Add Up The Figures

...for all these pro- and anti-coalition rallies together and you still don't match the total of May 2008's Global Marijuana March, which saw 20,000 participants.

God bless Canada.

Apparently, She Is No Longer A C**T

Others have written about Durham NDP candidate Andrew McKeever and his Facebook flareup in which he, among other things, called NDP (presumably) blogger Krystalline Kraus some rather nasty names and threatened another with physical violence.

Well, guess what! Krystalline (whose parents must have been hippies) and Andrew have kissed and made-up. In fact, they've done more than that; they've issued a joint statement in which McKeever renounces all the views he held so passionately just two months ago and gets in line with the NDP re U.S. army deserters and the war in Afghanistan.

One must ask: was Mr. McKeever on drugs when he denounced Ms. Kraus? And did the two share a big fatty before they wrote their "joint" statement?

Get it? "Joint" statement? Get it? I kill me sometimes.

And somewhere Jack Layton is reading about this and thinking "I could sure the fuck use a toke about now! Where the fuck did I stash my rollies?"

Whoops! They Did It Again!

For the second year in a row, the Campaign Life Coalition has been busted for using the iconic Canada wordmark - the official symbol of the Government of Canada- on its anti-abortion banners.

And their story hasn't changed much either:

In an interview with Inside the Queensway, CLC national organizer Mary Ellen Douglas called the whole thing“ridiculous,” and insisted that she never even saw the sign — she was too busy with the “eight thousand people” on the Hill for the march. She repeatedly excoriated the media, in general, and ITQ, specifically, for ignoring the “real story”, and instead focusing on a “tiny little sign” (that, we should point out, was on a banner that required nearly a dozen ralliers to carry); she blamed the oversight on the “sign printers”, who, she said, were “asked to remove it,” but “accidentally left it on.” It won’t be there next year," she said.

The feds are weighing their legal options.

By the way, the official estimate of the crowd size at this year's event is a little less than that of Ms. Douglas: "approximately 7,000" according to the Ottawa Sun. While the numbers of participants in the Global Marijuana March, held the same week, sky-rocketed to 20,000.

Obviously, a few of the souls noted by Ms. Douglas wandered off to smoke a fatty.

h/t to Kadey O'Malley, who sees all, knows all, on Parliament Hill.

Weed Beats God!

Global Marijuana March sees 20,000 hardcore puffers at the 2008 Toronto event, up 66% over last year's figure of 12,000 attendees.

Meanwhile the March For Life in Ottawa remains stalled at "approximately 7,000 protesters", the same figure as last year.

I see one way to fix this: the Catholic Church should make Bob Marley a Saint.

March For Life Not Sponsored By Harper Tories

From the Free Dominion site, a completely unofficial list of MPs attending last Thursday's March for Life:

Conservatives
Bev Shipley (ON)
Cheryl Gallant (ON)
David Anderson (SK)
Dean Del Mastro (ON)
Harold Albrecht (ON)
James Lunney (BC)
Jeff Watson (ON)
Mark Warawa (BC)
Maurice Vellacott (SK)
Myron Thompson (AB)
Pierre Lemieux (ON)
Rod Bruinooge (MB)

Liberals
Paul Steckle (ON)
Paul Szabo (ON)

NDP
None

Bloc Quebecois
None

Tom Wappel (ON) and Andrew Scheer (SK) were stuck in Parliament at the time and intended to go.

Any others there? One interesting thing is no MP east of Ontario was there...

Also, there has been some controversy over the Canada word-mark that appears in the youtube video below. Is it evidence of official Canadian government support?




Suzanne of Big Blue Wave says no (and I believe her):

...the government did not give one cent to the March for Life. How do I know? Because I attend Campaign Life meetings, and never is there any mention in financial reports of any government money. All efforts are paid for by the donations and fundraising activities of pro-life supporters.

[...]

All it is was someone made a banner and overlooked any copyright or trademark rules-- as many people are wont to do-- and put a Canada wordmark on the banner, probably for reasons of patriotism.

Is patriotism still legal? I thought we'd banished that in Canada. Anyway, as I wrote about here, a week previous the Global Marijuana March drew crowds double the size of the March For Life, and they were all out there protesting for the right to blow ganja in public.

Anti-Abortion Militants Vs. Warriers For Weed

The Lifesite:

OTTAWA, May 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This year's March for Life, the 10th annual march organized yearly by Campaign Life Coalition drew a record 7,000 participants and was populated mainly with youth, estimated at around 75% of the crowd.

VS.

CityNews:

Adding to the frustration of trying to get around town this weekend with the DVP closed until Monday, more than 12,000 people took part in the ninth annual Global Marijuana March on Saturday.

Not even close, and I'd wager the stoners were alot better behaved! Certainly, they were listening to better music.

Gawd I love this country!