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operations; flights were delayed and rerouted, passengers were milling around like herring and the lineups were long.
    Nowhere longer than at the WestJet check-in booth where a harried ticket agent was doing her best to placate irate travellers. The MP barged through the line and bulled his way up to the desk, demanding a boarding pass. The ticket agent looked at him and said, “Sir, as you can see, there are many passengers ahead of you. We’re doing our best to get everyone through just as quickly as possible. I’m afraid you’ll have to get back in the line and wait your turn.”
    The MP went postal. He thumped the desk and roared, “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”
    Not missing a beat, the WestJet ticket agent picked up the public address microphone and announced to the entire airport, “Attention, please. We have a gentleman at the WestJet ticket counter who does not know who he is. Anyone who thinks they may know this man is asked at this time to please step forward and identify him. Thank you.”
    The crowd roared. The man snatched his wheeled suitcase and blustered off, tossing an obscene two-word curse over his shoulder.
    The WestJet clerk picked up the microphone again and said sweetly, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to get in line for that, too.”

 
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    There Auto Be a Law
    I think that the substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind.
    â€”Winston Churchill
    I ’m with the British Bulldog on this one. Oh, I rely on a gas guzzler as much as the next person and I’ve had my nether parts kneaded by enough saddles to know that going on horseback is no feasible option—but that doesn’t mean I’m in love with my car.
    I believe future archaeologists will be dumbfounded when they see how thoroughly we allowed automobiles to dominate our lives. They transfigure our landscape, poison our air, dictate our habits, define our habitations, suck our natural resources dry . . . and they kill us. You think guns are dangerous? Gun fatalities account for less than one hundred Canadian deaths a year. Fatal vehicle collisions claim nearly thirty-five hundred lives annually. Put more graphically, guns kill approximately one Canadian every six days; motor vehicles kill one Canadian every four hours.
    What they do to us socially is even more alarming. Marshall McLuhan predicted that mass transportation such as subways and trains was doomed in North America because, “a person’s car is the only place he can be alone and think.”
    That’s what our vehicles do—they separate us. We don’t walk or stroll or—beautiful word—promenade anymore. Cars box us in. We jump in our boxes and join streams of other boxes that take us to work or to play or to shop—as often as not in boxy office towers, boxy rec centres or big box stores.
    Happily, attitudes are changing. Many towns and villages—and even the tiny island I live on—are putting in pedestrian pathways and bike lanes for all those little trips that really don’t require motorized assistance.
    Cities too—and no city more comprehensively than Paris, France. There, the city fathers have okayed Vélib’, a bike-sharing network that allows citizens to pick up a bicycle at one location, ride it to their destination and leave it there. They have also eliminated twenty-three thousand parking spots downtown, narrowed crosstown expressways and replaced pavement and parking lots with nearly ten acres worth of parks, floating gardens—even a flower market.
    All of this in downtown Paris, which just a short time ago was characterized by honking horns, squealing tires and cursing drivers, all emanating from crawling daisy chains of cars and trucks courting terminal gridlock.
    Has it changed the fabled City of Lights? Bien sûr . For one thing, you can actually see those lights now that the