George MacArthur
3 Kari Court
Lindsay ON K9V 6B7
Dianne Niles Senior Accounts Clerk II Revenue & Taxation, City of Kawartha Lakes26 Francis Street
Lindsay ON K9V 4W9
Re: Tax payments.
Ms. Niles:
August 25, 2023
The program is able to continue processing auto-payments as demonstrated by the other occasion where there was a payment mix up back in February and it continued. Someone has control over enrollment in your auto payment plan, someone with the discretion to override policies when there are extenuating circumstances, like having an otherwise impeccable twenty-year record of paying taxes on time.
I am a violin bowmaker, the first one to ever live in the Kawartha Lakes, and probably the last. I added value to the community by providing a service that people in a large surrounding area would otherwise have to go to Toronto to obtain. Up until now I’ve never been a burden or an irritant to the city, but the question is, has the city ever been a burden or an irritant to me? Has the city ever done something to me that is as reprehensible as me missing a tax payment through banking error that could have been resolved the very day your office alerted me, had it done so?
I think it has.
When the city fell hook, line, and sinker for the covid-19 global depopulation plan (granted, like virtually every other city) it burdened me because of the unnecessary burden it applied to my mother, who was in the final years of her life. As her full-time caregiver I tried to do things to provide some meager kind of joy for her in those days, like the two of us going for coffee or lunch, but you ruined it. You and every other bureaucrat who towed the line are contributors (even if indirect) to my misery for the last three years, five months, and twelve days.
When I walked into the Police station to report several men in a car who tried to engage me for the purpose of fraud or something more nefarious who would have imagined that fifteen minutes later I’d be surrounded on Victoria Street by three officers ready to arrest me.
What did I do that could have precipitated my potential arrest you might ask Ms. Niles? Well, after waiting fifteen minutes in an unattended police station lobby (at 5:30pm on a weekday) that only has one call line into internal (as if there’s a zero probability that two or more incidents requiring immediate attention could ever happen at 5:30pm on a weekday) that was occupied by a woman who had good reason to be talking to police, I walked into the accident reporting attendant’s office for the third time except this time to take one of her business cards off the desk. Why did I do this? Because she irritated me.
How did she irritate me you might ask Ms. Niles? Well, it was the manner in which she exercised what she believed was her authority to disregard my request for her to call an officer, since it is not in her purview or job description to qualify what might or might not warrant immediate attention by law enforcement.
I’m normally not one to speculate, but I think her overt hostility had something to do with me interrupting a lovely conversation she was having in the office with a male friend. Imagine, a tax paying citizen (one with a perfect tax paying record up to that point) having the audacity to make a request that might break the concentration of two life forms reminiscing on the clock.
She failed in her civic duty, and that bothered me just enough to go back once more to get a business card and leave with it, at which point she did exactly that which she refused to do for me at least twice during the previous fifteen minutes, which was ring police officers and say something that would compel three of them to burst from their lair and detain me on Victoria Street.
Is there really irony in being detained and questioned for the crime of trying to report a possible crime, or is it just an illusion?
Of course I’m smarter than her, so my witty ways deprived her of the opportunity to manufacture my arrest.
Not very sporting.
Ms. Niles, I happen to be a man of principles. I cultivated them myself from a lifetime of observing people including myself. I have volunteered hundreds if not a thousand hours to the Red Cross - as a driver ferrying people to and from medical appointments, for Hospice Thornhill - attending the dying, and as a friendly visitor at Carefree Lodge Seniors Residence in Toronto. And I endured many hardships. My older brother succumbed to cancer brought on by a tragic life of addiction to one of the worst addictive substances known to man. But in times leading up to the end he’d punctuate the agony he mostly heaped on my mother by trying his best to make amends in moments of abstinence from that which ruined him.
But my hardships were nothing compared to my mother’s. My mother endured. My mother suffered way more than her fair share in her life, and she did it for me.
My principles told me that once I entered the room where she would depart, I would remain, until the end.
The definition of remain is to not leave.
The doctor called me on the morning of May 14, 2021 (home for a quick break from a twenty-two hour shift I just put in at her bedside) to tell me there was nothing more they could do for my mother.
May 14, 2021, I left my house at 12:51pm, destination Ross Memorial Hospital, for the purpose of sitting with my mother at her bedside one last time.
