The Third Man

What a film that was, back in 1949, when Harry Lime faked his death with the help of the third man. That's not what this is about.

The third man is a Canadian hockey thing. Two players go at it, a third jumps in, and off the ice he flies. Tod Maffin posted exactly that story yesterday – two guys fighting, the third one flies. Couldn’t have put it better.

So what’s this about? Yesterday, the province of Alberta voted on a referendum on whether to separate from the nation of Canada. The separatists put a lot of work into this. They’d met several times with the US State Department to talk about Alberta’s secession. The price: a credit line of 500 billion dollars. Nothing is free, not even secession. Or at least a promise made in the USA, one the current government reliably keeps. So went the thinking of the separatist representatives, anyway. In return, Alberta offered up shares of drinking water, of resources, and of course oil royalties.

How generous: a Canadian province flogging off Canadian fresh water, Canadian royalties, Canadian resources – to the USA. As a goodwill gesture, Republican strategists showed up in Calgary, Alberta. The very same people who “helped out” in Michigan during the last presidential election. The Calgary visit cracked open a database of roughly three million voters, names and addresses included. Ouch.

Yesterday, Monday, October 19th, Albertans went to the polls to vote on a future as a province of Canada. Or leaving Canada. The preliminary result at 4 a.m.: clear. A solid 77% want Alberta to stay in Canada.

The referendum wasn’t just a matter of Canadian separatists, it seems, but of plain American imperialism too. If the second-largest country in the world can be broken apart, Canada becomes easier to squeeze. And that opens the door to a possible annexation.

So much for theory and practice in the history of political power shifts.

But the USA still doesn’t seem to know its neighbours. Washington threw punches like the third man – and missed the fact that Alberta and Canada shake hands after the final buzzer, they don’t split up. When the final buzzer sounds after a hockey game, you shake hands. Even your opponent’s hand. You drive home on the same road and think, “Alberta took the long way home. Same highway.”

Same highway. That’s team spirit – even if one of them briefly flew off the ice.

Today, after seven years, I’m leaving Specialty Lofts.
As of today, I’m the guy around the corner.