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Police lay more charges in infant remains case
Tue. Jun. 9 2009 The Canadian Press
LONDON, Ont. -- A woman described as a recluse was back in custody and facing additional charges Tuesday after police discovered that infant remains found in a southern Ontario home were in fact the badly decomposed bodies of three babies who may have died years ago. The grisly find left police with a slew of unanswered questions ahead of an autopsy to be performed Thursday, including the sex of the children, the causes of death, and their relationship to the woman charged.
Last week, I was at a coffee shop in an office building in Burlington, Ontario while I was waiting for a business meeting to start. The coffee shop had a very nice setup which included a self-serve coffee bar, lots of tables and chairs, and two wall-mounted flat-screen tvs showing the news. They were showing the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) news channel. As I sipped my coffee, I alternated between looking over my notes for the meeting, watching the news, and observing the people who passed in and out of the coffee shop. I was half daydreaming when I noticed that everyone in the coffee shop had stopped in place and mid-sentence to watch the story on the tv about the lady from London, Ontario, referenced in the news excerpt above. The reporter was talking about the investigation into how the babies died and whose babies they were.
Two ladies were standing near me, and one asked the other, in horrified disbelief, "Did she have miscarriages or did she just kill some babies?" Her friend replied, "I have no idea. It's just insane."
A guy in his mid-forties who had been making coffee and watching the news as well, turned to them and proclaimed to everyone in the room, "Oh, hey, don't even TRY to follow the US news. Everything is so messed up there!"
An awkward silence ensued that did not allow me enough time to formulate an appropriate response until finally the lady behind the counter said, "Uh, this is the Canadian news. This is in Canada." Everone just stared at the guy as if they couldn't figure out how he missed the big golf-ball-like CBC logo in the lower corner of the screen. Someone else muttered, "Yeah, this is in Canada."
The guy quickly grabbed his coffee and scuttled out of the room. I fought the urge to chase him down, but wondered if he really believed that bad things only happen in the US.
There are crazy people everywhere, and the number of crazy people is likely proportionate to the total population no matter where you go. As Sarah says, "The US has pure numbers on its side."
Several years ago, after attending the wedding of a distant acquaintance and listening to the pastor's sermon about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, Sarah and I made a decision that we wouldn't attend any weddings unless 1) it was the wedding of a very close relative, or 2) it was the wedding of a couple who saw our marriage with the same seriousness and as having the same weight as any official heterosexual marriage. The second scenario involved a lot of imagining how certain people would behave if they attended a same-sex wedding ceremony. It's not as simple as it sounds to determine whether or not someone actually would view such a non-traditional wedding as legitimate.
Sure, we know a fair amount of individuals who claim they would take a same-sex wedding seriously, but most of these people, in their desperation to show just how okay they are with those types of events, end up making it clear that to them it's "cute" or some type of interesting curiosity. I believe a lot of people would like to attend a same-sex marriage ceremony just to say they did, just to prove to themselves, their gay acquaintances, and their straight friends how accepting and tolerant they are. In these situations, I knew the people (both gay and straight) who regarded same-sex ceremonies as cute and amusing were not taking the whole matter as seriously as they would the opposite-sex marriage. These same people would refer to opposite-sex ceremonies with solemn reverence rather than curious amusement.
(This belief that many who claim to view same and opposite-sex marriages as equivalents really don't is substantiated by the reaction I had from several "friends" and relatives when Sarah and I were forced to spend nine months apart while she had to return to England because she didn't have a US visa. The utter lack of sympathy from people I thought cared about us and even the admonishments I had for my sadness and self-pity was stunning. I know these same people would have been falling over themselves to support friends or relatives involuntarily separated from their opposite-sex spouses.)
But how can I blame people for not taking a same-sex marriage ceremony (in the US) as seriously as an opposite-sex marriage? One is a legal contract with legal significance, and the other is not. One has consequences if the contract is to be dissolved, and the other does not.. And, many look upon same-sex weddings with the same patronizing amusement one feels when watching six-year olds stage a pretend wedding--and why shouldn't they? A six-year old's play wedding has just as much significance and legal standing as a same-sex ceremony in most US states.
Of course, the many mass "weddings" staged at gay rights protests don't help anyone to take these commitments seriously, either. Sarah and I first "married" in 2000 at the Millennium March in Washington D.C. We consider that our actual marriage (even though we were later married in Windsor in 2006 for legal reasons), but hose types of mass ceremonies, with no legal significance, allow many couples to spontaneously make a public statement of commitment that they can break at any time. So many of the gay people we know have taken part in these mass ceremonies, but I don't know any who are still in the same relationship now. Perhaps we gay Americans need to start attaching the solemnity, gravity, and formality to all of our commitment ceremonies, legal or not, as is found in the majority of opposite-sex ceremonies.
Anyway, earlier this month, Sarah and I made a trip to northern Michigan to go to the wedding of a friend we knew through our volunteering at the humane society in Grand Rapids. Following our own rules about which weddings we will and won't attend, we know our friend Jen (and her fiancé Andrew) regard us in the same way they regard any other married couple. We left from Kitchener, Ontario and drove up around Lake Huron and down to Michigan through Sault Ste. Marie. We went through the border where the US border agent asked us lots of questions, including the always awkward "And how to you two know each other?" I've learned that the best answer is "We're married in Canada." This is a true statement, and it gets our point across. Simply stating "we're married" would only cause problems because at the location where we are asked the question, we're not married.
The border guard had seen our passports and knew I was a US citizen and Sarah a UK citizen, and responded to my statement that we are married with "Oh, so that must be why you live in Canada." I was quite shocked because this was the first time I had ever had a representative of the US government acknowledge our situation. Before I had time to recover from the shock of this long-sought-after acknowledgement, I was stunned by the irony of the next exchange. The border guard asked us where we were going in Michigan and why. I told him we were going to a wedding, and heard myself saying the words as if I was having an absurd dream.
