My blood hit a boiling point this week after reading a story on the Global News website about a landlord in Calgary who, essentially, had her house stolen from her by a tenant. The slug who took over claimed to be a member of a group called 'Freemen On The Land', an outfit exempt from government authority. Think about how ridiculous that is for a minute. If he's exempt from government authority, then couldn't we apply the same laws to having him removed by force? If he's exempt, then he can't file a complaint with police for someone else walking into the home and beating him up to get him to leave. These 'people' (term used loosely) who don't wish to follow any rules and regulations set down by society, hopefully, are not reaping any benefits provided by taxpayers either, such as receiving social assistance or receiving running water, electricity, and power.
Making this matter worse is that when the landlord in Calgary went to police to try and get this free loader removed from her home, they told her it was a civil matter and refused to act. Incredibly cowardly. To me, you get a 30-day notice to leave and a landlord shouldn't even need much of a reason. If you don't leave, you are trespassing and that is a criminal offense. It's not civil. If that's not bad enough, the civil court wouldn't rule on this either. They threw it back to the police. Where does a person turn to? If there are loopholes in the law governing landlords and tenants, then they should be, immediately, closed. Otherwise, landlords would be fools to rent to anyone. Tenants should be concerned too because people who rent in good faith and with good intentions could soon find themselves looking for places to live. I can tell you from hearing this one story, I would never ever rent to someone. It could cost me way more in legal fees to throw out a bad tenant than I would ever make collecting rent on a monthly basis.
I don't have much use for people who look at the letter of the law and try to twist it so that it can work in their favor even though they know they are in the wrong.
The National Hockey League season starts this week and for the first time in my life, I don't think I can give a prediction based on any knowledge from following the offseason. I haven't paid hardly any attention to it because as soon as TSN comes on with their panel and they talk about Rule 32B (or whatever number the flavor of the day is) I am turned off. Drop the puck and play. If the league has to hand out suspensions, then so be it. We don't need to still be talking about a line brawl a week after it has already taken place. Let's talk about who's going to win the Stanley Cup or the scoring championship.
I wonder how much longer Canadian hockey players will have the reputation of being hard working and gritty. When I look at typical young Canadians today, those are not adjectives I would use to describe them. In fact, when you look at where employers have to go in order to run businesses, quite the opposite description would apply.
Speaking of hockey, I always like finding out how non-hockey playing youth are doing in other sports and, usually, I discover that there are some real special athletes out there flying totally under the radar. 13-year-old Clarizze Perpetau and 12-year-old Benjamin Lortie are two examples. Clarizze and Ben, I'm going to guess, are Yorkton's best tennis players. Clarizze just came back from Sherbrooke where she competed in the Canada Summer Games. Ben has been invited to the Nationals for his age group. You don't think of Yorkton, or even Saskatchewan for that matter, as being a hot bed for tennis players. So kudos go out to them as well as to Ross Green, Blaine Stoll and a number of other members of this community who have solicited dollars in an effort to improve tennis playing facilities in Yorkton. They just purchased a $3000 Big Steel Box for equipment and the area had lights erected a couple of years ago. Check it out near the Western Development Museum.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders have now lost four in a row and at the hands of the following quarterbacks: Justin Goltz, Zach Collaros, Thomas DeMarco, and Josh Neiswander. Not exactly murderer's row. Face it friends. The Riders are jinxed. I'm convinced people who are, normally, very good at what they do end up losing IQ points as soon as they put on a kelly green hat or jersey. Missed 19 yard field goals, too many men on the field, six games without a touchdown, a long hail mary touchdown pass with no time left on the clock (Henry Burris to Romby Bryant last year), players beating up citizens outside a bar, and on and on and on it goes. And, this is just since 2004. Remember, Sportsnet Magazine ranked the Riders 9th in a league of 8 teams in an all-time ranking of CFL franchises. That tells you everything right there.
Nice person mentions this week to Lisa Kirkwood, Scott Fitzsimmons, Michael Bayly, Lynndell Popoff, Lori Kraft, and Leanne Kostyshyn.
