Noteworthy: Never drink and drive. Just don’t do it, please.

By Bruce Penton on September 4, 2024.

All I can do is add my voice to the sympathies extended to those close to former Flames’ hockey star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew, who were killed last Thursday night on the eve of their sister’s wedding in New Jersey while riding their bicycles and being run over by an alleged drunk driver. Everything about the Gaudreau tragedy has been reported and written by others, but it presents the opportunity again to implore people to never, never, never drink and drive. No, don’t do it. Ever.

Alcohol – any amount – dulls the senses. It impairs a human’s ability to make quick decisions. It impairs a person’s ability to react quickly. It impairs a person’s ability to take the less-risky route. Canada has its .08 law, which states a driver is unlawfully ‘impaired’ if his or her blood-alcohol level is at or above the .08 level (80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood). One or two drinks OK? Probably, but that person is still ‘impaired’ to a degree – just not as impaired as the idiots who choose to drive when they’re above the .08 level.

So many people had their lives turned upside down when the Gaudreau brothers were mowed down. Both young men had wives. Johnny had two young children; Matthew’s widow is expecting. Sister Katie’s wedding day, scheduled for the day after the carnage, was shattered.

These tragedies, unfortunately, happen on a regular basis. The Gaudreau story produced major headlines around North America because of his hockey fame. But how many other innocent people are killed because someone had too many drinks and then got behind the wheel of a 3,000 or 4,000-pound vehicle? In Canada alone, approximately 1,000 people die every year due to traffic accidents where alcohol was involved.

Don’t do it. Don’t drink and drive. There are so many safer options these days.

â€¢ Guilty, too: Driving south on Thirteenth Avenue the other day, I was following a half-ton truck that for six, seven, 10, 12, maybe 15 blocks carried on with his left-turn signal flashing. It didn’t take me long to realize the driver wasn’t going to turn and I was thinking of a few smart-alec cracks to make about senior citizens and their penchant for driving with their left-turn signal flashing.

â€¢ And then I realized: Hey, I’ve done the same thing myself. More than once. So, yes, it happens. It’s no big deal. It’s not just senior citizens, either. Sometimes you make less than a full-turn, like from Allowance Avenue turning left to go south up the Dunmore Road hill, and the flasher doesn’t automatically click off. So, long story short, no jokes. No admonishment. Just a minor oversight.

When the Canadian government quit producing the penny back in 2013, the world didn’t come to an end, as I recall. Nor was there a rage of discontent. Maybe a ripple of controversy. Canadian penny lovers didn’t storm Ottawa seeking to overturn the decision; we just went on with our lives with a gigantic shrug.

â€¢ Now, the penny dilemma is circulating in the United States, where the U.S. mint produces 45 million pennies per year. A recent story in the New York Times said Americans are like Canadians used to be when it comes to the penny – they put them in jars; stuff them into old wallets, but rarely spend them. It costs the U.S. mint almost 3.1 cents to produce a single penny, which makes continuation of their production a little silly, especially when they carry little to no value.

â€¢ Question of the day: Would you bend over to pick a penny lying on a sidewalk? Maybe, after all: Penny wise, pound foolish, whatever that means.

In Canada, 11 years later, we’re coping quite well without the penny. Perhaps the nickel will be next. In New Zealand the lowest-value coin is the dime, and that country’s economy seems to be doing OK. In NZ, every item on the shelf of a store has a price ending in zero.

â€¢ A headline on CHAT-TV’s website the other day referred to the Medicine Hat city council situation as a ‘crisis’ which I believe is going a bit too far, word-wise. My good ol’ thesaurus offered a couple of other words for ‘crisis,’ such as confrontation, deadlock, dilemma, impasse, mess, and situation.

Personally, I prefer mess, and the sooner the mess is cleaned up, the better.