The Mayor’s Pick

Yes, he was a mayor with a strong voice. Everyone knew he supported the movement to demand that the fossil fuel industry clean up its back yard in town. It wasn’t only Duncan who spurred taking down half of those gigantic tower reservoirs along the river as they clearly leaked fuel into the soil surrounding them. He’d made sure that all of the local industries knew they would be held accountable for contaminated soil, digging it up and replacing it with fresh soil to turn sections of their yards into green lawns and young forests at their own cost. He had been sure the people living in the southernmost reaches of the city were warned that they couldn’t eat the vegetables they did manage to grow in their gardens due to decades of particulate pollution falling on the soil. There were all sorts of people living in this town who wished that he had been born 100 or even 50 years ago, sensing that he would have insured some of the harmful practices of local industries were curtailed as soon as they occurred, whatever the cost to those companies.

The dialogue that Duncan’s actions had sparked around what the rest of City Council could legally do to prevent him, the Mayor, from entering City Hall, and what was considered to be impeding the Mayor’s ability to perform his job, had divided this city. Over the last two years, there were people in almost every crowd that gathered who wanted to oust him, and many would show up to heckle him in public presentations. There were a number of Councillors who called for the ballots to be recounted after every election, hoping that a review of the numbers would cause him to be thrown out of office.

This woman had knocked on my door at 8:30 AM with a bundle of pamphlets for Gord Smith and a clipboard in her hand. I’d answered the door in my nightgown and summer housecoat, though it was late October. I held the screen door open just a foot, to block the cool wind that still managed to penetrate. As I stood there, under-dressed in my doorway, I quickly began to chill. Yet, she was intent on her campaign and ignored my situation.

“Every year he picks athletes and heroes from our city,” she was saying now, “for ‘The Mayor’s Picks’ but he also picks at least two artists to recognise, like anyone really cares what those free-loaders do.”

She was counting on my agreement, but that statement was clearly a call to arms, though she didn’t know me or my inclinations. She didn’t know my feelings about artists, or athletes for that matter. I tried to keep the expression on my face noncommittal, knowing that people with her frame of mind are black-and-white thinkers. In their minds, you either agreed with them or you were a dark character. I’d been raised in that house, my own parents being such religious fundamentalists that they could never acknowledge there was any good to come from my chosen life path, even now.

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author
Sharon Berg's collection of stories, 'Naming the Shadows' will be published by Porcupine's Quill in Fall 2019. She writes poetry, story, book reviews and academic pieces. She has 2 full books (Borealis 1979 & Coach House 1984), two audio cassettes (Gallery 101 Productions 1985 & Public Energies 1986), a small book of children's verse & song (One Finger Press 1984), a CD (Big Pond Rumours 2006) and three chapbooks (Big Pond Rumours2006, 2016 & 2017), plus she wrote a chapter in a textbook about alternative schooling (Palgrave/MacMillan 2017). Sharon is the founder/editor of Big Pond Rumours, an International Literary E-Zine and the chapbook Press of the same name.
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