Swantanamo bay makes me laugh ... and cry.

I don't have a lot of time for animal-rights activists. Some of the people who moan about the seal hunt make me a little nauseous. Seeing Brigitte Bardot or Loretta Swit or Paul McCartney out on an ice floe with a whitecoat seal pup is offensive to me. I didn't see them worrying about the collapse of Northern cod stocks, or making efforts to help sealers find an alternative to a centuries-old tradition of subsistence living.

Anyway, rant over. Suffice it to say that I am not an automatic lover of the animal-rights folk. But I have to admit, that calling the shelter for the City of Ottawa's Royal Swans 'Swantanamo Bay' made me laugh hard this morning. Of course, that laughter was quickly stifled by the realization that the city actually believed it had to spend HALF a MILLION DOLLARS!!! to construct a new shelter for the 18 swans.

My buddy Bob Daley would be happy to sell you this Billings Bridge town house and this lovely Britannia home for a total listed price of just under $600K. Or you could buy the three-bedroom Britannia home (near a beach for paddling) for the swans and use the other $200K for feed.

It appears that there's a solution, though. The swans may end up at a former agricultural research facility off Woodroffe Avenue in the city's west end. The building used to house several hundred geese, and apparently we can put up our 18 swans there for less than a quarter-million in renovation costs.

Holy dinah, that's still a lot of money. Ottawa councillor Clive Doucet says "Hats off to our staff", according to the CBC. I say put your hat back on! What do they have to do that would cost $250K?

In a city where property taxes keep going up by larger and larger amounts, (zero, 4.9, 5.9, 6.2...) I'm (pardon the pun) not sure this'll fly.

Ciao,
Bob.