Thursday, January 01, 2009

Ye Olde Gold-tipped Cane

For as long as I can remember, ever since I was a wee child, every January 1st on the six o'clock news they run a story about the first ship that enters the Port of Montreal. Every year they show us pictures of some paunchy guy with a beard, the ship's captain, shaking hands with some municipal stooge while being awarded a gold-tipped cane. And now, after all these decades, I feel the need to ask:

Who cares?

Why are we supposed to care about some old bearded guy and his ship and the famous gold-tipped cane? Because, for the rest of the year, we never hear another thing in the news about any other ship that arrives in the Port of Montreal. And frankly, we don't care about the ships that arrive in the port, including the first one of the year.

Now the first baby born in a Montreal hospital? That we care about. Because a baby is so much cuter than a ship's captain. (Well maybe not always, but a good 99% of the time.) So why not offer a gold-tipped pacifier to the parents of the year's first baby? Fair is fair.

4 comments:

cityofmushrooms said...

not to mention a nice fruit basket for the mum

Anonymous said...

Please remind me NOT to invite you to my New Year's Gold Cane party. As a kid, my parents always had a get together to watch who it would be and we'd bet on which country the ship would be from.

Great memories of New Year's past always begin with the Gold Cane ceremony.

Nanuk of the North, older but no wiser said...

Any excuse for a wager, eh?

Anonymous said...

You bet!