Showing posts with label Brian Mulroney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brian Mulroney. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Waiting for Joe

This week we heard that Joe Clark, Canada’s prime minister in 1979 and 1980 and author of How We Lead: Canada In A Century of Change, was coming to speak to Creative Communications students.

We waited.

But he didn’t come.

As Samuel Beckett almost wrote in Waiting for  Godot (tragicomedy in 2 acts):


POZZO:
(peremptory). Who is Joe?
ESTRAGON:
Joe?
POZZO:
You took me for Joe.
VLADIMIR:
Oh no, Sir, not for an instant, Sir.
POZZO:
Who is he?
VLADIMIR:
Oh he's a . . . he's a kind of acquaintance.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing of the kind, we hardly know him.
VLADIMIR:
True . . . we don't know him very well . . . but all the same . . .
ESTRAGON:
Personally, I wouldn't even know him if I saw him.
POZZO:
You took me for him.
ESTRAGON:
(recoiling before Pozzo). That's to say . . . you understand . . . the dusk . . . the strain . . . waiting . . . I confess . . . I imagined . . . for a second . . .
POZZO:
Waiting? So you were waiting for him?
VLADIMIR:
Well you see—
POZZO:
Here? On my land?
VLADIMIR:
We didn't intend any harm.
ESTRAGON:
We meant well.
POZZO:
The road is free to all.
VLADIMIR:
That's how we looked at it.
POZZO:
It's a disgrace. But there you are.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing we can do about it.
POZZO:
(with magnanimous gesture). Let's say no more about it.


But at least Joe showed up on Strombo’s show.