By Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: The Armchair Mayor Awards for news misses of 2018

Dec 29, 2018 | 4:02 AM

KAMLOOPS – THE YEAR HAS GONE BY quickly, hasn’t it? Hard to believe it’s time for the 2018 Armchair Mayor Awards for news and news makers that made headlines but not necessarily in a good way.

There was a lot of legitimate, important news — some good, some bad — such as the civic election, the dirty needles issue, the shutdown of Greyhound, floods and wildfires, the 4th Avenue pedestrian mall experiment and the ongoing McArthur Island nature park question.

Following are just a few of my own favourites, which just happen to be ones that didn’t work out as intended or expected. Picking the winners isn’t easy and you might disagree with my choices but that’s what the comments section is for. The envelopes please…

THE SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM AWARD FOR BIGGEST NON-EVENT OF THE YEAR — Goes to the legalization of cannabis. Kamloops scored the first government cannabis store in the province and people were lined up for days to get in. After that, nothing much happened. We aren’t assaulted by the ugly stink of weed as we walk down the street, the roads aren’t crowded with crazy drivers (not any more than usual, anyway) and life goes on. Media lost interest. The only thing different is that potheads now complain some of the fun has gone out of it.

THE FICKLE FINGER AWARD FOR MOST BONE-HEADED MOVE BY AN EX-POLITICIAN — Next year, this award will undoubtedly be named after this year’s recipient. When Donovan Cavers was a Kamloops City councillor he did some knuckle-headed things but decided to wait until he was out of office to top them all. Just before Christmas, after results of the referendum on proportional representation were announced, Cavers took to Twitter to decry the defeat of prop rep with this gem: “Although the ‘..TP’ in ‘FPTP’ should stand for Toilet Paper asshats like @ToddStoneBC, @PeterMilobar, @TerryLake16, @BillTieleman and @Wilkinson4BC helped keep BC in the 1800s. Congrats 1 & all.” He followed this with an “#F—You” minus the dashes and a “Yes, it’s appropriate #F—You.” Awhile later, he deleted the tweet but not before several people had saved and retweeted it along with appropriately outraged comments in response. One has to think we haven’t heard the last of ex-councillor Cavers.

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THE THANK GOD IT’S OVER AWARD — The electoral reform referendum took up way too much time, energy and money, but at least it ended the right way, which was the rejection of proportional representation. The prop reppers somehow managed to turn what seemed like an almost certain victory into an impressive defeat, which will keep the analysts busy for quite some time.

THE SAY IT AIN’T SO AWARD FOR WORST BUSINESS DECISION — The closing of Canada’s last Sears stores in January (the Kamloops store closed the previous October) put 12,000 people out of work. The failure of Sears was a classic case of not keeping up with the times. Sears isn’t the only big store to fail the test — Eatons, K-Mart, Woolco, for example — but it’s the most shocking. It didn’t have to be that way — the store that pretty much invented catalogue shopping somehow didn’t catch on to the new style of catalogue shopping on the Internet.

THE PAINT THE TOWN RED AWARD FOR OBNOXIOUS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE — This one’s a collective award to all the protesters who took protesting a step too far in their headline-grabbing determination to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart set the tone by being arrested for civil

contempt for blocking a road at a Kinder Morgan worksite in Burnaby in violation of a court injunction. Both got off with fines and Stewart was rewarded by being elected mayor of Vancouver. Later in the year, Greenpeace pulled a spectacular stunt by suspending several protesters from the Ironworks Memorial Bridge to interfere with tanker traffic. An indigenous activist group calling itself the Tiny House Warriors splattered red paint around at a provincial campsite in the North Thompson and disrupted campers; a few months later they were involved in disrupting a meeting on the Trans Mountain project at TRU. More red paint. They, too, were arrested and released, which seems to be the standard response to this kind of behavior.

THE HAPPY HOLIDAYS AWARD FOR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS —There were a lot of contenders this year but the award goes to Victoria City council, which wins for effort if nothing else. First there was the removal of Sir John A.’s statue from in front of City Hall, then there was the investigation into civic Christmas decorations to make sure there was nothing offensive — like Christmas trees — being paid for by non-Christian taxpayers. Honorable mention goes to the provincial government for renaming Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park.

MOST EMBARRASSING PERFORMANCE ON TELEVISON AWARD — The Royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan was obviously a big deal for millions around the world but the spectacularly embarrassing performance of Judge Brett Kavanaugh at the Senate hearings topped anything on TV for sheer entertainment. And the whole debacle surrounding the hearings on his Senate confirmation was first rate when it comes to the game of politics.

Here’s hoping for a productive and prosperous 2019, along with a few surprises.