Keeping the Ottawa River Parkway

Who knew that a 10-kilometer stretch of roadway along the Ottawa River was such a top priority for the federal government?

I know: the Conservatives made the change in August. I heard the news and thought "what pinhead thought that this was an important issue?" It wasn't important to me. And so I reserved my opinion until now.

You'd think that our federal government might have more pressing issues, such as the economy, health care, education, the environment, and decent living conditions with clean water for people living in the far north.

But no. Someone thought that the low-hanging fruit, the fruit that no one was even interested in, was more pressing. In the months since the announcement, everyone that I have spoken to about the renaming of the parkway to Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway have come up with the same questions: why? what was wrong with the old name? how much is this going to cost taxpayers? who wanted this change so much that the Tories made it a priority?

Seriously, who was sitting around the table, thinking of important projects for our nation, and came up with the renaming of the Ottawa River Parkway?

I want names. I want to know who thought this was a critical issue, who thought that taxpayers needed to spend money on a name that many people won't even use, including residents of Ottawa?

I won't. I won't use the name of a drunkard politician whose father fled their native country to avoid paying his debts. Yeah, yeah, so what if he was our first prime minister? We already have a lot of buildings named after him. The Ottawa airport bears his name too. And, before the Ottawa school board sold it, there was a high school named after him.

For me, it will always be the Ottawa River Parkway. There's no confusion for newcomers: it's that beautiful parkway that follows the Ottawa River from the war museum to Lincoln Fields.

And no pin-headed politician (you know, the guy who refused to have the word "Canada" or the name of the building in which he works—likely, because it's named after a Liberal PM—on his gold-embossed business cards?) will ever change the name for me.

End rant.