It seems that Jacob Marley’s ghost got short shrift in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Think of how busy the guy would be in this Christmas of 2021. There are far more people today needing a visit from the ghosts of Christmas’s Past, Present and Yet to Come. We could start with Ontario’s premier Doug Ford.
It is hard to believe Doug Ford could inspire anyone. This is a guy who has never done anything right. He has never made the ‘nice’ list with Santa Claus. He’s a salesman who thinks bombast works. The ghost of Christmas Past took him to a Christmas party for the class he started with at Humber College. Someone mentioned that loser who started with the class and only stayed with it for two months. She added that he thought he was a big shot, peddling labels for his father’s printing company.
The ghost of Christmas Present had a more difficult task. She took Ford to an Ontario hospital where the intensive care unit was overloaded with Covid-19 patients. An exhausted staff of nurses had a minute to grab a quick cup of coffee during a rare, few minutes of quiet. As a joke some started raising their cups to toast people not there. “And here’s to premier Ford,” one of them said, “he’s squeezed our hospital for funds. He’s refused our ask for raises. And he doesn’t listen to the medical experts.”
But he never heard what the group thought about that toast as some heart monitors started beeping. And the staff rushed off to see if they could do anything to save the patients.
But the most dismal of the ghosts was the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. This ghost took him directly to a small group of funeral attendees in a windy corner of a Toronto cemetery. It was a glum crowd. Even the widow was stoic. “He should have known better.” Was her stock phrase to most of the questions directed to her. Even when it shook the premier awake beside her, he quietly got dressed and headed for the office to see if any more conservative developers wanted to build along Highway 413. Doug doesn’t believe in ghosts.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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