As Ian Sees It

Sometimes it is just fun to belong to something.  A group, a club, a fan base.   That isn't even really a "sometimes" thing.   I am pretty much a rural kind of guy.  I as born the son of a farmer turned oil man.  I grew up in a small town.   And no offence to those I shared that experience,  but I couldn't wait to get out of there.    So I joined our national police force and said goodbye to our little town of four thousand.   Six months later I was posted to Pelly Saskatchewan,  population 300.  It wasn't until 1989 that I lived somewhere larger than my home town.  Karma? Not being a city kid sure didn't make me a farm boy.  I was a townie.  Townies, some would consider the living breathing proof that there is indeed a purgatory.   "And where is this going?" you ask.  Well why don't we get to that.......  All those years in those smaller places you discover that in order to have the things that th...

    On June 6th 1944 my dad made his first trip to France.  It wasn't very welcoming.   I have told his story before.  My dad came home from the war in better shape than many.  He was wounded on D Day which may have actually saved his life.  Those who landed on Juno beach with him that morning were eventually captured and murdered.  He was a good man all his life.  Honest, hard working, sincere but with a razor sharp sense of humour.   D Day and the war shaped his life, and had a lasting effect on all of us.   Which had an effect on the communities in which we lived.   There were lots of vets of World War II around when I was a kid.  Some of them were like my dad.  Some of them were unable to unsee and unfeel the horrors to which they were exposed.   So when on June 6th. our Premier tweets out a salute to the veterans of D Day "Which marked the beginning of World War II"  I am so offended.     ...