J
jollyjacktar
Guest
Shared with the usual caveat. Full story on link at end. At first I was suspicious of this lady, but she won me over and now I will miss her as GG and am very sorry to see her leave office. She is a class act and makes all the other GG of recent years pale by compairson. I wish her and her husband well wherever they go to next. 
By Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - A yellow schoolbus rumbled to a stop at the village grocery store just north of the Arctic circle and, without warning, a bundled-up Governor General had walked in and was wandering the aisles. Michaelle Jean considered the prices an outrage. The subsequent scene was a solitary snapshot of Jean's five-year term, which concludes this week with viceregal transition ceremonies.
This wasn't quite the stereotypical case of a well-heeled public figure experiencing sticker shock upon exposure to the cost of everyday living. It would in fact qualify as a normal reaction for a first-time visitor to Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T. — because, on the 69th parallel, the price of groceries is just that obscene. A jug of milk cost $13.99. Fruits and vegetables were also prohibitively expensive. And anyone with a craving for exotic fruit would have to be desperate enough to shell out $14.89 for a pineapple.
So the Queen's representative did the natural thing: she summoned the national media. To be more precise, she sent an aide to drag in the lone Ottawa-based reporter covering her 2008 trip to the Northwest Territories with a request, which might be ubiquitous at Rideau Hall but counts as rare for an everyday greeting: "Her Excellency would like to see you." So the reporter cut short an interview, walked into the store and found himself a moment later standing — alongside Canada's vicereine and an Inuvialuit couple — in front of a $14.89 pineapple. "We need to do something about this," Jean said, staring in disbelief. She introduced the reporter to the local couple. "You need to speak to these people."
Jean had encountered a reality known to anybody who has ever ventured into Canada's North: the region's sky-high rates of health problems, including diabetes, can't easily be curbed when it's so expensive to ship fresh foods but a bag of Doritos still costs less than $4. Her immediate instinct was to suggest public subsidies that might help bring down the cost of fruits and vegetables here. Ottawa has since announced a $60-million subsidy program called Nutrition North Canada. Some might have considered it naive for a public figure — holding what is constitutionally the highest office a Canadian can hold — to be shocked by such a well-documented reality of northern life. It might strike others as equally naive for that figure to believe more people — from the national media, to the voting public, to policy-makers — might be persuaded to take an interest.
There were hints early on, even before she was officially sworn in, of the traits she might bring to the job. But given all the furor over whether she was a closet Quebec separatist, few people noticed when a friend described the incoming Governor General as someone completely lacking in cynicism. It was equally easy to misinterpret the motto she chose for her viceregal coat of arms — "Breaking Down Solitudes" — as a reference to old English-French squabbles. She repeatedly explained that her motto applied to all social barriers, including those that isolate people living in the North......
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100927/health/health_gg_jean_leaves
By Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - A yellow schoolbus rumbled to a stop at the village grocery store just north of the Arctic circle and, without warning, a bundled-up Governor General had walked in and was wandering the aisles. Michaelle Jean considered the prices an outrage. The subsequent scene was a solitary snapshot of Jean's five-year term, which concludes this week with viceregal transition ceremonies.
This wasn't quite the stereotypical case of a well-heeled public figure experiencing sticker shock upon exposure to the cost of everyday living. It would in fact qualify as a normal reaction for a first-time visitor to Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T. — because, on the 69th parallel, the price of groceries is just that obscene. A jug of milk cost $13.99. Fruits and vegetables were also prohibitively expensive. And anyone with a craving for exotic fruit would have to be desperate enough to shell out $14.89 for a pineapple.
So the Queen's representative did the natural thing: she summoned the national media. To be more precise, she sent an aide to drag in the lone Ottawa-based reporter covering her 2008 trip to the Northwest Territories with a request, which might be ubiquitous at Rideau Hall but counts as rare for an everyday greeting: "Her Excellency would like to see you." So the reporter cut short an interview, walked into the store and found himself a moment later standing — alongside Canada's vicereine and an Inuvialuit couple — in front of a $14.89 pineapple. "We need to do something about this," Jean said, staring in disbelief. She introduced the reporter to the local couple. "You need to speak to these people."
Jean had encountered a reality known to anybody who has ever ventured into Canada's North: the region's sky-high rates of health problems, including diabetes, can't easily be curbed when it's so expensive to ship fresh foods but a bag of Doritos still costs less than $4. Her immediate instinct was to suggest public subsidies that might help bring down the cost of fruits and vegetables here. Ottawa has since announced a $60-million subsidy program called Nutrition North Canada. Some might have considered it naive for a public figure — holding what is constitutionally the highest office a Canadian can hold — to be shocked by such a well-documented reality of northern life. It might strike others as equally naive for that figure to believe more people — from the national media, to the voting public, to policy-makers — might be persuaded to take an interest.
There were hints early on, even before she was officially sworn in, of the traits she might bring to the job. But given all the furor over whether she was a closet Quebec separatist, few people noticed when a friend described the incoming Governor General as someone completely lacking in cynicism. It was equally easy to misinterpret the motto she chose for her viceregal coat of arms — "Breaking Down Solitudes" — as a reference to old English-French squabbles. She repeatedly explained that her motto applied to all social barriers, including those that isolate people living in the North......
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100927/health/health_gg_jean_leaves
