Acts of Orwellian feminism

My elder daughter spent Thanksgiving weekend with her boyfriend visiting his parents at their farm northwest of Winnipeg. For a young woman who had never had any previous taste of life in rural Manitoba -- aside from a walk in the woods at Clear Lake one year -- it was eye-opening.

For her, at the time, the emphasis was first on taste. At home on Thanksgiving she gets turkey, mashed potatoes, a vegetable, and, if she's been good, which is not often, a piece of pie with, perhaps, some ice cream.

On the farm, however, she found a whole different kind of Thanksgiving dinner. There was, of course, a turkey, but her hosts were of Ukrainian descent -- she is Icelandic -- and there were many other dishes, from perogies to cabbage rolls to concoctions too exotic to describe that she wolfed down with such voracity that she began to alarm her boyfriend and his parents. Baba, however, thought a good appetite in such a young woman could only bode well for the future.

When she called me to tell me how her weekend was going, however, it wasn't the food. Rather it was about a more amazing experience. "Guess what, Dad?" she cried. "I got to fire a shotgun."

I don't think that she had ever seen a shotgun or a rifle before, but like most farm families, her boyfriend's farmhouse was full of them. She not only learned how to shoot one, she learned that a 12-gauge shotgun has a hell of kick -- it nearly knocked me on my bum, she said, and added, with some pride, that she had stayed on her feet.

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be able to shoot a 12-gauge with one hand, but I can't and I'm willing to bet that you can't either.

My daughter is beginning to understand guns, the power of them and the purpose of them and pleasure that can be had from them. In short, she is beginning to understand a little better what it means to be Canadian, to be part of a culture where long guns have been a natural adjunct to a normal way of life.

Or, at least, long guns were a natural adjunct to the Canadian way of life until the Liberals inflicted the long-gun firearms registry on the nation. Suddenly, the farmers, hunters and recreational shooters had been shifted from being good, law-abiding Canadians to being potential criminals as a knee-jerk political response to the distress that gripped urban Eastern Canada in the wake of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre of 14 young women in 1989, a tragedy that probably no piece of gun-control legislation, not even one as draconian as the Liberal long-gun registry, could have prevented.

The registry has been extraordinarily expensive to implement. It has been called the billion-dollar boondoggle because it cost at least that much to put in place -- some people call that an underestimate and that it should more accurately be called the two-billion-dollar boondoggle. It is also expensive to maintain, even under a Conservative government that wants no part of it, takes no interest in it and clearly wants out of it.

On Wednesday, the country was given an opportunity to opt out of this bit of Orwellian feminism when a private member's bill, put forward by Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, passed in the House of Commons by a surprisingly large majority as 20 Liberal and NDP MPs joined the Conservatives in supporting it. The Bloc Quebecois, unsurprisingly -- Quebec political parties have always had a more autocratic tinge to them than parties in the rest of Canada -- was unanimous in its support of the registry.

Giving the Canadian registry the kiss of death and the Canadian way of living the kiss of life is a long and unpredictable process -- there are still committee hearings and the thrice-accursed Senate that need to be surpassed -- but it is at least a hope.

Until that hope is realized, I am glad that my daughter has discovered the joys of Ukrainian cooking, but I am even happier that she has discovered the joys of what it means to be a free Canadian and the consequences and responsibilities that entails.

She showed me a picture of herself taken on her cellphone, holding up two dead geese that her boyfriend had shot. The grim expression on her face tells it all. She ain't going goose hunting again, but my guess is that she could be a killer at skeet.

tom.oleson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 A19