Pity the poor passengers

If Air Canada passengers thought flight attendants were surly and indifferent before the strike action, now the buckled-in can expect some payback. Duck your head: here comes the empty service tray.

Prime Minister Mark Carney behaves like someone who flies private. And Carney’s lackey, Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu, is no better.

Hajdu didn’t even flinch when she behaved like a 19th-century robber baron. “Back to work, flight attendants! Aimless Trustafarians have prayer flags to collect before returning home to renovict the working poor.”

Carney and Hajdu’s union-busting tactics read as punitive — even from my precarious perch as a non-unionized gig worker.

Carney is the ambitious footman on HBO’s The Gilded Age who invented a timepiece and betrayed his class.

Yet Carney still carries that submissive footman hunch when alpha oligarchs like Trump demand more trade concessions.

Perhaps we’re guilty of elevated expectations. For a quick peek into contemporary entitlement in action, just watch as outraged passengers complain about being ‘detained’ in Europe on The National.

No, you aren’t housed at Alligator Alcatraz for an indeterminate stay; you’re stuck in a Paris Vrbo overlooking the Seine for one more harrowing weekend.

Go out for the evening. Eat a Michelin-starred meal. Live dangerously and put it on your low-interest credit card.

Your real estate earned more money last year than a typical flight attendant — unless you’re over-subscribed in the Toronto condo market. In that case, it’s time to plant that vertical balcony garden.

I haven’t left the continent since a red-eye travel junket to Ireland in May 2019. Since the pandemic, it’s been road trips west on family visits — which we all know is no holiday.

“No American travel,” I declared to my patient spouse when Trump was elected for Term Two in November 2024. “We’re staying put.”

A U.S. border guard wouldn’t have to dig too deep to find Internet evidence of my disdain for Donald J. Trump: “Canadian woman detained in South Dakota for laughing at South Park episode.”

I can hear the legal eagles on The National now as they advise: travel with a burner phone. Now we’re all criminal cast members of Breaking Bad.

Prairie people crave sprawling Air Canada carriers to ferry us far away from a sad, smoky summer season compounded by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert cancellation.

I’ve learned the hard way not to travel by ground through a Prairie “frontier” border crossing. Bored agents make a sport out of delaying beleaguered Canadian tourists.

In spring 2008, while entering western North Dakota, one wily guard with blue latex gloves emerged from tossing our vintage Volvo station wagon with a rosehip held victoriously between his finger and thumb.

“What’s this?” he demanded like I was smuggling fentanyl.

“It’s a rose hip,” I said. “I like to wildcraft,” I added before realizing that hobby and our Volvo only confirmed my Hippy-Dippy-Liberal profile.

Rosehips aren’t on the list of banned items so his little face dropped. Laddie, our nefarious border collie, was released from his detention cage and we left the gatekeepers to their next rubes.

Since 9/11, crossing over to the United States has been more challenging. Is it wiser and safer to just stay put? My 10-year passport has only one stamp in nine years.

The urge to punish America endures. I don’t want to reward the current administration with my hard-earned dollars. I’d rather sit home and go stir crazy than cross that border.

Besides, I enjoy tracking America’s declining tourism numbers as hopeful evidence of my consumer clout. I’m unmoved by desperate tourism board reps from border states who plead for the return of my business.

What’s there to do for the hardcore staycationer?

A quick internet search reveals no escape rooms in my area. Perhaps I could DIY-it? In my claustrophobic game, you wake up a Democrat in Banana Republican Texas.

Texas Gov.Greg Abbott has redrawn the electoral map. Find the hidden lever to pull then cross over unharvested canola fields. Take refuge in the empty Margaret Laurence House in Neepawa.

It’s finally time to relinquish that Yellowstone boycott and spring for a Paramount+ subscription since South Park is currently having a moment. It’s detainment-worthy.

To combat summer boredom, ask ChatGPT: How do you successfully negotiate a trade agreement with Donald J. Trump?

“Become the 51st State — unless the occupied District of Columbia beats you to it,” the AI app responds, “so you can enjoy live NFL football, American Netflix and discount Frontier Airlines.”

Patricia Dawn Robertson staycations in central Saskatchewan.