Yes, there is  Landlord & Tenant Act in Ontario and it governs residential tenancies, but I have encountered nothing other than careless, mean, greedy, irresponsible landlords since returning to the province in October 2009. Legislation will never serve to teach people how to be decent. People like that cannot be forced to see themselves in a true light.

The last two, a wealthy married couple, have specialized in ripping off tenants by charging extortionate rents for a house that at first blush appears to be in a lovely location in pretty Cobourg, close to Victoria Park and the beach. It’s a busy place, a lot of cars and foot traffic. The basement is unusable. The windows are ill-fitting and don’t just allow draughts, outright wind blew through the bathroom. The rest of the windows don’t even open; some are nailed shut. Out of three toilets, only one was working at any given time. I never was able to use the Jacuzzi-type bathtub. It didn’t work. And the place with thick with filthy black grease and the firmer tenants’ junk when I moved in. There were many many more problems.

Now, a more modest place with no expectations as far as location goes in Whitby. But the same problems and a ton of lip service from a landlord who has a day job and is too busy to be a landlord, who hires inept handymen as so-called contractors and who makes hollow promises. I’ve been here six weeks; I still have no heat, no use of the bathtub, and can only operate 3 of the 8 windows. The screen door blows open every time there is a breeze and thumps its way through most nights, keeping us awake. Lights don’t work, baseboards are missing; so is part of the floor in the sitting room. The water in the shower runs to cold in less than 2 minutes. He had promised to have renos completed when I moved in and a “professional cleaning lady” clean the place. Ha! It was to “contractor: who wiped down the kitchen sink, but left the fridge, stove and bathroom filthy.

Now this guy expects me to paint the entire woodwork (doors, baseboards, trim, kitchen cupboards, etc.) using my supplies and my labour at no cost to him.

I’ll be off to visit the Landlord & Tenant Tribunal office on Monday. In order to do this, I must waste half of my day on the bus, pay $45 to file my list of deficiencies, and then I have to serve that claim to the landlord myself. He has never given me his address.

I am a careful tenant. I look after the places I rent. I keep them clean and orderly. I improve them. I treat them as if they were my own home. And I am fed up with landlords.

As soon as I am able and as soon as we decide where we plan to live on a long-term basis, a house will be purchased. Enough of this.

My award-winning full-length comedy for the stage, Welfarewell, has been published in book form by Samuel French, Inc. of New York City.

Available at www.samuelfrench.com, it costs under $10.00 and comes with a guaranteed laugh! I’d be happy to sign your copy if you buy one!

Esmerelda Quipp is 80, still of sound mind, but her body is beginning to “come unglued”, as she puts it. Having spent her working life as an actress, age pushing her gradually out of the business, she now faces the fact that her meagre government pension is insufficient to support her, even with her minimal needs. When she is arrested for attempting to bury her dead cat in her landlord’s yard, she finds that there is some sense of community, not to mention free room and board, within the prison system. She devises a plan to get herself sent back to jail; she robs a bank. But a well-meaning public defender gets the charges against her dropped. Esmerelda Quipp is undeterred! Using money she gets from selling stolen wine bottles to a recycling depot, she buys a toy gun at the local dollar store, and commits armed robbery. Knowing that she will be convicted because she will plead guilty, she assumes that she can spend the rest of her days living free, hanging out with other women, and being fed decently in a women’s prison. But the system that has failed her also wants to forgive her because of her age and general health, and the public defender wants to use an insanity plea to get her off. How will Esmerelda convince the legal system she should be incarcerated, literally, for life?

This play takes place over a few days during which Esmerelda is mostly in the police holding-cell jail, awaiting transfer to court and then, hopefully, prison. A few scenes occur at her seedy apartment, the banks she robs, and in a courtroom.

