A touch of nostalgia – The Burd Report

A few weeks ago, as I might have mentioned in my Travel Page, I was having trouble with my web hosting. As a result I came back home to the local Internet magicians – Eagle.ca. They setup this site and a couple of others in the archive on their server and we are off the races as far as efficiency and speed are concerned. Talking to Tom Copeland the owner of Eagle.ca later he expressed amazement as one of the sites was an early BurdReport. It was an archive of Cobourg Politics from 2001 to 2005. Other websites had been around since, as I have been dabbling in local commentary for years.

I have discovered three websites among about eight that I have been working on in the last 35 years and exist on my hard drives that are worthy of listing as local history. Web development has advanced as the sites have advanced from the rudimentary to the almost sophisticated that I use today. But, the intent of this post is to highlight that if one wants to dig deep enough local politics has changed very little in the last 35 years. Read some of the commentary to discover this. Those of you with long memories may recognise the characters mentioned, some may only recognise familiar situations.

Note to reader – before examining the archives please understand that some links may not work – just move on to the next one.

The first site created in 1999 was a summary of local affairs and published for a couple of years. During that time I was contributing a column to two local papers and some of the columns are on this site.

The second archive is another site that moved into a better design and lasted from 2000 to 2004. If you are interested in any local history I would suggest that you start at the bottom of the left-hand column and work upwards. The first entry at the bottom should be skipped as it is a nothingburger.

The last archive was when the site moved to BlogSpot (a Google platform) and covered the years 2006 to 2010. Again the site is in reverse chronology. So start reading from the bottom of the menu on the left hand side of the page. If one wants see the comments, and a few posts are full of them click on the Post Title not on the comments link – that will not work.

Then came a couple of sites that have been lost because of hosting changes and the lack of backups but they really became lost because I was using the domain name that has stayed the same for fifteen years. Sometimes progress is not so good !

Obviously I either had a lot of spare time on my hands or I thought I had a lot to say about local affairs.

Reading through the stuff that I wrote fifteen years ago I came across this snippet and I now dedicate it to the local activists fighting for local Social Justice.

Inspiration from the Oddest Places

Every year when the Film Festival lands in Toronto I avoid watching TV news. The simpering, smarmy reporters following the celebrities for what seems like weeks on end just drive me crazy, leading me to fret about the mess our society is in when this event creates such excitement and wonder amongst the masses.

Since nothing ever stops me from reading the print media though, I saw in the Toronto Star a lead story this morning that made my weary heart sing. There he was, Martin Sheen, walking the picket lines with strikers at the venerable Royal York, the hotel targeted for a single day of action today.

Telling the press he has been a union member all his adult life and that he supports the labour movement, he then came out with a statement that spoke directly to me. He said, and I quote directly from the Torstar, “I’M HERE TO REMIND YOU THAT LOST CAUSES ARE THE ONLY CAUSES WORTH FIGHTING FOR”.

It hit me like the proverbial bolt of lightening, and for a split second I swear my heart stopped beating, then resumed with a lilt that’s been missing for quite a while. In that one short sentence was contained the entire rationale for a lifetime of seemingly fruitless work on my part, work that sometimes feels like it has drained all my energy for nothing.

The significance of Mr. Sheen’s remark is stunning. It reminded me that it’s easy to work for popular causes like curing cancer or diabetes. Everybody believes in those goals, and nobody will tell you that you’re destroying peoples’ lives, an accusation hurled at me more than once for my efforts to end poverty. Nobody boos you when you speak, nobody calls you nasty names or gives your kids a hard time because they carry your name too. Instead, you get awards and accolades for it. Like I said, it’s easy to carry the flag for popular causes.

But just try advocating for a cause that is controversial, like giving the poor an adequate income so they can feed their children properly and live in decent housing. For some reason, that drives some people crazy, and they will go to great lengths to discredit and silence you. That’s true whether it’s anti poverty work, or union activism, or gay rights, or any other worthy but controversial cause.

But Martin, dear Martin, put it all in perspective for me again. Nothing worth having is gained without a fight, and the harder the fight, the worthier the cause. Just think of civil human rights, and womens’ rights. Those battles are far from over around the globe, and if the fight to win them here in North America is any indication, we still have huge battles ahead before we succeed.

Now, at least, my head is clear. Like Braveheart and Robert the Bruce, I say bring it on, the battle is nigh.

CREDITS:

The cartoon in the post is a Barry King original, I just added the text in the briefcase – thank you Barry!

Inspiration from the Oddest Places

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