WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, DON'T FLUSH THE DOPE

Canadians who happen to possess that legendary Canadian get-up-and-go keep
pretty quiet about it, or else they get up and go somewhere else. That's
the general feeling, anyway. It wasn't always the case.

Although it could just be the right opportunity hasn't come along.

Opportunities abound. According to TV, all you have to do is scour the back
pages of magazines to set yourself up as a distributor of franchises for
ant farms, but it might be this isn't the right opportunity for you.

For you, the right opportunity might be one where you're not guaranteed to
lose your shirt, or where you won't lose it and be regarded as a goofball
at the same time.

Here, then, is something you ought to think about. The U.S. Supreme Court,
flush with the dawning of an era the like of which hasn't been seen since a
human being killed the last Tyrannosaurus Rex and stole its lunch, said no
to selling medical marijuana.

That very same day, the U.S. Coast Guard seized a trawler that was
attempting to unload 12 tonnes of cocaine on the coast it was guarding.
Twelve tonnes is a lot. Stick 12 tonnes of cocaine up your nose and you
could light a city the size of Edmonton for a year.

Does the word "Seagram" mean anything to you?

When some of the great fortunes in Canada were made, and some of the great
brand names, it was because a few Canadians with get-up-and-go also
possessed the humanity to relieve a crying need for self-medication across
the border.

You say, wait, cocaine suppliers are traditionally Latin Americans. What a
dead-end attitude. The House of Seagram would still be the sod hut of
Seagram if there had been doubts about our ability to outmanoeuvre
foreigners (so foreign in that case that even the men wore skirts). And
these particular cocaine suppliers turned out to be Ukrainians and
Russians, not one of whom would recognize a maraca if it slithered up their
trouser leg and bit them on the haunch.

Two-thirds of the names in the phone books on the Prairies end in "owski."
And Canada produces a prime grade of marijuana (my personal efforts to
extract marching powder from Coca-Cola by boiling it on the stove have so
far been unsuccessful; at any rate, I have not yet stuck up a gas station
after snorting the residue, although mixing it with Muskol keeps the flies
out of my nostrils), and there are people down there with genuine
self-medication needs, for instance they can't stop their hair from
twitching. How can we stand by, refusing to make a fortune by offering
help? (Nobody ever heard of the CIA demanding a piece of the ant-farm action.)

Along these lines, Timothy McVeigh missed his date with destiny. Actually,
he got stood up.

McVeigh was supposed to be executed in Terre Haute, Indiana. When the show
got called off (all that evidence the FBI forgot it stored in dumpsters for
safekeeping; I have a feeling it will indicate that, even though McVeigh
swears he blew up all those people, and has receipts for all that lethal
fertilizer, and despite the witnesses who sold it to him, DNA found at the
scene will prove that he had been kidnapped at Disney World by interstellar
marauders and was, at that exact moment, being strip-searched aboard the
mother ship, something he preferred not to mention because he didn't want
people thinking he was the kind of wacko who, unaccompanied by children,
would have been waiting in line outside Cinderella's Castle in the Magic
Kingdom) - anyway, when the show got called off and all the spectators who
had been invited to watch his offing pulled up stakes and left Terre Haute,
along with all the media and their technicians and their satellite trucks,
1,600 motel rooms suddenly became vacant.

I wouldn't have thought there were 1,600 motel rooms in Terre Haute.
Probably this was how many suddenly became vacant in the Greater Terre
Haute Area.

But say we don't get the Olympics.

If the Toronto committee put half the energy into restoring the death
penalty as it has put into getting the Games - you think Parliament isn't a
pushover compared to the International Olympic Committee? - we could host
what looks like it will become the biggest crowd-puller of the 21st century.

At least we'd be cheering for our own. Don't tell me Canada doesn't have a
lot more potential hangees than medal threats.