By Bob Groeneveld
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After a succession of years that turned out to be serious stinkers – Donald Trump was elected president of the USA in 2016, and wasn’t impeached in either 2017 or 2018 – 2019 turned out surprisingly positive.
Not only did Trump finally get impeached, but Andrew Scheer didn’t succeed in his bid to become Canada’s prime minister. Don’t take that as an endorsement of Trudeau The Younger; I didn’t say 2019 was a “great” year, just that it was better than it could have been.
The summer of 2019 also bucked the recent trend of increasingly unbearably longer hot and dry periods. Overall, weather-wise, it was closer to what used to be a normal summer – at least here in Langley – than we’ve had in a couple of decades.
As I’ve mentioned here before, 2019 was also the year that started with learned veterinarians predicting that our beloved Sam would soon be squeaking his last chew toy – yet he’s still with us to this day. And while I grieve for friends who were not so lucky with life and loved ones, and understand that their memories of the past year won’t be counted among the highlights of their lives, I can’t help but remember the year fondly, if only for those extra months of obstinacy plagued upon us by that dear, sweet poodle.
And now we have 2020.
The United States Senate is preparing to make a mockery of the House of Representatives’ impeachment of a president that has been making a mockery of their democracy, and 2020 is shaping up to be a repeat performance of the Orange Plague visited upon the so-called Free World in 2016.
It would all be a source of wry amusement, except Canada is both geographically and economically situated directly in harm’s way between Trump’s New Amerika and the rest of the world stage.
And only a couple of weeks old, 2020 is already blowing its dark clouds into Canadian politics. The Conservative Party’s past is raising its ugly head in the form of former leader Peter McKay, who is deemed a front-runner in the race to lower the bar set by Scheer in last fall’s election.
McKay, the old and wizened among us will remember, was the guy who won the leadership of the grand old Progressive Conservative Party with the resolute promise that there would be no merger with Stephen Harper’s upstart Canadian Alliance… and then resolutely handed the keys to his party’s executive washroom to Harper in exchange for a promise that he could keep his own seat there.
Yeah. The people who so desperately despised the Liberals that they elected Conservatives like the ones we got in Langley must really relish the though of McKay being their standard bearer if and when Trudeau’s minority falls.
And now 2020 has botched the relatively mild and pleasant winter that 2019 started building.
It’s like Trump and Obama… 2020 is bent on wrecking any good that its predecessor did.