Grab some pizza! Sign up for the army! One Stop Shopping as Canadian Forces Opens its Newest Recruitment Office - In a Mall!

In a ceremony bordering on the surreal, Canadian Forces opened its newest recruitment office today. The office is conveniently located in a strip mall on Mumford road, directly across from the Halifax Shopping Centre. You can now treat yourself to a slice of pizza, shop for fashionable seconds, fill your prescription, and take that first important step towards becoming a mindless, killing, serf, all in the same trip!

Defence Minister Peter McKay was supposed to be on hand for the grand opening, but a mild drizzle and the presence of Tamara Lorincz and the tireless factions of Halifax Peace Coalition protestors scared him away. Instead, second stringer Senator Fred Dickson cut the ribbon on this front office of the Canadian war machine.

“Senator Fred Dickson?” you say. “I don’t remember voting for him.”

That’s because you didn’t. Nobody did. Old Man Dicksoncut his long Tory teeth in the Mulroney years. He helped seal deals in off-shore Nova Scotia oil, and he and his cronies most famously created a money-bagging unit known as CDM Investments (The D was for Dickson). On paper, the company did a variety of investing, but behind the scenes CDM helped donators feed the Conservative Party coffers under a cloak of anonymity. Give to CDM, and CDM will make sure the Conservatives get it, and no one need ever know it was you. Such is the debauchery and back room dealings that will land a 73 year-old man who was never elected to anything, anywhere, a seat in the Senate. Strange how I now equate a lifetime of evil with becoming a Senator...

If you think I’m just spinning yarns, just remember that Fred Dickson, all smiles and grandfatherly with a pair of decorative ribbon-cutting shears in his hands, is among that dastardly crew of Senators who voted on November 16thof this year to kill Bill C311 in the Senate,after the bill had gone through Parliament. There is a special circle in hell, Senator, for those who sell out the future and eagerly send other peoples’ sons and daughters to become so much cannon fodder

P.S. Screw you too, Senator Nancy Greene! I thought at least you stood for something...like...well-groomed ski runs, anyway! What is this country coming to when former winter Olympians kybosh our only climate plan bill? Don't you realize that your celebrity status, and hence your power to govern over us as a Senator, is based entirely on the fact that you won ski races...ON SNOW???

On a lighter note, here are a couple things the good senile...I mean...Senator...actually said during his tiresomely prepared speech.

“Friends, none of this government’s success in rebuilding our military, after The Decade of Darkness (What The Fudge?), would make much sense if we did not dedicate adequate resources to our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces.”

Decade of Darkness, eh Senator? I don’t quite remember that one. And I’m not your friend. Methinks the Senator may have missed a morning dose of his Donepezil.

“By standing on guard at home, and abroad, they’re (the Canadian Forces) setting an example by which we can all expire...uh...aspire.”

 No, no. Expire was the mot-juste. I have this on tape if you don’t believe me.

Anyways...where were we?

So the military, all adorned in their parade uniforms with medals a-dangling, engaged in a self-congratulatory backslapping session in their newly painted recruitment office. A few stick-to-the-script speeches happened, and then all present were invited into a backroom for a continuation of the festivities. I was hesitant, as I had things to do, and windowless backrooms are already stuffy enough without them being packed full of soldiers, never really known for their engaging or insightful points of view. But I figured “what the hell?”

And that’s where things got weird...

You know those contests? The ones where the millionth shopper wanders through the doors of some crappy department store and gets shocked by a ceiling full of balloons falling on their heads? Trumpets blare, and some cheesy-looking guy comes out of nowhere and gives them a free trip to a three-star McCaribbean resort? And all the while they look happy, but shocked, because all they really wanted was a bag of chips and a couple rolls of toilet paper?

Well, the backroom experience was kind of like that. Except the millionth shoppers were a couple of scared looking boys who simply wanted to enrol in that evil institution known as the Canadian Military, and figured all they’d need to do was answer some skill testing questions, have a doctor tell them to turn and cough, and Harper’s your uncle, done.

Instead, poor Roderick Horner, and poor Tristan Tobin, as the ceremonial first enrollers at Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre Halifax, were hauled up in front of a room full of military goombahs and press, had their families plopped in the front row, had cameras shoved in their faces, and perhaps worst of all, had to suffer through the comedic routine of Master of Ceremonies, Commodore Dan MacKeigan.

“For the families...where are the families?” babbled the Commodore, as the Horner and Tobin families sat right in front of him in the front row. “Thank you very much...merci beaucoup...for your confidence in me, your confidence in the armed forces...and moms...any moms here? Thank you very much for giving me your children! This is usually where crying is allowed (WTF!!!).”

Damn, me without my gong and oversized novelty cane!

The bizarre gets bizarrer (not a word), as we all rise for the national anthem. If you’ve never watched a roomful of military brass snap to attention and strong salute the...uh...the wall, while the Canadian anthem plays on a television, then you have not lived my friends.

Horner and Tobin are then brought forward, one at a time, made to clutch a Bible in front of a framed photo of the Queen, and then repeat their allegiance to the country, to the Queen, and to the Christian God for which this country...uh...fights wars. Personally, I thought we did away with this Bible thing when we acknowledged that practitioners of other religions might be put off by it all, but I guess not.

My girlfriend tells me that you have the option of enrolment “light”, but I just don’t care enough to research whether this is true or not. The rest of the room has no such qualms with the whole Bible/Queen symbolism thing, and claps politely. The military brass then pose for a photo shoot with the startled, yet resigned, Horner and Tobin families.

I wish I could tell you that I pulled out a harmonica and disrupted the whole thing, but there were so damn many of them, and it didn’t seem fair to steal young Horner and Tobin’s thunder on this, their special recruitment day. They even got special certificates to put on their “me wall” (Comedian...I mean...Commodore Dan’s words, not mine).

The buffet, by military shindig standards, was actually quite decent. Bagels with egg salad, a fruit plate, and some questionable beast-filled sandwiches, of which I did not partake. Good to know our tax dollars are being spent on smart things, like pepperoni sticks, dipping mustard, and cubed cheese for Senator Dickson.