In the autumn of 1967 when I studied Philosophy at Gledon Hall in Toronto, I was introduced to Rosalee Matalon, the daughter of a well-to-do family in Kingston, Jamaica. I believe her family owned Appleton Estate Rum. She was a quiet but stunningly beautiful young lady, tall and sylphlike. I had been asked to connect with her because she was a friend of Alexander Dougall, a former boarding school chum of mine from St. Andrew’s College in Aurora.
In 1975 after having successfully completed the Bar Admission at Osgoode Hall in Toronto I practiced law at Macdonald, Affleck on Sparks Street in Ottawa. The following year I moved to Almonte where I practiced law for the duration of my career. I am extremely proud to have been a country lawyer and have never considered it a diminishing label (though my urban colleagues routinely taunted me by calling me a “rural conveyancer”). However looking back upon my entire law career I have to say that Macdonald, Affleck at least afforded me my “fifteen minutes of fame”:
Yesterday I suffered the most disturbing suspicion. Suddenly my complacency reverberated from an unidentified tremor. My entire life in spite of a preferred posture of sometimes flattering proportions abruptly resembled that of a goaded sheep. I saw myself sterilized by commonality and being herded along a predetermined path, railroaded, responding not to enlightened inspiration but rather answering mechanically to superimposed governance which nonetheless revitalized me. The absence of singularity was however overwhelming. My ambition to distinction (though perhaps not dignity) was but a haughty pretence. I felt manipulated by mysterious energy. The culprit was “they”.
Our downsizing has had noticeable reverberations which were to be expected. For the most part I think we’ve adjusted rather well. While the exercise is by definition mostly of material proportions only there have nonetheless been certain philosophic alterations such as embracing what is unquestionably for some the stigma of renting property as opposed to owning it (though I hasten to add it is a deprivation we’re happily able to bear).
Though it would border on misrepresentation to deny we’re easily unbalanced, we two old fogeys nonetheless subscribe to the mitigating theory that all’s well that ends well. Today’s venture was a case in point.
The serendipitous events of this idyllic day combined to produce the most agreeable summer delight which we’re now about to crown with an appropriate late summer dinner – yellow corn on the cob from the local farmer’s roadside stand, baby potatoes and Atlantic salmon cut to order but hours ago by the fishmonger (he having withdrawn the entire carcass from the walk-in refrigerator and gutted and de-boned the piece before our eyes, its severed head displayed on the grey and white granite slab as testimony to its freshness).
In spite of a patent veneer of respectability the maxim “noblesse oblige” should be regarded with reservation. It is time to excoriate the idealized fluff surrounding it and to dismiss as bumpf its mystique. Like most airy terms, noblesse oblige is capable of double-dealing distortion for the accomplishment of private, hidden purpose. As such we may do well to investigate to see how it may have got there and so on.
“The Millstone News“, the exceedingly popular e-newspaper of the Town of Mississippi Mills (combining as of 1998 the former Corporations of the Town of Almonte and the Townships of Ramsay and Pakenham) inaugurated June 4, 2011 by Val Sears (deceased) and the Almonte Press Club and now under the capable editorial direction of Edith Cody-Rice and Brent Eades both of Almonte, is currently running an article about one of the brighter lights of Almonte; namely, James Mackintosh Bell.
Mickey de Mollusk was an unfortunate creature with no head or backbone who lived in a shell. In spite of his Cambrian ancestry he came from the wrong side of the tracks, a mere accident of birth but it was an austerity which Mickey de Mollusk considered sufficient to afford him the licence of indiscriminate and sometimes venomous ventilation. Meanwhile he resided buried in sediment where he felt safe from predation. He was exceedingly private. Besides he had his shell to protect him and no one would ever see who he really was; on the outside he looked the same from any angle, amorphous. His was a hardened calcified exterior. Inside he was soft, though characteristically less than wholesome and more vulnerable than anything else. This was a regrettable perspective because of course Mickey de Mollusk never came out of his shell so he hadn’t the advantage of seeing – as others might have done – that his exterior though obdurate was nonetheless moderately compelling. But inwardly he seethed with poisonous anger and wasteful notions which from time to time he sought to circulate through his two symmetrical doors (bivalves).
Forgive me, won’t you, if I say that mendacity is something I know more than a little about? I of course agree that the proclamation is not at first blush the sort of quality one would normally rush to embrace. Nonetheless the fact of the matter is that in my business I heard lies. I won’t say it was the stock of my daily commerce but the possibility of lying was certainly something to which I was bound to be alive if I were to perform to par.