Hosers

Open letter to Peter McKay  

Long live the new King of Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda-stan. No one ever lost more 

by Kevin Potvin  

Peter, you have got to be the biggest idiot this country ever produced. There you were, tossing her giggling children on your knee, reclining without a care on her father’s couch with him after supper, comfortably showing affection to her in public, and probably just a few more months of continuing good behavior away from marrying into Belinda Stronach’s billions. That’s “billions,” as in world-league wealth and power. You were that close!

Stronach is no blonde dipstick, as your frat-boy pals in Alberta characterized her after you blew it. She has more power than all of them combined—more even than any mere Prime Minister. She is the former CEO of the largest auto-parts company on the planet. No daddy’s girl, she was named by Fortune 500 two years ago as the second most powerful woman in the world. That’s “in the world.”

Those hicks from Alberta who’ve been dissing the “whoring” “blonde” would be blessed beyond what they deserve to clean this blonde’s summer cottage bathroom. And you, about whom I can hardly do more than shake my disbelieving head, sneered last night that now you’re going to walk your dog because at least dogs show loyalty. You’ve lost your mind.

Everyone still thinks it’s the woman who must choose between life and career, never the man. Everyone automatically supposes that the fateful night before she crossed the floor to rescue the Liberal Party from a non-confidence catastrophe, that you and her talked till 8:30 AM about her decision. I know that’s hogwash. Stronach has actually lead a big company, consults with former US presidents, hangs out with the world’s top CEOs. The idea that she would seek advice on an important decision from you, her cutesy pipsqueak boytoy from the Maritimes, is chokingly laughable.

Unlike you and all your juvenile pals from that frat-house of a political party, Belinda actually showed a little class and gave you time to think it over. Her mind was made up. It was you who was unable to choose between life and career.

And you chose career. That’s a stunner, because your career is presently second banana to a disastrously inept leader with no future in a party about to break up all over again. The choice you turned down was a lifetime with a smart, articulate, powerful woman with a rolodex of the entire world’s elite of wealth and power on her desk, billions of dollars, and way more power to influence the direction of Canadian politics—even world politics—than you could ever imagine, and all of it wielded in the comfort and calm of corporate boardrooms, hotel suites, and private homes in Palm Beach.

Maybe that was your problem: Belinda was trying to tell you, “Hey Peter, I’m holding this out for you because I like you, you’re cute,” but you lack the capacity to imagine it. That is the enormity of the idiocy you displayed the next day when, as Belinda took to the press conference with the Prime Minister, you watched it on TV rather than sit at the same table to announce you were crossing the floor too. Great leaders know when to lead. Likewise, great followers know when to follow. You’re neither.

It’s hard in retrospect to figure out what Belinda saw in you. First, you show blinding stupidity in failing to grasp what she was offering. Then you get it in your thick head to call up the media to come to your daddy’s farm to take pictures of you scratching your dog and looking wistfully across the acres. It is the very definition of pathetic. And then, to top it off, the act that made me spray my morning cheerios across the wall: your remark that at least your dog shows loyalty! Lordy sakes, Peter, it was your loyalty that was in question, never hers!

There is something ultimately Canadian about you, Peter. You speak for that large constituency of Canadians that is found at the bars on weekday nights regretfully peeling labels off bottles of Molson or propped up in bed in run-down workers’ motels playing video games alone. You represent all the men who fill this country with unspoken despair, all those who coulda, woulda, shoulda. Canada is the land of the people who don’t seize the moment, and Peter McKay, you are the new King. Forget the cognac, get me a Molson, buddy, and let’s watch hockey in our underpants, again. You idiot!