At 1:01pm, six days after she was taken back to the hospital for pneumonia (she’d been home but bedridden and unable to walk for about three weeks) I would find myself in my mother’s room in the palliative wing and talking to a nurse when I was struck with the realization that I was dehydrated, probably severely from six days with virtually no sleep and little thought about nourishment. I asked for a cup of water. She said I couldn’t drink in the room. Something about not being permitted to remove my mask. I’d have to go outside. I explained that I’d made a vow to not leave the room once I’d entered, was dehydrated, and needed water. She declined again. I told her to inform the hospital’s CEO Kelly Isfan, whom I had communicated with days prior about two nurses who took turns antagonizing me for hours by declining to call a doctor on duty as my mother continued to slide into a coma that no one but me seemed to notice and by asking me “are you a doctor?” as if I have to be one to say whether an eighty-three year old non-responsive woman whom I knew better than she knew herself was in fact slipping into a coma. I was certain Isfan would tell staff to make an exception and give me water.
The head of palliative showed up instead. I conducted the same diplomatic dance for water with her as I had moments before with a nurse. She insisted I should just break my vow and go outside to drink. In a last-ditch effort I said “My mother’s not going to catch covid. If I were you I’d just look the other way.”
What was her response you might ask Ms. Niles? Well, she said “If you remove your mask or drink in the room I’ll have you removed from the building.”
That’s what she said, so help me God.
I said I will comply. She said “You better.”
There I was, staring into the eyes of an actual demon, yet only one of innumerable vessels who tortured one family after another in hospital & hospice rooms everywhere, for years. I was staring into the eyes of an entity that was seriously contemplating having a loyal fifty-five year old son dragged from the bedside of his dying mother, so she could die alone and he could live with the guilt of failing to execute one final gesture of duty and honor, because he needed water.
Like the auto accident reporting attendant at the police station, I deprived this smarmy witch of the opportunity to exercise her near-limitless authority to decide who gets water and who gets to have their only living son at bedside when death comes, because I lied to her. I removed my mask after the nurses left the room and I formulated a plan where I’d keep the curtain closed so I’d have time to don it when they entered on the hour, and I drank from the tap that I finally realized was there.
Twelve hours later I had met the day’s objective. I managed to see my mother’s way, and if I’m correct that the removal vital equipment caused her to regain some cognitive function - as her eyes were open somewhat when I arrivedI managed to let my mother see her only son’s face unobstructed by someone else’s whim, one last time.
There are people on this planet that tried to deprive me and my mother of this last communion.
And it enrages.
How many other families in Kawartha Lakes and other cities around the world were deprived of the opportunity to properly attend dying loved ones due to the illegal decrees handed down by a consortium of unelected *authorities* in far-off places? A thousand? A hundred thousand?
The next day I wrote my second letter to Ross Memorial CEO Kelly Isfan. I conveyed the details of my exchange with the palliative head and I confessed to not wearing my mask at any time and drinking in the room. And I included a picture of me and my mother I had taken five minutes before she would take her last breath as proof of my violation of sacred laws handed down by learned men, men of renown. Then I informed her that she was obligated to report me to whomever is responsible for processing those who would so flagrantly violate hospital protocol and jeopardize others. This was not presented as optional. She was dutybound to report me. I waited for someone to come and issue my court summons, but they never came.
Is there irony in almost getting arrested because someone didn’t like you and then not getting arrested for irrefutably committing what was an offense at the time for which people were getting arrested everywhere?
My mind blazes with the fire of a hundred thousand suns and it radiates thoughts of vengeance for those who were psychologically tortured by *officials* everywhere when trying to visit sick or dying loved ones.
But what can one (albeit wily) bowmaker possibly do in the face of such overwhelming might of an adversary that owns and controls all the central banks and virtually all industry, all media, all natural resources, all governments, and by proxy all armies and police forces?
I don’t know. I’ll think of something.
In the meantime, why should the burden of the knowledge one man’s trials and tribulations be laid upon me when I’m just trying to do my job as a tax collector you might be asking yourself, Ms. Niles?
Well, maybe you’re just unlucky.
I have good news. The cheque is in the mail.
Have a nice day.
