Say what you like about us older Canadians, but ours were the golden years. I will never forget the convenience of getting a passport for the wife overnight. And I am certainly nobody important. I once wrote a note to the citizenship minister about an immigration problem. It was about the mother of one of my company’s employees who had been refused entry to Canada because of illness. All I said was that she would be a member of our company medical plan. She was in Canada a few weeks later.
And I am not talking political influence here. I once wrote a very polite note to whom-it-may-concern at City Hall in Toronto. It was about the foolish assumption of some people that there is a 12 am and a 12 pm. I had found a sign saying that you could park on Richmond Street until 12 pm. I got a very expensive ticket for parking there. In my letter, I told the story of my third-grade teacher who had taught us kids that there was a 12 noon and a 12 midnight and no such times as 12 am or pm.
I got a phone call from a gentleman who worked for the city and he was chuckling over my letter. From his accent, I guessed he attended the equivalent of third grade in another country. Yet he told me that he had also been told his by teacher at about the same age that there was no 12 am or pm. He apologized on behalf of the city and asked me to send him the ticket and not worry about it. He said if I had any further tickets in the City of Toronto, I could also send them to him. It was also good to see shortly thereafter that there were stickers going on parking signs around Toronto saying 12.01, which helped clarify the problem.
I was thinking about this recently after I had a minor accident in a local grocery parking lot. It has been a long time since I had an auto accident. It proved to me that I am past my due date. The gentleman who had caused the accident was loudly proclaiming it was his fault to the point that I told him he should stop proclaiming his culpability. (My wife had enough information on the witnesses at that point.)
But the claims adjuster for my insurance company acted like it was my fault. He said (at first) that I was not entitled to a replacement vehicle and asked me to take pictures of the damage for him with my telephone and e-mail them to him. I told him that I did not have a smart phone, did not do photography and had already rented a car (which was needed, as it took five weeks to get the parts to fix my car).
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