ARMCHAIR ARCHIVES – Who’s the champ of word mangling at City Hall?

 If you sometimes shake your head at the state of the English language, rest assured mangling our native tongue isn’t restricted to any particular segment of society, nor is it recent. Those we elect to office often put their own personal jargon or stamp on it, as evidenced in this column by yours truly published in The Kamloops News on March 18, 1983.

THOSE WHO FOLLOW the dreary goings-on at City Hall know that there are precious few kernels of excitement in that silo of corn known as Council chambers.

Anybody who can sit through several hours of reports and delegations and bylaws and remember, without taking notes, more than .009 per cent of it the next day is a better man than I. The grist simply becomes lost in the mill.

Councillors do try to lend their own style to the debate. Some call it grandstanding, some call it trying to relieve their own boredom.

They succeed as color commentators to varying degrees. They employ puns, exaggeration, clichés, bad English and illogic to make their points however valid or weak.

Sometimes they trot out the well-worn, as in “we can’t tar everybody with the same brush” (Bob Chalmers, Jan. 25), and “that whole red herring” (Kenna Cartwright, Feb. 1) and “putting good money after bad” (Chalmers again, Feb. 22).

Chalmers, in fact, seems to be the master at hackneyed phraseology. He’ll say “you can’t rob Peter to pay Paul” (Jan. 11) or “time is money” (Feb. 15). During a discussion of a request to hold a motorcycle event he quipped, “When you have a good track record it’s easy” (Feb. 15).

Even that old classic has been trotted out…. When Bob Saucier lost out in a budget discussion, he muttered, “You can’t fight City Hall” (Jan. 25).

Sometimes they repeat themselves. Mayor Mike Latta said at a recent meeting “if we don’t go out and beat the bushes” and “if we don’t go out and beat the drum” only to have Helen Kerr follow up later in the day with “we’ve got to go out and beat the bushes” (Feb. 15).

Then we have Pat Wallace with “I think we’re putting the cart before the horse” (Jan. 25) and Cartwright with “an easy target” (Feb. 15) and “I want to be assured that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing” (ditto).

The masters of garble, of course, are Howard Dack and the mayor himself.

Dack, not content with following in others’ footsteps, ventures out on his own. The one I like is “we’re sometimes moving before we start the motor” (describing making council decisions on specific budget items before the final budget is adopted, Jan. 15).

Not that he isn’t capable of the folksy cliché, complaining of a “big kafuffle” (Feb. 1). And he has an interesting turn of logic, as in “I’ll approve this on the basis that we can turn it down later” (March 8).

Dack, unfortunately, is also one of the worst offenders when it comes to abusing the Queen’s English. He will “re-enterate” (Jan. 25, Feb. 8) or talk about who “done” the engineering on a project (Feb. 15).

Cartwright has a nasty habit of reciting “stastistics” (Feb. 15) and, earlier this year, wanted an “intermediator” for something (Jan. 11).

She also has an irritating little speech mannerisim: about every three sentences she’ll interject an emphatic “so!!!” and then continue. She may use this to try to get herself back to the point, but it has her listeners distractedly awaiting the next “so!!!” and ignoring the rest.

Mike Latta, though, retains his long-standing reputation as the word-wrestling champ. One day he “recapitulated all of the choices” (Jan. 11) and on another he told councillors, “I think we should be a little more implicit” (March 8).

Describing his position on an issue, he proclaimed that he wanted to make it clear “at the very outlet” (Jan. 11).

But no one will ever top his classic of last year, when he candidly admitted to Council, “I was somewhat syringed.”

As I was trying to implore earlier on, if you only listen to what they’re saying, it’s all clear as a chord. Or is it strike a bell?

So!!! Anyway, no offense to our extinguished council members.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, former school board chair, former editor of The Kamloops Daily News, and a former director and alternate director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He was awarded the Jack Webster Foundation’s lifetime achievement award in 2011 and was a 2019 Commentator of the Year finalist in the Webster Awards. He’s been writing about Kamloops since 1970. Contact him at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.