co. are doing. What’s as important if not more so, we’ll be telling citizens of BC what alternatives there are for an energy policy for British Columbians, not for Mr. Buffett and friends. Damien will be showing his marvelous videos, many guest speakers will underscore what must be stopped and what must be done, and I will be a principal speaker at them all.

My role will be to synthesize the enormous wealth of information brought to the Common Sense Canadian by its illustrious “Contributors”, outstanding British Columbians whom you will see introduced on our website, www.thecanadian.org.

Back to the main question – why don’t I just retire and go away?

From a personal standpoint, I don’t know what the hell I would do with myself if I did. And as Wendy reminds me, “I married you for better or for worse … but not for lunch!”

I admit the wisdom of Robbie Burns gave us when he observed “O wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as others see us”. And it is as others see me upon which I must make my judgment.

When the time comes for me to quit, I hope I recognize that and, failing that, my comrades-in-arms let me know.

In the meantime my main effort is to make sure that I’m around to get a new disabled parking pass and a fresh Amex card in 2013.