I think the irony was lost on him, but perhaps not. At any rate, as we drove away, I began to think about how we were leaving our marriage at the border to go witness the legal marriage of another. I waited for the expected wave of anger. It didn't come. I realized with great sense of relief that since moving to a country where I do have equal rights in marriage, I can now go to a wedding (or wedding shower, or bachelorette party) without feeling jealousy or resentment. This is only one of the positive changes in my life since moving to Canada, but it's a very important one to me.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent my first “Victoria Day” in Canada, a holiday known here as May 2-4 for various reasons. This was my third such civic holiday since I’ve been in Canada.
The first weekend I lived in Canada after moving all my stuff also happened to be Labor Day, also known as Labour Day to Canadians. (If you haven’t noticed my sensitivity to the nuances of Canadian spelling, I’ll explain that in a future post.) I was very excited because after a Saturday and Sunday of unpacking, I’d be able to go shopping, check out local restaurants, etc. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Looking back, it was very apt that my first real weekend in Canada also introduced me to one of the big differences between Canadian and American life—the level of convenience. In the United States, everything is about convenience—24-hour gas stations, 24-hour grocery stores, restaurants and bars open late, all-night drive-thrus at restaurants. And while Canada has its small share of these types of conveniences, in general, my life as a consumer got a bit more complicated here.
Around noon on Labour Day, Sarah and I got in the car and drove to the mall. It was closed. I was pretty surprised. So, we drove to some nearby outlet stores. All closed. We tried a drug store. Closed. Back home we went, and we spent the day taking the dogs for a nice walk, which was probably better for us physically and financially.
I also remember my first post-10 pm trip to The Beer Store. Closed. On Saturday night. I wondered if there had been a power outage or a fire in the store. I checked the posted hours. Nope, just closed, as usual. The following Saturday, I went to the LCBO (liquor store) and made sure I was there before 9. While checking out, I commented to the clerk that they should be open later. The clerk responded, clearly offended, with a loud “OH?? And how late do YOU think we should be open???” I grabbed my bag and scurried out of the store with my tail between my legs muttering something about 11 pm.
I have had to start planning my liquor purchases. This was something I was a bit used to in the Bible Belt of Michigan where no liquor was sold on Sunday in my home county. But, at least I could go to any grocery store at 1 am when I ran out of beer on a Friday night/Saturday morning and get more.
I could also add beer to my grocery list and just pick that up while doing my regular shopping at most any time during the week. Not so here. The first time I went to a grocery store in Canada (this was actually a couple of years before I moved here on an occasion when I was just visiting) I learned about beer sales in Ontario. While checking out with a few food items, I said to the clerk, “I’ve looked everywhere—where’s the beer?” From her response, you would have thought I asked her what color oranges are as she said matter-of-factly, “At the beer store.” The “duh” at the end was just implied. I thought she was playing a joke on me. I was just about to ask her if milk was at the milk store and if sugar was at the sugar store, but the look on her face said that she thought I was an idiot. I eventually discovered that she was talking about THE Beer Store.
Trying to remember to make a special trip to buy beer in the afternoon or early evening when I’m not even thinking about late-evening activities yet has been a challenge.
What I did always remember to do on Saturday afternoons when I first moved to Canada was to check the mail at my house. Every Saturday I’d go to my mailbox, open it, find nothing, and remark to Sarah, the dogs, or just to myself what an odd coincidence it was that we got mail almost every day of the week but never on Saturdays. After about three months of observing this amazing coincidence, I finally asked one of my work colleagues and learned that Canada Post does not deliver on Saturdays.
Going back to the issue of businesses being open on holidays, I will never forget my first Canadian New Year. I came down with some sort of Canadian flu bug that my body had apparently never encountered before because I was sick with digestive system issues for over a week. I was in bed by 9 pm on New Year’s Eve, and when I finally did get up on New Year’s Day, I was desperate to eat something as I hadn’t eaten in days. I really just wanted Gatorade and saltine crackers. So, off to the store went Sarah. I thought she’d be back in ten minutes. Then I remembered it was a holiday in Canada. About an hour later she returned with some Gatorade and some expired crackers she’d managed to find at a small convenience store across town. It was the only place she could find open.
January 2 fell on a Friday, and I was still very ill. Because I had never been this sick with a stomach bug for over a week before where I literally couldn’t eat anything and continually experienced all other symptoms you can imagine, I thought I had better get to the doctor. Of course, I didn’t have a “family doctor,” so on Friday morning, I dragged myself out of bed and somehow made my way across town to the urgent care clinic. Sure enough, it was closed. How convenient.
This past Victoria Day was one of the most relaxing civic holiday’s I’d ever experienced. I made sure I went to The Beer Store on the Saturday before and stocked up. I made sure I hit the grocery store on Saturday also to get some food for grilling. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do any shopping on the Monday holiday, so we took the dogs for a long walk along the river and then grilled burgers on the deck while having a few beers. It was actually wonderful not to have even the thought of running errands or going shopping in my head, and therefore I was able to really rest and enjoy the day. I wondered how much stress all of the “conveniences” in the US had actually caused me during my previous life.
Apparently Canadians feel that civic holidays should be holidays for everyone, even retail employees (who never get those days off in the US). If I worked in retail in Canada, I’d be thrilled with the time off. And, if people tried to argue that all the businesses should be open during holidays for their convenience, I’d probably be just as offended and alarmed as the LCBO clerk who didn’t like my suggestion that their store stay open late.
