Loyal readers of K&K, all six of you, know that we’ve long questioned the work ethic of Vancouver Canucks national anthem dude Mark Donnelly.
Although there are those who find the opera singer’s crowd-baiting antics stirring, we’ve always maintained that getting the ticket-paying audience to sing a few verses of “O Canada” while Donnelly remains silent and holds his microphone in the air is just another form of outsourcing, if not laziness. If you want to see someone earn every decibel of his applause, listen no further than droopy-eyed anthem singer Richard Loney, who’s sadly been relegated to the “Star Spangled Banner” ghetto thanks to Donnelly’s chicanery. Man, we love using that word.
But Donnelly has recently embarked upon another endeavour, one that requires a good amount of sweat and toil for once. It’s for something called the New Abortion Caravan, in which a group of trucks with not-so-subtle 22-foot-long billboards showing what the group claims are graphic abortion images drives across Canada to poke a stick at a debate that, until the election of the Conservative majority government, most of us thought was settled long ago.
The Convoy of Guilt kicked things off Tuesday at the Vancouver Art Gallery with Donnelly returning to the well and singing “O Canada,” though the public’s reception was far less gracious than at a Canucks game, with protesters booing and jeering in an attempt to drown out the singer.
As for Donnelly’s future with the Canucks, it’s anyone guess. He isn’t under contract, but should he be cut loose for his public stance against abortion, or more accurately, women having the right to choose if they can have a medically supervised abortion or not?
To be honest, K&K has no desire or endurance to wade into the murky depths of the abortion debate with each faction firmly entrenched in their own beliefs and opinions—save your angry letters invoking the wrath of God for our pro-circumcision rants. But we will say this: Donnelly, a middle-aged man with nine kids, should have about as much say in a woman’s reproductive rights as he does in deciding who the Canucks put in net each game. Simply put, he should stick to what he knows: singing the national anthem—preferably all of it.
k&k@vancourier.com
Twitter: @KudosKvetches
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