Cast of Characters 7F/1M (with doubling)

Esmerelda Quipp, 80, a former actress, pensioner

H.B. (Honey Bunch) Hackett, 35, police officer

Val, 30, a film actress, posing as a hooker

(real name is Rosanna Palermo)

Penelope Farthingale, 45, a hard-drinking hooker, past her

best-before date, and lacking a pension plan

Dottie Ramsbottom, 50, a compulsive shoplifter

Alfred David, 30, lawyer; a weary public defender

Jennifer Doer, 25, a naïve social worker/do-gooder

Gladys Symmington-Bukovitch, 55, a rich woman who shot her

husband, but he failed to die

Judge Julius, 55, a crusty-but-caring female judge

Mildred McGonigle, 60-ish, a bank customer

Landlord, 40, a beer-bellied bully

Three Bank Tellers and one Bank Customer

A Chef

A wee nicht of neeps, tatties and haggis to ring in the Bard’s 250th birthday, and on home…

By Cat Delaney

According to the Honourable Ken McAskill, Scottish parliamentarian, there are more McAskills in Canada than there are among the 5 million total population of Scotland. Across the globe, the 250th birthday of Scottish bard, Robert (dinna call me Robbie) Burns was celebrated on January 25th, 2009. Why this global ceilidh? It’s not just another excuse for a party, at which the Scots are adept, but a seemingly unmatched phenomenon: we all either have a little Scotch in us, wish we were Scottish, or plan to drink a little Scotch into us.
The Scottish culture has fascinated for centuries.
Using Burns’ 250th as its launch-pad, Scotland’s tourism folks have labelled this “Homecoming Scotland” year. Playing up Burns, single-malt, golf and pride of clansmanship, a segment of the tourism marketing thrust is put forth as “Great Minds and Innovations”. A helluva a lot was invented by the Scots, including some of their own legends…
My wee mummy grew up in Scotland, mostly Glasgow, Ayr and Peebles, and while her blood was Irish, she always considered herself a Scot. Her brother, Vic, born in Scotland, was a fine bag-piper in his day; her sister, Betty, still melts at the sight of a handsome man in a kilt.
As Mum lay dying in a hospital in SW Ontario in April 2005, with the blessing of her doctors, I went to Scotland for the first time in my life. I had no idea what to expect and feared that mum’s cherished memories of the place were like someone telling you a certain film is the best they’ve ever seen, you go see it and are disappointed, at best. Turns out, they were understated.
Arriving in Edinburgh by train from the Midlands of England, my first snapshot was of countless chimney stacks, grey skies and stark trees blasted by the winds. But when I walked the short block to my hotel, I discovered I was not alone. Certainly throngs of people scurried about on their daily business; it was not that. In Edinburgh, most of the population lives in a spirit (and I don’t mean whisky) world. The sense of history is overwhelming; not just the Castle or Holyrood, but the walking dead, still very much alive in the soul of Edinburgh.
This essential spirit is what is missing in so many other places in which I have set foot. I didn’t find it in Glasgow, not even London. Not even in the Parthenon back in 1972.
The good people at www.visitscotland.com and www.cometoscotland.com have invited me back this summer. I’ll hop the new flight direct from Halifax to Glasgow, operated by FlyGlobeSpan, spend a few days there, leaving half of my mother’s ashes behind. And I ‘ll write of the cultured place that Glasgow has become in its long life. The other half of Mum’s ashes will rest in Edinburgh, swept by the winds up The Cowgate and off to Holyrood. There too, an article I’ll scribe on what is hard to write (the intangible, the arcane). And I’ll finish the research on my novel, Smoke, set there, in The Cowgate in 1858, and write the closing chapters.
And I will be a Scot, for this homecoming his hers, my mother’s, and she would want my tartan soul to feel every fibre of the weave. Lang may her lum reek.

When I Think on the Happy Days

When I think on the happy days
I spent wi’ you, my dearie;
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I be but eerie!

How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
As ye were wae and weary!
It was na sae ye glinted by
When I was wi’ my dearie.

(Robert Burns)